Tag Archives: gardening

Red Sky at Night

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Julia took the photos for this post, including the sunset, which appears to have been made less colourful by the camera. Isn’t it always the way?

Looks like butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth, doesn’t it? Based on size and colour, we seem to have four regular visitors. And based on the way the seed is going they are all eating well. I know there’s more to nature gardening than just feeding birds, but it’s not as if squirrels really need much help to prosper.

It looks like it is time to bring some gardening tools down, as things are starting to happen and we will need to get on top of it. That means it’s definitely time to start the compost heap. I’ve been putting it off because Julia always worries about compost attracting rats, and has been particularly jumpy after we spotted the rats a while back.  Me, I’ve rarely seen a rat near compost – they tend to have better things to do in suburbia, where there is plenty of decking to hide under, and plenty of spilled bird food. Some people down our old road even used to put food out for foxes overnight, which is a surefire way to get rats.

A leap like that deserves a few seeds . . .

Meanwhile, it’s been a slow week for reading blogs. I’m sorry about that, but I left myself with a lot to do this week and am only just coming down to earth after a marathon writing session. I’m hoping to catch up with my reading this week before starting on a slightly more sensible writing spree this month. I have ten submissions to do, if I move to each form being a separate submission, which doesn’t sound much better, but if I start now instead of leaving it for three weeks I should be in much better shape to get it all done.

And finally, a robin.

Planning

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Peacock on crocus

Today, I messed round on the fringes of poetry. I am no closer to submitting the December poetry than I was a couple of days ago. However, it is familiar territory and nothing to worry about. It is not a matter of life and death. Tomorrow I will make a decision on whether I submit or leave it. I prefer to make a decision rather than just let it drift. Then I must get next year set out, listing all my planned submission dates.

I did, however, do two short articles on medallions for the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire Facebook page. It’s not great literature, and doesn’t solve any mysteries, but it keeps me out of mischief and keeps my mind engaged.

Crocus at Nottingham

Today, apart from this, was uneventful. We had brunch (which included leftover sweet potato fries) and an evening meal consisting of a ham sandwich with a variety of leftovers – including frozen chicken nuggets left over from Christmas Eve and various wrinkly salad items. These two meals allowed us to feel like we were cutting back, and still left time to eat shortbread biscuits.

The sunflower seeds in the garden feeder are going down at a satisfactory pace and the fat balls are showing signs of avian attention. The nyger seed, however, remains untouched. We will probably use it to mix in with other things at a later date. My plan is to replace it with a peanut feeder. I think we have an old one hanging about, and peanuts seem to be an attractive food. Meanwhile, I have plans to plant teasel and sunflowers in the garden to provide natural food. We also need some more berry-producing shrubs.

Daffodils

When mum and dad moved into the bungalow, I produced a planting scheme which allowed for cover, security, bird food and year round interest. Their gardener (they had him for years at three different houses) removed most of my shrubs and substituted the normal boring mix he always relied on. They have a variety of shrubs but nothing with spines or berries. I’m going to start making changes, but you should always spend a year in a garden before you start work on major things.

Daffodils

My first project will be to check for the presence of bulbs, once the flowers start. I’m fairly sure that I will be able to get some snowdrops in, if nothing else. After that, it will be a question of waiting for autumn to plant more bulbs. Bulbs, like me, are simple things. I really should have planted some pots of bulbs in the autumn, but there was so much to do it escaped me.

Irises at Wilford

Quiz Night and I Do Quite Well

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Horse ploughing at Flintham

Second day under new rules and I’ve already deviated. This is the first writing of the day because I’m waiting for a gardener to arrive and I can’t concentrate when I know that I’m going to be disturbed. If I was going to be disturbed all day I would work round it, but just waiting for one knock on the door, for some reason, seems more disruptive. It’s the same with unexpected interruptions – I just deal with them and get on.  It’s the annual tidy.  I’m not able to cope with the steps and the slope and Julia has plenty to do without adding garden maintenance to the list. She deals with roses, fruit and vegetables and that’s enough. Hopefully a new garden on one level will reinvigorate our interest in gardening. It will be good exercise, and it’s about time I started moving more.

