Plant progress
19 December 2025 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI finally got round to cutting back the dead sticks on the mint and oregano (which I really ought to bring myself to get rid of, as it is still virtually flavourless).
I repotted the sorrel *again* last week because I discovered the roots were all coming out of the bottom -- it obviously put on a lot of growth in the last few months! The old (plastic) pot had photo-decayed (of course it was second-hand to start off with, so there is no knowing quite how old it may have been) and fell apart into fragments as I tried to remove the rootball, so I simply pulled it off the outside and then hacked the roots fairly drastically back in order to make room for some more surrounding compost. It is almost certainly completely the wrong time of year for such treatment, but the plant does seem to have survived.
Which is more than I can say for the new pot of spring onions, which are now all dead. The little tuft of chives is still alive, but not exactly thriving -- we shall see if it makes it through the winter.
I still have marigolds (second generation) and pot-marigolds flowering, and of course the pink Linaria. Both the garlics are happy.
I tried using my front bike light for the quick ten-minute run back from the library around dusk (i.e. 3.30pm!) on Wednesday, and despite several attempts it displayed the red battery warning as soon as I switched it on, even though I'm *reasonably* convinced that I did in fact recharge it after all my earlier testing. So... if I want to use it apparently I need to check it for charge some time in advance before going out, as well as not daring to switch it off while I have the bicycle in use :-O
After running my heating for more or less 24 hours non-stop (it kept turning itself off every time it was scheduled to come on under normal circumstances, because the temperature indoors was already above the default background heating level!) I managed to push the thermometer up from 15.5C to a kingly 18C. Which is precisely why I don't waste my time trying to keep it warm indoors in the first place.
On the other hand, the mattress *has*, so far as I can tell, dried out -- certainly sufficiently to be slept on -- as a result, and I managed to restore it to a horizonal position from the corner in which it was leaning (in order that the divan base might also dry out....) without knocking any of the pictures off the picture-rail in the process. However I am still sleeping on top of it cocooned in a single sheet-sleeping-bag rather than having remade all the multiple layers of bedding, mainly because I am hopelessly lazy when it comes to domestic matters in anything other than an emergency, but also because (a) I wanted to make sure it had dried out entirely and (b) the 'mattress cover' really is completely worn out, having shed all its quilted padding, and I need to buy a new one. Although I have of course now got a nice fresh stain on the surface of the mattress anyway to mark the location of the leak...
I got round to cutting my hair this morning, and have ended up with the sort of unfortunate glimpse-of-scalp patch round the back that is always the hazard of cutting by touch aided only by a three-inch pocket mirror. (In fact I have a pretty shrewd idea that it was actually caused by the hair at that point sticking out sideways behind my ear due to the way I'd slept, and getting over-enthusiastically trimmed off in the bathroom mirror as a result!)
Oh well, it will grow back in a couple of weeks or so, I expect... or enough not to be visible, anyway. Meanwhile I have evened matters out a bit by thinning the surrounding area as well so that it no longer looks like quite such a glaringly obvious mistake ;-)
Stupidly, I didn't get round to doing it until *after* I had just put my old pyjamas in the washing basket, and as always happens, no matter how careful I try to be when cutting my hair I always end up with itchy bits down the back of my collar. So the end result was that I had to put two thick pyjama jackets in the wash together and hang them out in the winter sunshine at around midday in the hopes that I should have something dry enough to wear for tonight. They are not dry yet, but have been moved indoors, so we shall see...
I repotted the sorrel *again* last week because I discovered the roots were all coming out of the bottom -- it obviously put on a lot of growth in the last few months! The old (plastic) pot had photo-decayed (of course it was second-hand to start off with, so there is no knowing quite how old it may have been) and fell apart into fragments as I tried to remove the rootball, so I simply pulled it off the outside and then hacked the roots fairly drastically back in order to make room for some more surrounding compost. It is almost certainly completely the wrong time of year for such treatment, but the plant does seem to have survived.
Which is more than I can say for the new pot of spring onions, which are now all dead. The little tuft of chives is still alive, but not exactly thriving -- we shall see if it makes it through the winter.
I still have marigolds (second generation) and pot-marigolds flowering, and of course the pink Linaria. Both the garlics are happy.
I tried using my front bike light for the quick ten-minute run back from the library around dusk (i.e. 3.30pm!) on Wednesday, and despite several attempts it displayed the red battery warning as soon as I switched it on, even though I'm *reasonably* convinced that I did in fact recharge it after all my earlier testing. So... if I want to use it apparently I need to check it for charge some time in advance before going out, as well as not daring to switch it off while I have the bicycle in use :-O
After running my heating for more or less 24 hours non-stop (it kept turning itself off every time it was scheduled to come on under normal circumstances, because the temperature indoors was already above the default background heating level!) I managed to push the thermometer up from 15.5C to a kingly 18C. Which is precisely why I don't waste my time trying to keep it warm indoors in the first place.
On the other hand, the mattress *has*, so far as I can tell, dried out -- certainly sufficiently to be slept on -- as a result, and I managed to restore it to a horizonal position from the corner in which it was leaning (in order that the divan base might also dry out....) without knocking any of the pictures off the picture-rail in the process. However I am still sleeping on top of it cocooned in a single sheet-sleeping-bag rather than having remade all the multiple layers of bedding, mainly because I am hopelessly lazy when it comes to domestic matters in anything other than an emergency, but also because (a) I wanted to make sure it had dried out entirely and (b) the 'mattress cover' really is completely worn out, having shed all its quilted padding, and I need to buy a new one. Although I have of course now got a nice fresh stain on the surface of the mattress anyway to mark the location of the leak...
I got round to cutting my hair this morning, and have ended up with the sort of unfortunate glimpse-of-scalp patch round the back that is always the hazard of cutting by touch aided only by a three-inch pocket mirror. (In fact I have a pretty shrewd idea that it was actually caused by the hair at that point sticking out sideways behind my ear due to the way I'd slept, and getting over-enthusiastically trimmed off in the bathroom mirror as a result!)
Oh well, it will grow back in a couple of weeks or so, I expect... or enough not to be visible, anyway. Meanwhile I have evened matters out a bit by thinning the surrounding area as well so that it no longer looks like quite such a glaringly obvious mistake ;-)
Stupidly, I didn't get round to doing it until *after* I had just put my old pyjamas in the washing basket, and as always happens, no matter how careful I try to be when cutting my hair I always end up with itchy bits down the back of my collar. So the end result was that I had to put two thick pyjama jackets in the wash together and hang them out in the winter sunshine at around midday in the hopes that I should have something dry enough to wear for tonight. They are not dry yet, but have been moved indoors, so we shall see...