Quick - before it rains again

Rain stopped during the night. The forecast says rain again Monday (all the way through to and including next Saturday). Yesterday, suffering cabin fever, I drove down to Blenheim with the trailer to get a load of wood chips.  While there I had a long chat to some experts in 'rainwater harvesting and storage' about tanks and pumps.

Today I raced to get the posts along the edges staked and screwed in place so that I could empty the trailer.  It needs another load to be as deep as I want it but it is already better than mud.

The edges are broken vineyard posts which we can buy down the road for $2 each. A steal. It costs the vineyard about $5 per post just to pull the nails out, but, the manager explained, it keeps the workers busy with something to do when it is too wet to work in the vineyard itself.  He'd be paying them even if they were doing nothing.  The mechanical harvesters knock the posts about a bit and that vineyard replaces about 1800 posts per year.  Imagine how many that amounts to across all the vineyards in Marlborough.

The garden between path and building will be for okra, tomatoes, capsicum and chillies, aubergines, and physalis. Scully doesn't recognize any of those as food and wants to know why you can't grow hard boiled eggs.

For about two months now there has been a damp patch in a top cupboard at the front of the caravan. Unable to identify a source of leak I had begun to wonder if it was condensation running down the underside of the curved roof.  It's either that or water defying gravity. It doesn't come in when it rains but the damp might increase suddenly after several days of rain.

Before I published a scientific paper on water running uphill I decided on one last attempt at finding a reason.  Eventually I realized the plastic lens on the running light was UV degraded and letting in water at the top but holding it in the bottom.  When the water level built up far enough the puddle would spill in where the wires come out.

New light was purchased and installed after all screw holes and wiring conduits had been sealed up with silicone sealant; a relatively small job that managed to eat over 2 hours.  Manufacturers of such fittings use cheap screws that rust and refuse to be backed out.  Some bad language might have been muttered but the situation was not unexpected.  

Scratching about in my already burgeoning supply of 'stuff' I found suitably sized stainless steel self-tapping screws and gave the new fitting an upgrade so it should be fit for all weather now.

(Eagle eyed readers will notice my temporary downspout arrangement in the background.)