Horse ploughing at Flintham

There’s not much else to report. It was quiz night last night on TV. I did moderately well compared to the contestants in the general knowledge round of Mastermind (though it’s a lot easier sitting at home compared to the studio). In recent years I have started to drop back in comparison to them – I feel I may have peaked intellectually.

Only Connect set a new record for 1st  and 2nd round aggregate scores. They weren’t particularly good teams, they just had easy questions. I also set a record, answering four out of 12, two of them before the teams did. I then had a really good “missing vowels” round, which is unusual because that and anagrams are usually very bad for me. As I say, easy questions.

Horse ploughing at Flintham

Then on to University Challenge, where I also answered a few questions, including a couple the teams didn’t know.  Frustratingly I always forget the details so you’ll just have to take my word for it. However, in general I was, as usual, bogged down in questions I didn’t understand (maths, medicine and chemistry are all bad for me) being answered by people who are 45 years younger than me and know much more than I have accumulated in all my years.

Little Grey Fergie – men in Sheds

However, despite tonight’s success I realise I would be a lot less successful if I were in a studio and under stress. That keeps my ambition within bounds.  What I did notice, again, was that some questions seem to have come up a number of times in the last week. This has happened before and it always makes me wonder if the same people write the questions for all the quizzes on TV. I really should start to look at the credits. What I suspect is happening is that I watch so many quizzes that subjects simply come together by coincidence. Even if the same people were responsible for all the questions, and were guilty of recycling them, all the programmes work to different schedules so the questions would be scattered. makes you think though, the idea of one super-brained question setter sitting in the middle of a web with various strands marked “FA Cup Winners”, “Periodic Table” and “Pop Music 1980s” as they construct a massive web of questions.

And another tractor shot

Photos are more from past Septembers. It’s Flintham Show again . . .

Flower competition – Flintham Show

 

An Unusual Day

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Today was a little unusual – we did some gardening at the shop and I had the car serviced. The former required a lot of hacking of brambles and tracking of mud through the shop, as it was a wet day. The car servicing was equally successful and involved leaving it at the garage overnight because they are struggling to get it back together. I was provided with a small Mazda automatic for the night. It is small and automatic and not at all comfortable. Apart from the lack of space the automatic transmission means I am continually on  edge in case I forget myself and put my left foot on the “clutch”.  I did that years ago in a borrowed automatic. The “clutch” is, of course, the brake in an automatic and the car tends to come to a rapid and inconvenient halt.

So far, so good. I got home without major incident, squeezed myself out of the car and worked out how to lock it.

I’m sure tomorrow will be equally memorable when I get the bill for my car. The cost of bus tickets has gone up too and Julia is looking at ways of economising. It now costs £3.78 a day.which, considering the time taken, the timetable and the number of drunks and idiots on the bus, makes the expense of a car seem worthwhile. I know it’s better for the planet to use public transport, but cars are so much more convenient.

We had several interesting customers today too, including one who was recently awarded an MBE and one who is recovering from breaking both arms in a cycling accident. He’s recently had the cast off one arm and revealed the scar from the operation – it’s well over a foot long. This is another reason to stick to cars.

 

 

Parcels, Plants and Popinjays

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It was a reasonable day at work. We didn’t have many parcels to do and the ones we had were easy to pack and went to simple addresses.

We had several customers and a sprinkling of phone calls plus a couple of late orders.

You couldn’t really ask for more.

Until early afternoon. I’d just spent half an hour loading details and photographs onto eBay when I pressed the wrong button and, as you’ve probably already guessed, wiped it all.

