2022-05 Visitor Preparation!

It was the start of the growing season and my parents were coming over the next month to visit for the first time. So we were in full-swing getting the garden underway and finishing projects before parents visited.

Preparing Plants

We were preparing lots of plants to go out into the raised beds. At this point, we only had growing indoors, or outdoor raised beds. There was no staging area to acclimatise the plants. Outside was not hot, but was windy, dry, and sunny. As a result, we lost quite a few plants that were planted out as they couldn’t get established before drying out.

Repairing WoordWork

I fitted new woodwork where I’d removed rotted woodwork on the garden privacy wall. It was difficult to do without damaging the current woodwork. All the original structure uses large nails with no screws.

PostNord

About a year or two ago, our postcode was changed, but not for our whole village. Occasionally someone at a major sorting office in Sundsvall to the south seems to remember this and writes a different, but incorrect, postcode on our post. The postal company then record the post as “misaddressed” and deliver it to the postcode that has been added. PostNord support refused to believe that any staff member would do this. So the end result is that this month PostNord delivered my heavy parcel to a collection site 30km away and then refused to redirect it. That’s a 60km round trip if you don’t have a car, but at least the scenery was nice.

The parcel was about 6-7 KG and big. I had to tie it to my rucksack using a spare innertube for the bike. I have an e-bike that I used to use when commuting in the UK. If set to the lowest assistance mode I discovered on this trip that the bike could cover about 55km. So about 5km short but not a massive problem.

I now keep parcels that Postnord claims the sender has misaddressed; they are always correctly addressed. It’s just really frustrating and sadly it was always the same member of the support staff.

Getting a Car

A car would have made collecting misdirected parcels a lot easier, and it would mean we could get to explore places easier. We also wouldn’t have to depend on rural public transport times and could buy food in bulk from larger supermarkets.

If you want to hide in plain sight in Sweden, a Volvo is ideal. I hunted down a Volvo on the local sales site. The viewing process went ok. The seller only spoke Swedish and I could say and understand enough that we got by. For the actual sale, we met at my house with a local friend to assist with translation.

Basement Wood Storage

Inside the house, I was finishing the wood storage rack for the workshop. I wanted something that looked more traditional than a metal rack. It was a rough copy of a picture I’d seen on the internet.

Building New Raised Beds

We were able to use a rotating sieve to process a lot of waste soil and so could create raised beds. We got to work creating a flower bed for the house entrance and a raised bed around the edge of the garage.

I made the beds the same height and as level as possible. The lawn isn’t flat at all so there are some height differences I couldn’t fix.

Behind the back of the garage, the ground was not level. There was a lot of earth to be moved in order to create the raised bed. We fed all the earth through the sieve but it is a very dry clay-type soil. We would late have a lot of problems with plants drying out when planted in only the normal soil. A bit of compost made a lot of difference in plant growth. There was also some old metalwork which looked like ground anchors from perhaps an old electricity pole. We also found what looked like remains from the concrete laying of the garage foundation (metal rebar ties etc) and an old bonfire.

The apple tree saplings needed a lot of attention as caterpillars like to wrap the leaves up and eat through them. We would check and spray them in the evening.