Monthly Archives: August 2015

A good day for numbers

4 Replies

The first number is 200 – this being my 200th post on this blog. It’s nothing compared to some people, and even I’m not that impressed, but it does give me a pause to count.

I’ve been writing this for 305 days according to my rough mental arithmetic. In that time I have posted twice a day on several occasions. And yet I’ve only managed to average two days in three. Now, I did treat my wife to four days away for our 25th Wedding Anniversary last autumn, but that doesn’t really make much of a dent in the hundred missed days. I’ll just have to hold my hands up to being lazy. But you probably know that by now.

I did think about challenging myself to write 100 posts in 100 consecutive days, but that’s not difficult. It’s easier, for instance, than thinking up 100 titles.  Then there’s the question of quality…

However, moving on to another number – I have now reached 1,000 followers on Twitter. I’ve been looking forward to it for some time, watching the numbers surge forward and drop back and eventually I made it. Now I’m wondering why. There’s some great stuff to read on Twitter, even though it’s hidden under heaps of absolute dross, but half of me wonders if I’m just taking part in a massive exercise in vanity.

It’s ironic that the day I reach a milestone I have hardly tweeted, due to forgetting my card reader. It doesn’t seem right tweeting without pictures (this one won’t be posted until I get home and put the pictures up).

A card reader, for those of you who are accustomed to the finer aspects of technology, is a device you used to plug into a USB port that allows your computer (which still uses Windows XP) to read the card out of your camera. This, by the way, is my level of technology both at home and at work, though I do at least have a working printer at home and I don’t have to lock my stapler away.

I went to look at a new computer a few weeks ago but left because I didn’t like the way the salesman spoke to me. He appeared to think I was prehistoric, and an idiot.. I thought I’d keep my money. As things stand, I have a slow but functioning computer and he has no commission from the missed sale.

One – nil to me, I think.

Reasons to be cheerful

3 Replies

Number One – humour. It may be immature, but I still have my sense of humour, and couldn’t resist taking the picture with the cabbages. Fortunately my wife is a fan of Calendar Girls so I got away with it.

Number two, as covered above, immaturity. I’ll have time to grow up when I’m dead but while I’m breathing I’m going to carry on laughing at unsuitable jokes and wearing odd socks.

I worked out the other day that I have around a third of my life yet to live. As this is the third that features incontinence, Alzheimer’s and …I forget the other thing… I have decided that I’m not going to waste time being serious.

Number three, doing a job I like. It’s worth a lot when you get up in a morning (well, most mornings) and want to get to work. I also get to work with my wife. She is extremely irritating to work with, and I find I have to introduce her as “the first Mrs Wilson” to keep her in order, but i can’t really think of a better way to pass my days.  (Yes, she reads the blog, but she’s remarkably forgiving).

Then there’s birds, butterflies, flowers, trees, grasshoppers and stoats and all the things that live in the area outside the office.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Red Admiral and Peacock

I suppose I could come up with a fourth, probably about all the great people I meet whilst blogging, but I’ve just made myself so happy I’m going to go out and take pictures of butterflies. We had a Common Blue fly in yesterday (a new species for the Butterfly Garden) and, in my eternally optimistic way, I want to see if it comes round again.

Later: I didn’t find the Blue, but I did get a good shot of a Green-veined White.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The Unprogress Report

2 Replies

I really did mean to write a progress report to tell you what’s been happening, but I haven’t actually made a lot of progress.

The tea is looking a bit better, though it’s in a mixed condition – some glossy green leaves and a few scorched brown ones.

The hollyhock growing from the compost bin is looking taller, though it’s an accident rather than something I can take credit for.

The blewits still haven’t shown any inclination to form mould so I’m wondering whether to wet them again or to stick them in the fridge to try and jump start them. The grey oyster mushrooms are still in the fridge because the polytunnels have been so hot most of the time I thought I’d delay trying to grow them.

The experimental bed, also known as the accidental permaculture bed, showed the benefits of organic matter in the soil as the fat hen grew quicker and taller in that section. The beans, meanwhile, don’t seem to show any benefit from it. The trouble there is that cutting winds just after planting the beans out set them all back and killed several so I’m not convinced we’re seeing a true result.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Failed bean experiments – note lack of fat hen in the bed on the right!