So I had to plod through it all again. It’s not a good feeling doing it twice. Unfortunately, and I really hate to admit this, my last act on Monday afternoon had been to wipe it off too. In other words, I ended up doing it three times.

There must be a way to stop losing my work like this, but I still can’t work out how to do it. I’m adding new pieces to old listings so it isn’t as straightforward as starting from scratch.

I don’t feel bad about making mistakes, but I do feel bad about making the same one several times.

Things became more light-hearted when I started answering comments. I noted, whilst doing this, that I had made a couple of typos when adding tags. Writing THree Little Birds isn’t particularly amusing, but mis-spelling foraging as faraging did bring a smile to my face.

Foraging is, as you know, collecting wild plants for food. Faraging, possibly derived from the name Farage, is a word just begging for a meaning. It has several if you check it up but they are all made up by people like me. Well, like me but without the sparkling wit…

Faraging should, I think, be a word that indicates the ability to build a career on a single issue and a dash of personality, but free of the taint of actual ability, a bit like a modern reality TV star, and I think we all know my view of them.

There is a Seventeenth Century quote which I used to use in my re-enactment days – “Loud voices and empty words. So quoth the popinjay.”

It could do with some rewriting, but I think it conveys the general idea.

I’m going to start using it in that context and see if it catches on.

If it does, and I become rich and famous as a result, it will be a prime example of faraging, and I will become a noted farager.

There are many examples of names being used this way – Boycott, Quisling and Adonis are other examples. These are known as eponyms, which I should have known really, as I have seen the word eponymous often enough. It’s strange how some things pass you by.

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Streptocarpus grown from leaf cuttings

The photos are two of the four streptocarpus plants Julia has grown from leaf cuttings. She did it a few years ago to prove she could. As you can see, she succeeded.

The Fading Sky

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As I sit at the table to type I look out at a strip of pale blue sky under a layer of cloud. The cloud is touched by light along its lower edge but after that margin of hope, is grey and dead. This has been the pattern of the day, grey with a little brightness, and as I write the illuminated stripe is fading and the blue is becoming grey.

Last night we remarked on the richness of the sunset. I have pictured it before so I decided not to bother with another set of photos, but now I regret that decision. There will be other sunsets, but it’s foolish to squander them in the same way I did when I was an optimistic youth.

Julia is muttering in the kitchen as she uses an wok and a spice kit to produce linguine with prawns and rocket (arugula). It would be unkind, and unwise, to draw parallels between this and the opening scene of Macbeth, but the sky, the muttering and the spice kit are all inclining me to that sort of thinking.

Prawn linguine with rocket (and spaghetti)

Prawn linguine with rocket (and spaghetti)

The prawn linguine with rocket is subtly different from the version suggested in the kit. I didn’t feel the need to order liguine, for instance, as we have plenty of spaghetti and it’s near enough the same. We didn’t have rocket either because I pressed the normal button in my favourites whilst shopping and ordered rocket and baby leaf salad. This gives a slightly different effect and was the subject of some of the muttering.

Although the greens were wrong, it wasn’t me who stirred them all into the meal instead of strewing half of them artistically on top.

It was quite like last night’s experience – a few substitutions and a tasty meal. We’ve made this sort of linguine before, though the seasoning with the spice kit is much better. I am torn when it comes to seasoning – professionals do it better but they use more stuff, including more salt. I try to steer clear of salt.

Prawn linguine with rocket (and spaghetti)

Prawn linguine with rocket (and spaghetti)

Tomorrow we will having chicken pie with roast veg and the night after it will be the Iranian Vegetable Stew with the spice kit. Then it will be Thursday night – vegetarian stir fry followed by a new delivery of groceries from TESCO. This week I’m going to make sure I prepare a proper menu, as I’ve been relying on luck and repeating last week’s shopping for the last month.

