The 2010 Potato Harvest

Yesterday started fine and clear in our part of the world, and stayed fine and clear for several hours; so we skipped our usual Saturday morning visit to the farmers market at Stoke Newignton and went to the allotment instead, to harvest the remaining potatoes (which provided the excuse, if one was needed, to completely dig over one of the beds and repais its edging. Not that there aren't a number of other beds which also need (a) completely digging over, to clear their weed layer, and (b) their edging repaired -- fork-lift pallet planks just don't last any time at all these days). Inevitably, it clouded over and rained a couple of times, but we pretty much completed our self-assigned task -- and, for the time of year, managed to harvest an amazing variety of stuff -- several pods of peas, clutches of rocket and spinach leaves, two pots of raspberrries. And the potatoes -- a mixture of Red Duke of York, Sarpo Mira (the less red ones), Kestrel (with purple eyes) and Pentland Javelin (the sausagey-shaped ones). The potentially, er, "suggestive" positioning of certain of these items in the photograph is left as an exercise for the reader (fnurr fnurr).

"We'll come in low out of the rising sun, and about a mile out we'll put on the music."

When Daniel and Mitchell stayed overnight with us, while the other Truepeople went to the ballet, they were very interested in my helicopter models. They were even more interested when I pulled open the drawer under the spare bed in my office to show them the boxes and boxes of unmade helicopter models. Why hadn't I made any of them? Mitchell (or Daniel) wanted to know. In vain did I explain the concept of Adult Lack Of Time which kids never seem to grasp (full-time work, a garden and house to maintain, books to be read and Serious Cult Material to watch on television, etc. etc.) -- although I was slightly startled to hear myself say that I hadn't made a model since we'd bought our house, getting on for seventeen years ago. (Seventeen years!) This didn't stop Daniel (or Mitchell) suggesting that I extract a box at random and start making a new model right there and then, despite the imminence of dinner. (Perhaps they wanted to watch how a professional goes about it. Making models as a spectator sport? It would -- literally -- have meant watching paint dry.)

(Mitchell (or Daniel) also wanted to know why, since we weren't interested in and didn't participate in sport, we didn't use the time they thought we would notionally have devoted to same to play MurderDeathKill VII on the X-Box or Warhammer 40,000 AD instead. I once again attempted to explain that adults simply do not have the non-school free time which kids take for granted -- as they will discover for themselves ten years from now.)

Looking through the unmade models, I did notice a couple of duplicates -- the result (I theorise) of not having a list to hand on the occasions that I venture into the branch of Model Zone near my workplace. (I have now constructed such a list.) I was in the shop a couple of days ago, needing some polystyrene cement to resituate the pods on the starboard winglet of the Mil 24, which I noticed (when the boys were looking at it) had obviously been broken off at some point but Not Glued Back Properly. While in the shop, my eyes strayed towards a display of Revell Mini Kits, a range of teeny-tiny snap-together models (so teeny-tiny that no scale is given) which included an Apache Gunship. Something to put on my desk at work, I thought, and -- on impulse -- bought one.

Except that it's clearly too delicate to leave at work (for the cleaners to -- doubtless inadvertently -- break), so I brought it home instead. And -- having fixed the Mil 24's starboard winglet -- have duly snapped it together (with some careful dabs of polystyrene cement to keep it together). My first new helicopter model in getting on for seventeen years. What a hero I are!

Here are some photographs -- one of the box (with a pen for scale); one of the parts before assembly; one during assembly; and two of the completed model, sitting on the palm of the Wugster*.







*Note the spelling there, Daniel (or Mitchell). This being our made-up word, it will be spelled how we require. So there!

Photographs from Scotland (8)

These photographs all show aspects of the Palace of Holyroodhouse and the remains of the Abbey to which it is attached.

The Abbey was founded around 1128 and from an early date contained chambers for the specific use of the kings of Scotland, who found its surroundings more pleasant than Edinburgh Castle on its rock a mile to the west; by the second half of the 15th century, the royal lodgings had become larger and more important than the abbey. James IV took the decision to convert the lodgings into a palace on his marriage to Mary Tudor in 1503; any remains of this work will now lie below the rectangular tower built by James V in 1528 at the northwest corner of the palace, which was originally surrounded by a small moat. (The tower is now most famously associated with Mary Queen of Scots and the murder of her Italian secretary David Rizzio by her then husband, Lord Darnley, in 1566.) The palace was extended by James VI (James I of England) and Charles I in the early 17th century but damaged by Cromwellian forces (and then fire) in 1651. The present design of the palace dates largely from the reign of Charles II: a quadrangle surrounded by three-storey wings on the north, east and south sides, with a two-storey facade pierced by an elaborate triumphal gateway surmounted by the arms of Scotland on the west.

The photographs below show, in order, a view of the palace from Salisbury Crags to the south; part of the western facade with the gate to the right of centre and (on the left) the west face of the rectangular tower built by James V; the sole remaining tower of the western front of the abbey church, attached to the northern side of the palace; part of the nave of the abbey church, which projects beyond the eastern line of the palace (it is also visible in the first photograph); and a closer view of the elaborate triumphal gateway in the western facade of the palace.

