Small but beautiful!

There's always a lot of fuss over large vegetables. Large vegetables get their own tables at their own shows, but how many times do we think of small vegetables, and how great they are!?

We've had a lot of success with our tomatoes this year, they've produced most the year, and show no signs of slowing down.

I wanted to share todays pick of items that I collected this morning.

First we have the tiny tomatoes, probably only about 10mm (or 3/8") in diameter.



Then secondly, I thought I'd show you an egg from one of our Silkies. They are always small and white, but perfectly formed little wonders.



So next time you go shopping, or pick your produce from your garden, spare a thought for the little things!

Learning to weld!

It's something I've always wanted to do. I think it started when I bought my first motorbike, and has never gone away - the urge to learn to weld.

Last week, we asked Zak's school to fix his tray on his wheelchair, as on one side the weld had broken, and his tray flapped, meaning he wasn't able to use his switches for his pc - a major part of his free time!

We sent Zak in with a message for their engineering department to have a look and fix the tray/chair. Unfortunately, the trained and experienced engineers could figure out that the weld had broken on a certain part, so did pretty much nothing for Zak.

Annoyed by their lack of common sense, I went down to Halfords, and bought myself a welder, and a few welding supplies like electrodes, wire brush and gloves.

Now I have NEVER welded before - not even picked one up, but I was determined to fix Zak's chair - so onto Youtube I went, and began teaching myself how to weld. After about half hour of watching I decided to go and have a little play to see what was what.

After an hour I thought I had picked up the basics and took the part off Zak's chair that needed fixing.

It took me no more than 10 minutes to drill out the plate, push the bar into the hole and weld everything back together.

Now Zak's tray on his chair is fixed, and rock solid I might say - ok it's not the prettiest weld in the world....

...but it works!


I decided today to make Jo a little pressie, so I found some washers and a bolt and got to work.

Everything went well, apart from when it came to welding the support nail - it just MELTED!

I made a blob on the plate, then hurriedly pushed the nail into it while it was still soft - SUCCESS!

The butterfly is quite small - the plate on the bottom is approx 2" long, and the butterfly stands approx 2.5" tall.

Here is Jo's present, it's not pretty, but at least you can tell what I tried to do...


...and remember - this is only my 5th attempt at welding!!