We started lockdown by being organised and eating a lot of vegetarian options but over time we have reverted to more meat and convenience. We have also started eating fish and chips every week, though that is partly due to wanting to support the local chip shop, rather than a desire for takeaway food. We were already moving away from takeaways before lockdown, but it has certainly helped us stick to it. Our diet is healthier as a result and we are spending less.

I wonder what my diet will be like this time next year. If it’s still healthy I will tell you. If it isn’t, I’ll pretend to forget to tell you.

The teasel is from the front garden – we think they must have seeded from bird seed. The day lily is from the Mencap garden when we visited today to feed the wormery and do a few other jobs. Yes, this a ‘day off’ for a married man. The food has already been covered.

Day Lily Mencap Garden Nottingham

Day Lily Mencap Garden Nottingham

 

Getting Better

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This isn’t the post I said I was going to write, you’ll have to wait for that. This is the post that covers what I did today after posting the previous post and making breakfast.

We had people in on Monday to dismantle the sheds and associated ivy/brambles/honeysuckle at the back of the garden. It has been a great aid to security, privacy and wildlife over the last thirty years, including highlights such as the fox cubs and breeding blackcaps. There’s never a year goes by without at least one nest in it and this year it is great tits. It’s difficult getting anyone at the moment as everyone wants work doing after lockdown and it’s two or three weeks before they can get back to finish off. This fits in well with the great tit family which should be fledged and away by the time we destroy their habitat.

When it’s all done I’m going to plant a mixed hawthorn and blackthorn hedge, which should provide a good habitat over the coming years.

For the moment it’s left a bit of  a hole in the fence and though we’ve plugged it, it isn’t very elegant. As the house is home to a curious beagle I was going to make a better job of it today, so after breakfast I set off. I’ve just been told to increase my dose of Methatrexate to the maximum level. It seems to be working as I have use of my hands and my feet are a lot better too. However, it does mean that I worry about the effect of suppressing my immune system.

When I got to my first call in search of stout stakes and chicken wire I was presented with a queue of people which was positively festering in a shopping centre with the micro-climate of a tropical butterfly house. To be honest, it’s just the atmosphere a virus needs to spread, so I left.

The next shop I tried had a longish queue and I tried two builder’s merchants too. The queue at one of them contained more people than I’d ever seen in the shop before (I used to be in regularly when I was a jobbing gardener and it rarely had more than six people in. There were 18 in the queue. All these queues were outdoors, but after my activity on Monday when we took the shed down my knee is still a bit tender and doesn’t respond well to a lot of standing.

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Water Lily

Before returning home I went to Aldi where the usual bunch of idiots managed to get into my social exclusion zone, including one of the managers who entered via the exit as I was leaving and was so close I could feel their slipstream. I bought ripe avocados, which were made an excellent lunch.

After that I emailed the lady behind us to say I’d be a day or two later than planned with the fence, clipped the front hedge (I said my hands were better – I couldn’t have done this two weeks ago) and dead headed the poppies.

I tried to order the posts and wire I wanted online but, just like a supermarket, they take the order and then, as you pay, tell you that two items are out of stock. I was only ordering three items, so I wasn’t impressed.

I had to take Julia to hospital for a scan as a follow-up to the pre-lockdown episode and, when I returned there were two emails and a brown envelope for me (marked as being from the Tax Office).

The news is that the lady behind us has offered to do the patching of the fence, which will save me a lot of hassle because I’m working Thursday, Friday and Saturday. They could find no immediate fault with Julia, though they may find fault later after properly examining the results. The Tax Office want to give me £16 back, as I have over-paid.

This is all good, and a welcome lifting of the gloom that has been gathering around me over the last few months.

The second email was from a local literacy project (I emailed them last night to make sure I actually volunteered  instead of just intending to volunteer, as I so often do). They  aren’t doing much at the moment, but will be in touch when they are ready for more interviews and training.

Then, just to settle myself down after all this happiness, I spent an hour on the computer arranging tomorrow’s grocery delivery. This is an improvement on last week when I actually forgot to do it. Fortunately we had plenty in to last an extra week.

