Weekend Work January 19, 2009

Those sneaky spring bulbs are taking their chance to make a bid for freedom. I don’t know, a week or two of plus-zero weather and they get all over excited.

Finished tidying the last two boxes that I avoided due to last week’s inclement weather. If I’d have opened a window they might have been blown in! So the long-gone Lobelia are now no more and various rotten Dianthus have been cut right back. I was tempted just to remove them but decided to leave them there and see what happens in the spring. They are supposed to be good for a couple of years so the BBC say and there’s nothing lost if they don’t come again and need removed later.

Fixtures and Fittings January 16, 2009

Improv Bracket

I should have titled this entry something like: Hammer Drills – The Greatest Invention Ever? or something along those lines.

Being the fearful type and having no wish to cause serious harm or be sued I wanted to make sure the window boxes weren’t going to accidentally slip from their ledge, many feet up in the air, and land on some poor unsuspecting passer-by, postman or criminal damages lawyer (I can guarantee with my luck it would be the latter).

Having done a quick recce of the area I was surprised by how many planters were just sitting on their ledges without any support. Was I being a little paranoid? Perhaps, but as I was using plastic troughs and I didn’t have any idea about their weight when full of soil I wasn’t willing to take the chance. I also knew that every time the wind got up I would be looking on with slight trepidation.

So with safety in mind off I went to the DIY Store/Garden Centre to see what my options were. Surely I wasn’t the only one to want something to secure my prized plastic specimens? Hmmm!

After a fruitless search for an off-the-shelf solution is was clear that this was going to require some simple improvisation, especially with my limited DIY skills.