Plants and insects

I have started building a garden this summer. This may seem peculiar. After all, we only have a small shed in the forest. I find it exciting, though, to take my garden plants from the town and try to create something which will conserve some of the plants in the garden we have in the town even if we move away. I have also bought a few new plants. The roses I bought have bloomed well, which makes me very pleased. We’ll see if they survive the coming winter. 

    

I also bought three frames for my kitchen garden, painted them and filled with soil and compost. Then I planted chives, Welsh onion, lettuce, dill, mint, rhubarb and strawberries to see how they manage with sometimes weeks of our absence. 

This summer I enjoyed the nature, its plants, isects and birds. I chased butterflies, spiders and grasshoppers with my camera. I witnessed a spider giving birth to numerous little spiders. I didn’t  know that spiders can have different colours, too, or that a wasp would like to build a nest under the bed! 

Once this summer, when I was at the shed alone, attaching more shelves above the chest of drawers we brought from town, I got lovely visitors. It was my mom, my brother and his wife. They came to see me from their summer cottage. It was their first time after we felled the trees and built the road and the shed. They didn’t stay long, just to see what we had accomplished, but it was heart moving that they came. It meant a lot to me. I burst to tears when they handed in their presents: wind chimes of an angel shape, the axe I had made myself in the technical work lesson at the comprehensive school (but already forgotten) and a basket which once had belonged to my grand-grandmother, who owned this piece of land.


                    

At the end of this summer I harvested salad, dill, mint and onion. Not a bad start. A pity that the summer ended so quickly.   (P.S. I don't know why I published this so late in the autumn!)



 

New Dawn

My summer holiday started. The same day I headed for my piece of land for the first time after winter. On the way I visited my dear aunt and spent all nights at my dear mum. (I also visited my godfather later on my way back home.)

The days were full of work and I enjoyed every moment. I felt so free when I got to do whatever I wanted. And I wanted to finish the toilet! I had also brought plants from our town garden and I wanted to plant them.

I started by planting the wood anemones I had brought to our garden from Russia from my father’s birthplace at Karelian Isthmus years ago, when my father and mother took me and my husband there. I do hope they will survive the change of place beside Jami's grave. Then I shaped a flowerbed for the other flowers. I made it round and wished to get stones from the village for it, but I found out I should bring them from town. The rose, New Dawn, I had bought at the end of last summer and planted it at the side of the shed to wait for the flower bed was fine, so I planted it again in the new flowerbed. And I had bought one more, Royal Red, and brought it with me. Let’s see what will happen to them.  

My major project was the toilet, which we already started last summer but didn’t finish. You know, I got operated and had to start radiation therapy and my husband worked and suffered from aching leg, which is another story and it still goes on, and then the summer was over.

The old toilet, the pole and the pit, couldn’t work anymore. We had chosen Biolan composting toilet eco which composes the solid waste and collects the seep liquid. I thought it was a good idea to dig a large tub into the ground for the canister, which had to be positioned lower than the bottom of the toilet and cover it with a lid. However, I noticed the tub was too shallow. I had our neighbour’s old ceiling panels there for making an elevation onto the floor in the toilet, which would be my next challenge, so I used it to make a box. It didn’t turn out to be very nice, but it works.  

I dug the pit and dropped the box into it, fixed the hose and noticed the pit was too shallow. The edges of my box had to be lower. Easier said than done, I had to dig the box up again. I think I fixed the position of the box at least three times, before I thought it was good enough. Alone I was to lose my hope when trying to pull the heavy (to me) wooden box out of the ground those thee times before I felt satisfied. Of course, professionals wouldn't make all the mistakes I manage to do. 

Completing my major challenge, the elevation of the floor, made me work harder. The carcass wood for the boards had been planned and cut to measure previous summer. I only had to screw it in place. When I started sawing the used ceiling panels for the elevated floor, I felt all hand saws were for nothing and was sorry because I had to drive so far to buy a new saw. Of course, it may have been lack of my own strength in sawing that made me feel so, or as I later noticed, it was harder to saw with the grain than against the grain and I simply blamed the saw. At least I thought so to give myself an explanation that was good enough for driving such a long way. But I was to find out I was lucky I did. When I had to start shaping the boards round the toilet, the chisel knife I found in the village hardware store was a must. My first try of the board didn’t fit. The second one fitted, but didn’t look nice, because I didn’t remember the good technique. How come I have forgotten all the little tricks! When I was younger, I knew something about techniques, too. Lack of practice and experience, I would say, not skills, ha-ha!

Anyway, I decided not to care and continued. There I was, alone, with just some hand tools and thought: I’m doing this for myself and this will do. I shaped several other boards round the toilet. Some were the second or third versions before I was pleased and when I got to the back board and to its shaping, I thought I had finally learned something. And, I had accomplished something. The toilet had its elevation and it was ready to be used. 

It was time to head for home. I left the front board for later and painted the other part of the floor. I think the recycled wood, which the elevation is made of, looks great as it is.