Same goes for the experiment with saved runner bean plants. After planting,the cold winds caused havoc, as with the other beans, and seemed to do more damage to the old plant than they did to the new ones. The old ones have recovered and are looking a bit better than the younger ones but there’s not a lot of difference. I’m going to try and measure the yield, but as someone has already helped themself to some beans we might struggle to get a proper figure.

We also lost the fat hen out of the accidental permaculture bed when some mystery gardener weeded it all out and we’ve had a bay tree taken from one of the polytunnels, which is extremely annoying, to say the least.

There’s probably other stuff I should report on too, such as the willow water (er…haven’t actually done anything about that), the calendula hand cream (er…ditto) …you get the picture….

So, no progress, enough good intentions to pave a fair-sized road and still no Lapsang Screveton.

I will just have to take comfort from the words of George Bernard Shaw.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Possibly…

A small insight into my life…

10 Replies

There are a number of definitions of the word expert and none of the ones I recall cast much credit upon the possessor of the title.

  • An ex is a has been and a spert (sic) is a drip under pressure.
  • Any salesman who is more than 50 miles from the office.
  • Someone who learns more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.

However, despite that I now find that I’ve suddenly become an expert.

It started last night. I’ve already said I’d do the apple pressing and more work with the trees but last night I was asked if I could help the farm apprentice to learn about them. It’s a bit like the blind leading the blind because my total knowledge of tree husbandry could be written on the back of an envelope. I was about to explain my lack of suitability for the task when I had a strange experience.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you hear the word “Yes.” and realise it’s your voice saying it?

Anyway, we now move forwards about 18 hours. It’s lunchtime on the day after the unfortunate “yes” . I’m  researching tree husbandry and diseases of apple trees on Wikipedia when the phone rings. It’s someone asking for a member of staff who recently moved on and is working abroad. I explain this and the caller says she was looking for him to ask him to give a talk on Permaculture for Beginners.

“Could you do it?” she asks.

For the second time in 24 hours I hear a voice say “yes”…I do qualify it by saying “If you find anybody better I won’t be offended if you ring up and cancel me.”

“I won’t do that,” she says. “I’ve already tried everyone else.”

142 days until Christmas

4 Replies

Have we really had 223 days of 2015 already?

Time really does fly as you get older, though whether that’s anything to do with the theories in the article, or just because you spend longer asleep in front of the TV is a moot point. In my case anyway, you may be a lot more active than I am.

I had an email this morning telling me that we have to have news of Christmas out by 3rd September. Not sure why this should be, as most people already know it will be at the end of the year even if they are hazy on the exact date.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

It’s going to be an interesting end to the year. We start apple-pressing in early September with Doga on 19th September, World Porridge Day on 10th October, Apple Day on 24th, Turkey Tasting on 28th November and our Christmas Event (with wreath-making and Dickensian cliches) on 5th December. Add seven shoot days and a couple of events waiting for confirmation and it’s quite busy.

Then there’s Project Molish. It’s something to do with children and tools, so there’s not much to go wrong there is there?

Doga? Yes Doga. You bring your dog, do some yoga, have breakfast and then take the dogs for a walk. We’re at the forefront of novelty Yoga here, or the cutting edge of chaos if you consider the likely result of introducing a random collection of dogs to each other while the owners go “om”.

Apart from that we’ve held a discussion on the existence of Santa and whether Rudolph is a proper member of the reindeer team or a later addition, so it looks like I’m not the only one who is thinking ahead to Christmas.

We’ve also done a butterfly count that saw us able to record two Commas for the first time. We’ve had record numbers of Peacocks this year, far outnumbering the Small Tortoiseshells that were last year’s commonest sighting.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Comma

Overall we’re up on last year in terms of variety, though it’s the moths that have made numbers up. It’s time to start planning new plants for next year’s Butterfly Garden and I’ve been pricing up alder buckthorn. It’s a good plant for Brimstones – a butterfly which we had last year but haven’t seen this year.

I’ve just spent twenty minutes outside looking at the Butterfly Garden. For most of the time the loudest noise I could hear was the buzzing of bumble bees. That’s unusual on a crowded island. It’s also a good argument for planting to attract pollinators. I even managed to spot a Mint Moth. They haven’t been as common this year as they were last, probably due to weather conditions, and it was good to see one, though slightly annoying I wasn’t doing a count at the time. They are very small and difficult to photograph – you could fit two or three on my thumb nail.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Mint MOth

Strange really, I start by asking if it’s too soon to plan for4 Christmas and end up with plans for next summer already.