Photographs from Scotland (7)

On our last day in Edinburgh, I climbed Arthur's Seat for a view over the city and the surrounding countryside. (Although I think you actually get a better -- more detailed -- view of the city centre from Salisbury Crags, which I visited on the way back down. From there, through binoculars, I saw a puff of white smoke from the one o'clock gun on the Castle and noted moments afterwards -- one of course can't see both at the same time -- that the ball at the top of Nelson's Tower on Calton Hill had fallen.) It was a fairly grey day: some patches of clear sky, but too much cloud and haze to try taking photographs of anything too far away. (One would have needed an SLR with a telephoto lens of epically phallic proportions to resolve worthwhile detail.) The Pentland Hills, to the west, stood out; the bump of Mount Lomond was visible on the northwest horizon; the northern shore of the Firth of Forth was clear; much further away, to the east, at the mouth of the Firth, were North Berwick Law and -- beyond it -- Bass Rock, from where Simon King usually reports for the BBC's Autumnwatch (but not this time. I was slightly surprised by how white the Rock is, or at least how clearly its whiteness stood out: I know that the bazillions of gannets which roost there produce bazillions of tonnes of guano, but still....

But the real surprise about getting to the top of Arthur's Seat was the number of other people up there -- judging by their language, it appeared to be a group of German (or Austrian) students on a field geology trip. It was all a little like one now imagines the summit of Everest to be, with people queueing below the col for their five minutes of waving a flag and photographing each other before having to descend to make way for the next party. Here's a photograph:

Photographs from Scotland (6)

Following up my promise of yesterday, here are five more photographs of Stirling Castle. These show, in order, the Chapel Royal, the successor to previous chapels on the site, built in 1594 for the baptism of James VI's (later James I of England) first-born son Henry, who as we know did not survive to inherit the throne; the Grand Battery, built in 1689 in response to the brief rebellion that broke out in Scotland following the deposition of James VII/James II and his replacement by William and Mary; the Douglas Garden and the north face of the King's Old Building, as remodelled in 1855 following a fire; the North Gate, the outer parts of which date from 1381 and are probably the oldest visible masonry in the castle; and a panorama of the Nether Bailey below the North Gate, a large irregular enclosure on a lower terrace in which four powder magazines were erected in 1810. At the time of our visit, the wall walks around this were cordoned off as unsafe, because the very cold winter of 2009-2010 had resulted in the pitting and spalling of the masonry, repairs to which had still to commence.

Photographs from Scotland (5)

Time for some more photographs from Scotland, and here are five from Stirling Castle, "the gateway to the Highlands", which we visited on Friday 8 October, on the way from Rioslin to Crianlarich. As is obvious from the photographs, it was a bit damp; we also had very low cloud for the entire journey, which meant that we didn't see all that much of the scenery. (But the round trip from Crianlarich to Oban via Glen Coe the following day was, as I've previously posted, gloriously sunny and clear.)

The castle gets its tag from the fact that, until the early modern period, the land around it was marshy and prone to flooding; it thus controlled the route up from lowlands into the Highlands, and was fought over repeatedly by the English and the Scots during the Scottish Wars of Independence in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Following its capture by Robert the Bruce after the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, it was largely levelled to guard against the future possibility of being held against him; most of what one can now see, therefore, dates from the fifteenth century onwards.

These photographs show, in order, a general view of the Castle, on its rock, from the south; a view of the Forework from without (this initially had four half-round towers and now rises to only a third of its original height, having been damaged in the Cromwellian siege of 1651); the casemates and the bowling green the former built as bomb-proof barracks for government troops following the Jacobite uprisings of the early eighteenth century and the latter probably laid out for James IV in the late fifteenth century); the Great Hall (which has recently been restored, externally and internally, to how it may have appeared when completed in 1503); and the Royal Palace, built by James V to house himself and his queen, Mary of Guise, in 1538 (this is currently under restoration, and thus not presently open to the public).

More photographs of Stirling Castle tomorrow....

Sunshine sans voice

Got back from Bonnie Scotland, and almost immediately succumbed to what seemed a mild enough chesty-coughy thing. End of that first week back was Grand Planting Day for Maysie Memorial Garden. Back home sat down with a nice cup of tea, and promptly lost my voice. Completely. Amusing enough for the first couple of days, since it didn't actually hurt, but by the weekend the novelty was wearing off. By the weekend, I could rasp out the odd word here and there -- very oddly, admittedly. So Saturday JN and I sortied out to Wood Green High Rd to pick up the Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes book I'd ordered from the guys at Big Green Bookshop, and managed to achieve all the other useful items on our little list -- including miniature bat stickers for the Addams Family mansion that I have sitting by to make (1/24th scale, from Woodcraft 'fantasy villa' kit).

