Power to the people, or not

Power to the people, or not, if your RCD breaks during the night. All switches are up, none auto-switched off, power to the top of the RCD, but none from it’s bottom. Engineer Jansen concluded the RCD needs replacing. He made it so.

Luckily the cellar has it’s own switchboard, and RCD, so we could power the fridge-freezer from there with an extension cord.

Cant’t even have a quiet nightly pee in this house!

We had quite a few short power interruptions the past few weeks, and naturally blamed Endesa for being useless, still. We’ll see what happens, and maybe we can be sorry for Endesa. (Update: 10 days on: no power interruptions) (Update: 20 days: still fine)

Carefully pruning mandarinas

Careful pruning is necessary to maintain the health of mandarin trees.

Kort gedekt

Amerikaantje (oops)

Oranges! Malibu!

Oranges! Oranges! Oranges!
Malibu! Malibu! Malibu!
And a drop of Piruleta (red almond lolly liqueur of Mercadona)

Fig pruning

There's a huge and ancient breva fig (and this page) here, that has not been pruned in many many years. We are very happy with this tree because it offers both a lot of shade, and very nice figs twice(!) a year. But, if you do nothing eventually branches will break off, or you may lose the whole tree. And, you need to prune trees like this so they grow new branches, and new branches bear more and better figs. Luckily fig wood is rather soft, so with a pair of pruning shears and a wood saw it is not too hard to do, even for an amateur as engineer Jansen.

More than 20 branches were cut off, and the side shoots collected in a wheelbarrow as kindling. So far two wheelbarrows! Which makes our British neighbour with wood stove very happy.

I've seen pruned figs in the neighbourhood here, and even while I cut off 20 fat branches, I should cut off much more. Well, next year. I don't want to overdo this, as the tree bleeds a little bit (white sap) with some cuts, and there's a limit to what a tree can stand.