I got an email from Susannah who had picked up on my garden theme in my last post on this blog. Susannah’s got a problem with damping off in seedlings. She has just lost three young cucumbers and asked if I had any advice. Damping off is a fungal infection of plants, usually seedlings but can affect more mature plants also. I too had recently had a problem after repotting a supermarket bought basil plant. Within a couple of days in its new pot, almost the entire surface of the compost around the base of the basil was white with fungal mycelium. After a few more days most of the stems of the basil were covered in fungus and turning black…
Pile of fresh wood chippings
Just had a delivery of a load of chippings.
When driving home last week I passed a neighbour’s garden and saw Fergal’s van “Tree Care” outside. Somewhere above me I could hear the sound of a chain saw. Knowing that Fergal would not hear his mobile, or really want to be talking on his phone when hanging off a tree, I sent him a text. He texted back about half an hour later to say that he’d be around all week and would drop off a load of chippings. On Saturday I saw a van pulling out of our driveway and thought it was just turning, or had come into the wrong driveway. It wasn’t until the van straightened along the road that I saw it was Fergal and give him a thumbs up. But his delivery of chippings was over two weeks after his text back……
Drosophila_melanogaster_-(aka) – Wikimedia
I’m always on the lookout for moisture related stories. Part of this is about testing my own knowledge and asking myself if I can make sense of the story. Last week I was following stuff on Twitter seeing if anything caught my eye. Suddenly out jumps what I would call a little gem of a story. Actually it was not a story as such but a research paper that had just been published. However, the content was very much part of my story in My World of Moisture ….
Edinburgh Distillery Gin
Just had another trip to Edinburgh. This was a pre-booked visit to see my mum, but if you have been reading my blog, you will know she died in early March. So we had two full days in the beautiful city of Edinburgh to relax and enjoy what Edinburgh has to offer. Two things-to-do were planned in the days before setting off to Dublin for our flight to Edinburgh. A favourite attraction for me is the National Museum of Scotland in Chamber’s Street and that was put on the agenda. Picking inside locations fitted with the weather forecast, which was possibly snow! Another event chosen was more of a touristy venue, the Edinburgh Gin Distillery that is amazingly slap bang in the city centre. We booked this online for the day after our arrival. You may be thinking at this point that I’ve run out of things to say on moisture and turned my blog into a travelogue. Not so, it was at the Edinburgh Gin Distillery that the subject of moisture jumped out at me, but not directly….
I was feeding sheets of paper into a paper shredder and stopped suddenly when I felt a piece that seemed to be damp. The other sheets of paper in the same pile were dry, so how is it that this one sheet appeared to have picked up moisture? As far as I could see, this “damp” sheet came from the same place as the others, which was a stack of various documents, flyers from the post and envelopes with their plastic windows torn out. Curious is it not, to have just the one damp sheet in a pile, how can this be?
Hen container for eggs
I’m back to blogging after a short time away in Edinburgh. It was a few days of mixed emotions. I gave the eulogy at my mother’s funeral on Friday the 11th of March then two days later watched Scotland beat France in a great victory at Murrayfield. Returning to Ireland and checking my rainfall meter, showed that there was no rain whilst I was away. We’ve not had any rain since, which makes it 14 days rain free and a welcome break from all the wet weather of the past 3 months. Easter is arriving this weekend and thinking of eggs, I thought a few ‘foustie’ ones would be of interest. A dilemma I had was on which article to post first. This one about eggs, or, my previous one on chickens.
I’m not posting an article this week. My mother, 82, died this week. She had become physically weaker and weaker over the past 6 months. After a fall that broke her hip, she became immobile and I think the shock to her already quite frail body was just too much for her. All her life my mum was physically quite strong but she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s about 3 years ago. Her memory had been getting noticeably worse for about a couple of years before the diagnosis. Steadily my mum ate less and less, often describing any food put in front of her as “disgusting”. By the time we found a place for her in a care home last year, she was surviving mainly on chocolate.
I have great faith in the progress of molecular and medical science and we will beat this awful disease. Until that day please support in whatever way you can the organisations that give dementia sufferers and their families vital help. I’ve added some links here:
Chickens feeding
Sorry about the pun in the title. Actually this is a serious matter. Demands from a rapidly increasing human population means that food production techniques have to be maximised for efficiency. Moisture has a proven effect on the size of poultry grown in large numbers. Research on broilers (chickens for eating) and turkeys shows that their living conditions impact directly on their growth and health. Studies in the United States have estimated the cost of lack of moisture control to run into several hundred million dollars each year. But how can something that sounds so simple be such a big problem?
“Oil and water don’t mix” is a common saying and a scientific fact. But oil and moisture do mix! So how is it that moisture, which is also water, can mix with oil?
Why do I mention this?
Because I tuned into a webinar last week with a title that caught my attention, “Moisture in Transformer Oil”, to find out this is something that is very important to know about, if we want to keep our lights on!
Blue cheese
Out of the blue, a man talking about blue cheese and caves! Interesting enough on its own to maybe tune in and listen. Then, he mentions that magic word for me, “humidity”. Roquefort cheese from the Aveyron region in France is matured in a cave. And there is a very long history of the cheese makers in this region using the steady temperature and humidity conditions of the caves. But equally as fascinating for me is that the caves were also the original source of the fungus that gives the cheese its blue streaks.…