Maintenance

There's always a few maintenance jobs needing to be done here. If it's not the garden needing a bit of attention, then something in the buildings needs a look.

I have a 2-wheeled wheelbarrow, and one of the tyres had a puncture. It's not something I thought about when I bought it, but who would make a wheelbarrow with tubeless inflatable tyres? I made sure I had solid tyres on my next barrow. So anyway it's off to the village to get an inner tube for it, and fix it.

And there's a wasps' nest behind one of the garden chairs. A really bad idea to have a wasps' nest where everyone is going to be sitting, so it's off to the garden centre to get some wasp spray. There must be a lot of wasps about because the first garden centre I visited had sold out; the second one had some. I had a choice of two sprays. The one I chose says it's effective at 6 metres, which is, say, 19 feet. Now I reckon that 19 feet is a good distance to be away from a wasps' nest when you're spraying it, so, yep, that's the spray for me. The tin warns of a recoil effect when the spray comes out. Sounds even better. Test results? Lots of dead wasps. You can even knock them out in mid-flight if they're getting too close.



















French for wasp? Une guêpe. A hornet? Un frelon. Have you ever seen a hornet? They're scary. About 4 times the length of a wasp, so 64 times the volume, including, presumably, the volume of stinging stuff. Whereas I don't mind attacking a wasps' nest as long as it's not too big, I think I'd think twice about hornets. Actually, a guy died the other day in Le Mans, not far away, from multiple wasp stings. It didn't say what he was doing, but I bet he wasn't 19 feet away from the nest.