Welcome to Techno-Billies

This is the Blimp.

It catches rain from the roof and stores it until we are ready to use it on the veggie patch.  It finally ran dry a couple of days ago.  so now we have to connect a hose from the house to fill the blimp.



Then we use a pump to transfer the water from the blimp over these rocks...


Across this bit of ground (cleverly buried pipe)...



and then into the mini blimps in the veggie patch....



Ooops... this one is leaking... you can see Steve in the background hot footing it back to the house to turn the pump off.



It only takes a couple of rainstorms to refill the big blimp, but its unlikely that we will have a decent rain storm until the autumn now.  Summer storms do happen and they are regularly forecast but as the song goes... the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain... well... it often misses us and we can see it across the plain in the distance.



The garden has received a lot of attention this spring and is looking the best it ever has.  There are still some problems th…

I wouldn't normally put anything political on my blog.  Its only going to upset some people and in general I don't enjoy upsetting people.  I usually like to think about more important things... the stuff that unites us.  My focus is nearly always on the deeper meaning that underlies our lives because in that I believe I am approaching the truth and the key to being happy.


But I can't let Britain's leaving the EU, and my becoming an alien overnight (ha ha... some might have said that happened a long time ago lol) pass without comment since it really does affect me. You would be right to guess that I wanted to stay within europe.  After all I have taken great advantage of what europe has to offer by moving here.  So what does this exit mean for me?


Well.  I don't envisage life changing very much.  I have a little green residency card which says I am a resident in Spain.  I don't see anything changing that.  Its possible that there would be a little more paperwo…

I haven't spoken about spinning for quite some time.  that doesn't mean that I haven't been spinning.  On the contrary, spinning is an ongoing and almost daily event in our house, so much so, that it has become mundane and I haven't bothered to say anything about it on here.  I am still preparing the wool I got from the shepherd last year.  He offered me more but I declined.  There is still a large laundry basket full of washed fibre waiting to be combed.


There are plans to dye the wool that I spin using plants from the finca and finally, to knit something to wear.  It's a long process.  The best fibre is combed and then spun on my wheel.  I then ply it (2 ply) and skein it up and put it into a bag ready for dying later.


After combing there is quite a lot of waste wool.  This is the short fibres and the bits full of grass seed and other crud that hasn't fallen out or been removed by the combing.  I bagged this up with the intention of digging it into the garde…

When I was younger I never understood when people said that they liked a certain food but it didn't like them. I used to think, what a cheek! Food wouldnt dare not like me. I was happy to say that I could pretty much eat anything and everything.  Alas those days are gone. I have always had what could politely be called a sluggish digestion and so fibre and fresh fruit has usually figured large on my menu. However slowly over the last ten years or so my innards have been protesting and getting fussier and fussier. And finding a happy medium is proving very hard.

Raw fruit is a really tricky one. It has to be so ripe, almost on the turn before I can tolerate it. A wonderfully juicy slice of melon can leave me doubled up in pain. It's sad but I now have several things on the 'they don't like me ' list. At the top is apricots, if they are dried it's worse. I have no idea why.


In an effort to improve the situation I started drinking Actimel and other such daily supp…

As well as our future mouseworkers we have been joined by 2 new chicks.


Although mummy hen was sat on six eggs, only 2 hatched.


It's a little disappointing but you really shouldn't count your chickens and it's not right to be sad at new arrivals. So we removed the unhatched eggs, resisted the temptation to open them to find the reason why they hadn't hatched - that's a little bit gruesome for me - and got on with trying to ensure mummy hen was up to the job of keeping babies safe.  She, like us, soon forgot about the unhatched eggs.



Not all hens make good mums and since this was her first time we weren't sure how she would get on. Worst case scenario is that she would eat them, it does happen, but she seems to be pretty much a model mummy. She and her babies are alone in what we term the maternity wing.


But later today or tomorrow morning we shall move her into another space where she and the chicks will have access to the outside and be able to scratch on the…

We have been working very hard in the veggie plot, marking out paths and digging over beds for future use, trying to improve the soil, slowly, slowly it's coming together.

I was blaming the poor soil for the lack of peanuts and corn, that simply did not grow, but then discovered these little dimples in the soil, with definite scrape marks.



Something has been digging up my seeds and carting them off. My guess is mice. How can I entice my cats into the veggie garden I wondered? There is a water drainage pipe under the fence but otherwise it's cat proof.  No sooner had I thought it than I noticed Molly setting up vigil every evening since, just outside the garden right by the drainage pipe. How clever is that!


And since our cats are getting on a bit and only one of them is really keen on Mousework we decided to get them some help.


I say we decided, but it actually wasn't quite like that. While collecting Fergus from the vets we were shown two adorable kittens that the vet han…