Week 22
Week 22
The Boat
On Thursday, a chap (talkative salesman) came to look at our boat with a view to selling it. I thought the asking price was "about right" and Janny was pleasantly surprised... BUT we are not going to do it just yet :) It has meant a lot to us over the last nearly 15 years... but it is just one of the things that need to be considered as we get older.
So, hand in hand with that, I have arranged for another "boat person" to help with any maintenance things that I may not be able to do on my own. He also has a service of coming to help out if we get stuck somewhere. We'll probably only be in Friesland from now on, so "if I can't get there by road, I'll come with my boat"...it's never happened yet, but it's good to know. He was recommended by our last chap, so it should be OK.
Around the farm
We started making the house driveway narrower and then decided to pull out the driveway lighting of about 25 years...some of them weren't working as they had become ants' nests full of dirt and moisture.
The cable was 80cm deep, so it takes a bit of digging - reminding me that these things are getting harder to do! At about 60cm, I could use the ride-on mower to pull the cable out.
While I was out there, my mind drifted to the time when we had refugees here. A busload arrived at the end of the driveway one time - Janny and I went to greet them and a young chap bounded out of the bus and up the driveway...saying in rapid fire - "where's the disco and when do I get my house?" We looked at each other and said something like "all in good time" and took them all to the accommodation out the back. It made us wonder just what stories they were being told - he was from an African country, so presumably his village had gathered money for him to get away.
He must be around 40 now, so there would undoubtedly be another story about what has happened to him since.
And now 23 years later, there are still a lot of refugees. Apparently, there is a ruling that the asylum seekers have to be given housing within 12 weeks once they have achieved "status". This causes grumblings, of course, amongst the existing residents who have been on waiting lists for years in some cases.
Meanwhile, the housing shortage continues... we have a couple of women looking at our soon to be empty apartment.
We went to look at robot grass mowers - after my marathon mowing efforts of the last week - but we have too many patches that would need their own robot - 6 of them! So, the best I can hope for is a new mower - they too seem to have doubled in price lately.
We had to get the trampoline net repaired.
And I got a new camera in my phone...much cheaper than a new phone!
This caught my eye from Brilliant Maps...
Getting more holes in my crumpets :)
The KNMI (weather bureau) said on Friday that this spring has been the wettest since 2006 and that ground water levels are back to normal after a string of dry years.
In total, 205 millimetres of rain fell in the meteorological spring (March, April and May), compared with 148 millimetres in an average year.
Last spring (2022) was one of the driest on record and the east and south of the country were particularly badly affected, with water shortages and low river levels in many places.
Bees
More than a quarter of the Dutch bee colonies did not survive last winter. That is the highest mortality in thirteen years, Wageningen University & Research (WUR) reported on Wednesday. The university will investigate whether the varroa mite is the culprit.Climate change isn’t just coming for Europe. It’s coming for the European Union.
Europe’s north will struggle with floods and fires, even with warming at the lowest end of expectations — the Paris Agreement limits of 1.5 or 2 degrees above the pre-industrial global average. But the south will be hammered by drought, urban heat and agricultural decline, driving a wedge into one of the European Union’s biggest political fault lines.(The industrious north vs the more relaxed south)
The world’s leading climate scientists warn that billions of people are at risk of chronic water scarcity, tens of millions exposed to hunger and places near the equator will experience unsurvivable heat, unless steps are taken to build up defenses against climate shocks and cut emissions fast.
As temperatures rise, other parts of the world that were once productive — including Punjab, the Middle East, Africa’s Sahel and Southeast Asia — will be growing less and less of anything. Global supply will be squeezed, increasing food prices that deliver an apocalypse windfall to Northern Europe. Southern agriculture will be dying on the vine, even as farmers in Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands cash in. (But the intensive farming is already causing problems in the Netherlands)
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