Biodiversity Day in Ballymun

Global Action Plan Ireland (GAP) is an environmental organisation that focuses on informing and educating individuals about sustainable living and environmental issues. To highlight biodiversity day 2012, GAP will host a day of green workshops, ranging from-rainwater harvesting, compost "how to", attracting wildlife, planting advice and tips and even a fairtrade cup of tea. All are welcome to attend on Tuesday May 22nd. Venue: Muck and Magic Community Garden Ballymun Dublin 11

Sowing and Recycling

 

 

I’ve been doing a bit of reusing and recycling this week in preparation for seed sowing.  It sounds simple to put a few seeds into containers but I have a lot of preparation work to do first.  Firstly I have to get into the garage and find some plant pots and propagation trays; this means having to do a job I have put off since moving house last October...tidy.  It isn’t just a tidy up though, on a scale of 1-10 this is a big 10.  All winter the family have been rooting around the boxes and containers looking for things and as the boxes are emptied they are seldom packed up again, things just get thrown everywhere.  Add to this the dogs making beds out of our winter coats and the guinea pig throwing straw about and it’s a pretty bleak scene. 

Emerging

Three days later and I have emerged from the garage.  I have four piles of things. Keep and reuse, recycle, charity shop and burn in the fire.  The ‘keep and reuse’ pile ranges from tools to old bits of carpet, which is quite straight forward.  The recycle and charity shop boundary is a bit vague though.  Some of the recycling things like old metal will be going to the recycling centre but things like clothes are a different matter.  I have the choice of dumping my three bin liner bags full into the clothes bank at the recycling centre, sending them to the charity shop or taking them to a place on the Springtown Industrial estate in Derry where I can get 60p per kilo for clothes and shoes, and 20 per kilo for old bedding.  I don’t need to tell you where they are going. The charity shop will be getting my old video tapes and a few ornaments. 

Old cooker

The old gas cooker in the corner of the garage needs to go.  All of the connectors would decay quickly if not used so I need to find a new home for it.  Scrap values for anything metal are very high at the moment so I could take it to the scrapyard along with a couple of old car batteries I have, but the cooker is only about 6 years old so I want to find a home for it.  I did try advertising it for sale on Donedeal a month or two ago but got no response.  I remembered a set up called Freecycle, this is a worldwide group where you can give away or ask for things you need in your local community. We have  two groups locally in Donegal and Derry and there is also an offshoot of the scheme called Freegle which formed after the UK Freecycle split from their American founders.  I joined the Derry group and put the cooker on it.  Within an hour a very nice lad had collected the cooker and said he would make good use of it, now I am not sure if he meant because he was going to use it or take it to the scrapyard and get a few euro for it. I didn’t like to ask.

Cleared

The garage is clear and I resume my search for the pots and propagators only to realise that I have left them all behind in the old house, which has been totally cleared.  Oh well, it’s not like I am potting on an industrial scale so the old dog chewed pots we have blowing around the garden will have to do.

As I was organising the garage, Julie was buying some vegetable seeds and also managed to get pea, beans and courgette seeds from her dad who always has some left over after planting.  We don’t really have a workspace for potting up the seeds so I made good use of the top of an old chest of drawers that I haven’t chopped up yet for burning.  With the use of an old fence panel and a branch I lopped off the sycamore tree I quickly make a very sturdy work table in the garden that is ideal for potting up and housing the seedlings. Hopefully the dogs will keep of it for long enough to let them germinate. 

I realise now though that we haven’t really got a place ready for the vegetables.  We have a small section cleared of weeds and old roots but the soil is quite poor.  I did remember to bring large bags of compost from the old house so we can dig those in soon; we also have fresh compost in the bins that we can put in trenches for the peas and beans to grow on.  It’s all “Just in Time Management “in the garden at the moment which is expected as it’s our first year in the new place.  Exciting stuff!

Odd Jobs

Bitting and Bobbing
I've had a “bitting bobbing” day today, if there is such a thing.  Like some of the busiest days around the house it started off without any real plans. I just let the day unfold.
My first job was stocking up the sheep’s wool I have on top of a pile of logs at the far end of the garden.  It's a bit of a long story but I decided to stuff some cushions last year and in my pursuit to find a cheap natural filling material I contacted wool insulation companies an asked them for free samples.  They duly obliged and I had enough natural, undyed sheep’s wool to fill four good sized cushions, can't argue at that price. I never got around to making them up though so the wool has just been floating around the garage all winter.  I put a bit of it near to the compost bin last week ( iI couldn’t get the lid off, a common problem) and it was soon snapped up by the nesting birds who fluffed up mouthfuls and took them back to their nests.  Since then it's nearly all gone. There will be some very comfortable chicks around our garden this year.
The path to the log pile was an obstacle course as the dogs in their bored moments (they have a lot of them) decided to rip their foam bed apart and scatter the remains. It wasn't a cheap bed either but I'm sure there will be no objections from them when they are sleeping on an old towel. I spend a good twenty minutes putting the foam bits into a bag before the wind picks up and blows them over to the neighbours.

Bird House
I was now in the mood to do a bit of tidying in the garage out of the wind.  After a few minutes of just standing and staring at the mess I spot a bird house that I forgot we had. It's a well made, brightly coloured piece that should fit onto a large tree or wall.  As I was chainsaw happy last autumn we are now left with absolutely no trees in the garden except for a couple of low down stumps, which would be a perfect height for the dogs to poke their noses in, so I set about fitting the bird house high up on the garage wall underneath the eves. I did a bit of sealing around the edge of the roof of the wooden house with some silicone; I wouldn't like the thought of their natural sheep’s wool nest getting wet in the rain.

