Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

Someone asked @Emptyheadtime (a couple of pages back) if their monthly bin payment was for green waste. Unless you live in a biggish town in Ireland you won't get a green waste collection. You're not allowed to have a bonfire, either... so it's a compost heap and a "dead hedge" here, plus a shredder, and a bag stuffed with dandelion roots etc. You can take green waste to the tip, but it costs a lot. (Each household has to have a contract with a refuse company for recycling, food waste and general rubbish, paid by weight. Ours is with "Mr Binman"...) But our council tax equivalent is a tiny amount, and we don't pay water rates. Swings & roundabouts.

 

We have no green waste bin either @Liriodendron and are not allowed fires. We have a wheelie bin for recyclable domestic packaging material that is emptied fortnightly and a smaller one for general waste. Paper and cardboard, bottles, bulky plastics and metal and bigger household items and any green waste we can't compost can be taken to the container park where OH has to show his pass and can visit 26 times in a year at no extra cost. Fine for those with transport.

We have huge compost bins and piles and I've recently convinced himself to start a dead hedge so very little green waste goes out.

 

What's a dead hedge?

 

I think it's a pile of dead wood, or that is how I envisage it.

I've got a lot of that.

 

https://www.rspb.org.uk/helping-nature/what-you-can-do/activities/build-a-dead-hedge-for-wildlife

 

We have lots of deconstructed dead hedges aka piles! Luckily we have large shrubs against one boundary so can hide lots of brash and branches under and behind them. If I was starting my main wild area again I would do a dead hedge along its boundaries but we just threw everything into a large heap at the time and slightly more organised heaps since. I have wondered whether to deconstruct it and start again but then that would disturb the bugs and organisms which have made it their home mmm…

 

I have a similar thing to a dead hedge, although it's posts with branches woven around them rather than the usual 2 rows filled with branches. It filled a short gap between 2 bits of boundary fence at the back of the garden where there's a conifer and a pine.
It's very handy when you have quite a lot of shrubs that need pruning, or even just the odd thing that has woodier stems that you cut down in autumn or winter. The kind of stuff that won't break down in a compost bin/heap.

 

Go for it @Loofah - that sounds a perfect site

 

I've got several of these dotted around. Various ages and states of decrepitude. These go with the stumpery at the bottom of the garden.

 

Bit like us really!

 

Our veg plot is a fenced off area formerly used as a donkey paddock and our hens sleep in its shed, suitably adapted with a perch and nesting boxes. The back of this area has a row of mixed trees which provide deep shade and dryness underneath and even weeds struggle.

We already have two compost heaps at the back of the polytunnel and other compost bins, heaps and piles elswhere in the garden for soft material. We've now begun a dry hedge against the fence on one side of the veg plot and I look forward to it becoming a real feature for wildlife.

 

My dog is happiest carrying something and that normally means she comes home with a stick. Over the years we have made a dead hedge the length of our garden that Hadrain would be proud of. I don't know about which creepy crawlies really live in there because we try and leave it alone, unless topping up, but I have seen stag beetles in the garden and the blackbirds like nesting on top of it.

 

Well what a surprise - a letter arrived yesterday from the electric supplier - mostly written in red ( danger ? ) harping on about the need to fit a Smart Meter again. They say they have "a legal obligation to check the current one ( past it's Best Before date according to them ) and replace it. What is about these people that they do not understand "not necessary" ? Beginning to smack of harassment to me.
Rant over

 

For possibly the only time in my life have a small amount of sympathy for the utilily supplier. They are fined if they don't install enough smart meters, but there is no way for them to actually force any customer to have them unless they can show that the current meter is faulty.