I love wintertime, curtains drawn at 4pm, heating on, planning next year’s seeds, a nice long rest before the panic of Spring, the though of everything looking dead when you know it is only sleeping and will all pop up again.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
This morning I thought I would wash my bird feeders, like you're supposed to.
I had 3 feeders and needed 2 different screwdrivers, 2 different Allen keys, long nosed pliers, an old washing up brush and a toothbrush, and an extra hand would have been, well, handy!
I would never have got them assembled again without losing a nut if I hadn't remembered my trusty telescopic magnet gizmo which held them for me.
It took over an hour, plus drying time and I still couldn't get one completely apart.
I love wintertime, curtains drawn at 4pm, heating on, planning next year’s seeds, a nice long rest before the panic of Spring, the though of everything looking dead when you know it is only sleeping and will all pop up again.
This morning I thought I would wash my bird feeders, like you're supposed to.
I had 3 feeders and needed 2 different screwdrivers, 2 different Allen keys, long nosed pliers, an old washing up brush and a toothbrush, and an extra hand would have been, well, handy!
I would never have got them assembled again without losing a nut if I hadn't remembered my trusty telescopic magnet gizmo which held them for me.
It took over an hour, plus drying time and I still couldn't get one completely apart.
Does it really have to be this hard?
Doesn't inspire you to do it very often!
Put 'easy clean bird feeders UK' into Google ... there are some good designs out there nowadays ... so as you replace you can make your life a bit easier
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I try and clean my bird feeders every Sunday but I do miss a few I'll admit. The RSPB feeder I've got is great for cleaning though and it's all metal parts apart from the tube. I thought this would be great as it would last forever but now the plastic tube has a crack in it and they don't seem to sell replacement ones.
Speaking of replacing things. My kitchen tap has been dripping for a couple of weeks now and I've been putting off taking it apart as it has one of the new 1/4 turn ceramic valves and they're a pain to get replacements for. If you've never tried you have to disassemble the tap, remove the valve which will probably have no manufacturer's markings on it, go around all the plumbing shops to find out that no one stocks a similar one, go on-line to find a replacement and finally find that shop that sells all the valves known to man but only if you have the millimeter precise measurements of every part of it and know the number of splines on the thingy, which are surprisingly hard to count.
So I skipped the first steps and removed the valve and painstakingly measured the whole thing with a pair of calipers, counted the splines on the thingy (4 times just to be sure) and made a drawing. I then cleaned the tap and valve and replaced it all... which fixed the drip.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I just soak my birdfeeders in hot soapy water, scrub any sticky bits and then rinse and hang to dry. I've also been known to put them in the dishwasher as that's hotter and should kill any bugs I miss by hand. However, I just have fat ball holders, fat block holders and peanut feeders - no fancy technology to see off squirrels and so on so maybe a simpler design.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
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https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/694368/flu-winter-death-cold-fatalities
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.