Frogspawn
My next unplanned job is to take the dogs onto the park and check on the frogspawn. There were a few places on the park where frogs had laid the spawn but only one place is surviving due to the dry weather we have had.  All barring this one puddle have dried up completely.  This one would have done too if it hadn't been for he vigilance and dedication of a few locals.  Every evening in the dry weather the men would come down into the park with large containers of water and keep the small pond filled up.  So far the tadpoles have survived drought, a tractor grass cutter driving through them, litter and dogs taking a drink. When it's warm the water bubbles with the sheer amount of activity. As I am in the park there's time to stop and have a natter with some other dog owners. that took a good hour.

Grease
When I got home, there was nothing pressing so decided that now was a good time to walk around with a large tin of grease. It's amazing where you can put a good dollop.  All of the garage door hinges needed doing and I remembered I need to lubricate the strimmer head.  I have had one seize up on me before and they are expensive to replace.  Keeping the grease levels up stops friction, If you get the urge, use the grease that copes with high temperatures as the heads get very hot under normal working condition which turns normal grease into a liquid. I grease the hinges of the gate next and realise that that is well overdue a coat of paint.  It's an ornate steel gate that has already got 20 layers of paint on it. I have a tin of rust resistant silver paint that I spotted in my visual tidy of the garage earlier. I had no paint brushes though, so it was off to the shop to get one to suit..that was another hour gone.

Back home and raring to go with the silver paint.  Applying just one coat takes a good hour as it's very fiddly.  After drinking tea and waiting for the paint to dry I needed to build up the height of the gate to stop the dogs jumping over it in their endless bids for freedom.  This took a while but I made what I think is a fine looking addition out of bendy white water pipe and one of my favourite accessory ever...good old cable ties, second only to Duct tape.  It's been a busy day, the sun is setting and I am ready for a rest.  It's amazing how busy you can be when you have nothing to do.

A Bee or not a Bee?

I’ve been outside painting the windowsills of the house bright yellow this week and splashed white emulsion on the wall around the front of the house. We also have walls either side of four very large steps leading up to the front door, which also needed painting white. As I was putting on the paint I couldn’t help noticing that I had company. I was obviously disturbing what looked like honey bees and they were making their irritation known to me by flying around my head. It wasn’t long before I found out that their nest was underneath the large concrete steps. Prior to painting I went around and sealed up any gaps in the wall and steps with a cement mix, unbeknown to me I sealed up the bees two entrances, and these I noticed had been neatly opened up again before the cement had time to dry. The steps and walls are all one piece of concrete and would take a mini digger to pull up so I can’t see myself getting in there and moving the nest, so I need bit of advice.

Asking for help
My first place to ask for help was Facebook and had some mixed comments. One or two people said that I needed to kill them all as soon as possible or smoke them out, which I wouldn’t want to do. Inishowen Home Baking said that they needed to have a nest professionally removed because the honey made a real mess and forced them to replaster some walls. They also mentioned that bees can be a bit annoyed when disturbed and advised keeping children away from the area. With bees being on the decline in Ireland I’ll need to come up with a method of removal that won’t kill the colony.

Foyle Bee Keeping Association
My next contact for help was Willie McMullan, one of the founder members of the Foyle Bee Keeping Association that was set up in 1999. The association has members stretching from Greencaste to Malin and Derry. Willie was extremely helpful and gave me a bit more insight into the habits of bees. When honey bee colonies get too large, they swarm and split up to form new nests, the original nest (such as mine) will still be in use. I had hoped that the bees would all just up and leave at the end of summer and move to a warmer climate, but that probably won’t happen. Ordinarily Willie and other professional beekeepers would only be too happy to remove a nest, if they could get to it, which in my case they can’t as it’s encased in concrete. The Beekeepers get called out to a lot of false alarms so Willie asked me to send in a few pictures to study.

Conclusion
The following day Willie had his conclusion. They are not bees but one of the 180 hover fly species that pollinate flowers in Ireland; this has saved Willie and his team a wasted visit. I feel a bit safer walking up the stairs now and I’m sure the postie will be more at ease when pushing the mail though the letter box.
While I was waiting for Willie to deliver the good news I did a bit more research about bees and found the An Taisce (The National Trust for Ireland) site very informative.

Bees in Ireland
Ireland has 101 species of bee – 14 are well-known social species including the honeybee and 13 bumblebee species. The remainder are lesser known solitary bees that do not form colonies but make individual nests.
Bees are not only a large component of biodiversity, but they also provide a valuable ecosystem service of pollination. The majority of our flowering plants require pollination to reproduce. As humans, we rely on pollination for 1/3 of all foods that we eat. In Ireland, crops such as apples, strawberries, clover and oilseed rape all benefit from pollination and the value of this service to the economy has been estimated at €53 million per year. The worldwide estimated economic value of pollination is € 153.000.000.000
30% of bees are currently threatened in Ireland, with this figure rising fast. Many butterfly and hoverfly species are also threatened. The main threats to pollinating species include habitat destruction, agricultural intensification, and a lack of food sources and nesting sites.
Here are some suggestions for attracting pollinators into the garden:

Tips for attracting bees and other pollinators
1. Avoid pesticide use
2. Use local native plants.
3. Chose a diverse range of colourful flowering species.
4. Choose species that will flower at differing times through the growing season.
5. Plant flowers in clumps, this will attract more pollinators
6. Choose flowers with differing shapes, again providing a range of flower shapes means more bees species can benefit.
7. Plant in the sunniest and most shaded areas.