Only a few repeated photos, I have no new photos to share.

Garden Flowers
Garden Flowers
Garden Flowers

Changes…

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Has anyone changed either the title or the page of their blog?

Things have obviously changed since I started blogging (has it really been three and a half years?), though, as at least one person pointed out in the beginning, I was a bit erratic at the best of times.

We are no longer running a Care Farm, I’m not cooking, we don’t get out as much…

You name it and it’s all changing.

It makes sense to change the blog to reflect these changes.

I’m thinking of changing the name of this one to reflect the fact it’s about the thoughts of a grumpy old man who spends his time sorting piles of junk.

With Julia I will then start a new blog based on her gardening.

Does anyone have any comments, or any experience of changing blog names or addresses?

All views and advice will be welcome.

Watching TV and Reflecting on the Unfairness of Life

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I’ve just been watching Countryfile Autumn Diaries on TV whilst writing up the second post about our visit to Stoke. I’m fuming. I often fume, as you have no doubt noticed, but this time I’m having to hold myself back from throwing something at the TV.

It seems that many of our common garden plants are poisonous. Knew that.

Garden soil contains bacteria which helps cure depression. I’ve written about that more than once in this blog.

They also showed us a group of men who get health benefits from working together in a garden group (a sort of Men in Garden Sheds). Knew that.

Darwin was an expert on earthworms. I’ve blogged on that too. I can also tell you that he was related to the Wedgwoods of Stoke, which I visited yesterday, and that he noticed the activity of earthworms when discussing how all the pottery waste was pulled down into the soil.   They didn’t tell you that on TV.

Then they visited the worm farm where I bought our wormery.

So there you are. I’m sitting at home unemployed, and possibly unemployable, and those idiots are getting paid lots on TV for talking about stuff I already know. There’s something wrong with the world.

If I’d been able to find something to throw there would be something wrong with my TV too.

It’s not even my specialist subject.

Talking of which, Tim Wonnacott managed to make three errors in thirty seconds yesterday when talking about Princess Mary tins.

I’m not saying I’d be any good at presenting TV shows, or that I’m always accurate, but it does seem like money for old rope when all you’re doing is talking about stuff I already know.

The District Nurse

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I got up around 8.00 today, which is late but not unforgivably so for an idle town dweller with nothing much to do. It gave me plenty of time to wrestle with plumbing, socks and trousers and do a spot of gardening before breakfast.

It was sort of gardening anyway, going over the joints of the paving stones with a flame gun. It’s far better than weedkiller and easier than hand weeding. The hedge looks like it needs a tidy, which reminded me I was planning some drastic pruning. If I get it cut back in the next two days I can get all the waste in the garden bin ready for the first collection of the year on Friday. Privet really isn’t good for compost.

This time next year I’m hoping to have a new permaculture based front garden. I was hoping to start this year but I haven’t felt up to doing much so far.

Granary toast for breakfast and some uplifting reading on WordPress, including this, this and this. I usually drop in here and here too, but I’m working slowly today. Apologies to those not mentioned, I’m just finding it harder to get round these days.

It was time for a walk then, as I’m trying to get more air and exercise. With a bad leg (not sure what is causing it, but sitting down all day isn’t helping) I’m struggling to do more than a few hundred yards, but that was just right to get back in time for the district nurse.

She provided me with a few bags and the phone number to get more plus help and advice. She also took blood pressure, heart rate and temperature readings with equipment that looked decidedly old-fashioned compared to the kit in hospital. All is as it should be. Finally she accepted that I was able to monitor my own bottom for signs of pressure sores, which was good. I’m a man, not a baboon, and such display is, frankly, neither necessary nor welcome.

By then it was time for lunch, shopping and a drive home.

I’m feeling tired now. Well, I’m convalescing so it’s allowed.

A good time for quiz shows and blogging, I feel.