No wonder time goes quickly!

Catching up

2 Replies

I just added a recipe for Fat Hen soup on the recipe page. It’s slightly misleading as there’s no hens in it, though I used butter to soften the onions so there’s plenty of fat.

We’re going to taste test it at lunchtime with fresh bread rolls that we’re cooking with the kids. (Fourteen kids of mixed age, half a dozen parents and two kilos of dough – what could possibly go wrong?)

Here’s a picture of the “staff”. We’ve been having trouble with the toaster.  It’s difficult getting staff when you don’t actually pay, even worse when you promise them toast and marmalade and the toast bit doesn’t happen because the toaster will only do one side at a time.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

It’s hedgehog rolls today (another misleading recipe title) for the kids and a bread roll for the soup if the parents want to make one. I will be making spares anyway because I need to get back in practice.

I’m slightly worried about the dough. I used a half measure of yeast and put it in the fridge last night. The result is three balls of dough that have risen but not risen quite enough. They aren’t actually refusing to rise but if they were human you’d think they were typical truculent teenagers. Apart from the fact that they are out of bed at 10.25am.

After bread rolls and soup we’ll be making woodland masks and (possibly) toasting marshmallows.

Have a look at @QuercusCommy if you want a progress report on the baking. We also have some pictures of the harvesting that started yesterday, including a shot of the combine cutting between the rows of apple trees in the agroforestry field. I say trees, but you might have to squint a bit as they are only two years old.

I’ll put some pictures up on the farm page to show a bit more of  the field and harvest.

Old cameras and other stories

2 Replies

I’ve recently resurrected my old Lumix. At the time I bought it I thought it was (a) expensive (b) technically advanced and (c) going to last me for a while.

Well, I was correct in one respect; it was expensive. To be fair, it was technically advanced for the time but, as with all modern technology, its time didn’t last long. As for the rest, Julia bought an Olympus that was far better than the Lumix and within a year I’d saved up for a new Olympus (the model that had replaced Julia’s – such is the pace of change.

Ten days ago I decided to charge up the Lumix and give it a run. It’s a lot more solid to hold and the colour is probably better rendered but apart from that the Olympus wins hands down. The zoom is better, the focus is better and the shutter speed is better. Sometimes old can be classic, but other times it’s just outdated. It’s like wine and knees. Wine improves with age: knees don’t.

P1010024

 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

The one at the top is taken with the Lumix, the lower one with the Olympus. I was standing within a few feet of the same spot both times, the Olympus shot was about twenty minutes later than the other, with light conditions being pretty much the same (as much as the human eye can tell).

The reason I couldn’t use the Olympus for the first shot was because Julia had mine to take pictures of the combine in the oilseed rape.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

That’s another plus for the Lumix, it’s always available for use (which was good as we don’t get many Commas in the butterfly garden) because nobody ever wants to borrow the old camera!

 

Confessions of a Mediocre Gardener

14 Replies

Twenty years ago I’d have had to go to the library to find answers but today, courtesy of the internet, I’m a coffee-growing expert.

Of course, I was a tea-growing expert at one point but that hasn’t worked out too well. I first thought the deteriorating of the tea plants was due to over-watering and/or scorching. So we shaded them and let them dry out a bit. It hasn’t really helped; they still look a bit shabby and down at heel. Then it occurred to me – we’d been doing a lot of watering with tap water. Tap water contains lime and tea plants, liking acid soils, don’t like tap water.

Seems like a good bit of deduction but trying to get the group to remember is more difficult than you’d think. Then, after more research, I find that it might not be a problem from tap water.

(And before you tell me to get more rainwater storage, I generally have enough, but people will insist on using the hosepipe for ease and speed. I confess that I do it myself at the end of a long day.)

So I’m going to add some ericaceous food, some organic matter and tap water.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

They look slightly better here than they really are.

The coffee plant looks in need of a little help too, but according to the web all I need to do is replicate conditions on a tropical mid-level mountainside and all will be OK.

Should be easy enough in a mock-Tudor semi in Nottingham. Apart from the tropical bit, and the mountainside…

So – humidity (gravel tyray), good drainage, temperature above freezing and preferably above 65 degrees F (18 degrees  C), plenty of sun (but not direct) and it likes acid conditions and orchid fertiliser.

I reckon I can do this.

But that’s what I said about the tea.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Looks better than the tea, at any rate.