Sunday, glorious sunshine, so we yomped down to Walthamstow Reservoirs for our own local Autumnwatch experience -- lots of great crested grebes, several little grebes, shovellers, cormorants, herons, swans, lots of tufties, lots of angling chaps, and I caught three fleeting kingfisher glimses. Then up the Lea canal to the cafe at Stonbridge Lock for a cuppa. Then onward to the next bridge, back via the two new bridges that link to Wild Marsh East and Chingford, and home past East Marsh allotments to watch Time Team, Roy Strong on landscape art (managed to not actually mention nature -- though he did note it as a form of response to ecological catastrophe) -- and David Attenborough.

Today glorious sunshine again, so after an early lunch I pottered out to cut back a few untidy bits of garden. Found one of our rose bushes has buds about to open on almost every branch, so postponed its pruning. Nonetheless made three vases of flowers: hot pink nerine lilies and fuchsia in a tall brass vase; autumn roses in a gothic purple vase, and a small fountain of fuschia in purple glass. Down to the allotment with the rest of the prunings for the big compost heap. Nasturtiums all frosted to death, so into the compost with them. Bumper crop of big fat raspberries -- one of the best we've had all year. Also picked mass of rocket leaves, plus a self-sown lettuce starting to bolt, sorrel, alexanders and parsley. Just packing up when there was a shout from down the gate. New chap making his first visit to his plot, with a couple of tiddlers at foot, had his key break off in the gate padlock, which meant none of us could get out. The two others of us there helped him climb out over the fence and passed out the kids. Luckily he lives just around the corner and within a few minutes was back with a pair of pliers, pulled out the broken-off bit of key, and we were free.

Photographs from Scotland (4)

Here's a view to the northeast taken from Edinburgh Castle's Argyle Battery on Tuesday 5 October 2010 -- West Princes Street Gardens occupy the foreground, with Princes Street to the left. The two classical temple-like buildings in the middle distance, to the right of centre, are the Royal Scottish Academy and the National Gallery of Scotland; immediately behind them is the Scott Monument (at 200 feet high, the largest monument to any writer), and to the right of that is the glazed roof of Waverley Station (named after one of Scott's novels). (The tunnels running under the National Gallery are clearly visible.) Sprawling out to the left of the picture, beyond Princes Street, is the 18th century New Town -- although the frontages of the buildings along Princes Street itself have been heavily interfered with, the streets behind it retain much of their original, and rather attractive, appearance.

Photographs from Scotland (3)

Our route from Crianlarich to Oban via the Pass of Glen Coe (see previous postings) took us across Rannoch Moor, which Judith reckons to be the most remote place in Britain (presumably by virtue of being the furthest from any human settlement -- although since it also has its own railway station, one's default assumption is that it can't be that remote). At one point on the road, as it curved up towards Loch Ba, we encountered a layby, and pulled over to take some photographs. And there in the layby was a white camper-van with, just setting up outside it, a bagpiper in "traditional" highland dress (bonnet, kilt, sash, sporran, white hosetops, tongueless brogues and all). A piper? On a layby in Rannoch Moor? Just for us?



Well, no, of course not. Mere minutes after we'd pulled up to take photographs, the first of what would presumably be a stream of tourist coaches pulled up to allow their passengers to get out and take photographs too. Tourist coaches offering by nature a more packaged "experience", they perhaps appreciated it more. For my part, I didn't throw any spare change into the piper's plastic pot (having had enough of bagpipers in "traditional" highland dress by that point), but did take a photograph of him. Then we got back in the car and pressed on to Glen Coe (and a walk in the woods).

Feeble whisper

Are others finding that the on-trend respiratory virus this season gives you a week or so of sore throat and cough, then takes away your voice -- but without (so far at least) all that messy, headachey, sneezey snot-factory head cold business?

Luckily my voice lasted through half of yesterday -- would have been hard to run the Maysie Garden Planting Day without being able to talk to people. But by the time came home from his Friends of Bruce Castle AGM, and informed me he'd just been elected to the illustrious responsibility of Chair, I found myself barely able to squeak out my congratulations and commiserations...

Luckily losing my voice doesn't involve actual pain, just a mild discomfort which is far outweighed by the amusement value of the current faint squeaks that emerge. But I feel slightly cheated that this time it skipped the husky-sexy Lauren Bacall growl stage.

Community garden planting went well...

Maysie Garden -- Grand Planting Party

Glorious weather, lots of people turned out to join in the digging over and planting, we had photographers from the 'Great Book of Tottenham' project and a BBC News crew -- and by 3pm the garden was planted up and we'd even cleared up afterwards. Next session: Friday 22/10 afternoon, starting 2pm -- checking all is in order, possibly popping in some more low-growing decorative ground-cover plants. And if you see this in time, look out for us on BBC TV news this evening Mon 18/10.

In advance, I'd hovered between worrying we had too many plants lined up, and worrying that we wouldn't have enough. This session was to fill the middle of the garden with plants donated from local gardens, underplanted with crocuses and daffodils. The west side is (mostly) the warm 'gold' side -- yellows, oranges, reds, hot colours. The east is (mostly) the 'silver' side -- pinks, blues, purples. The middle bed is certainly stuffed pretty full -- with the soil still quite warm, which should help roots settle in before the winter cold. Around the garden edge and the centre-north bed needed to be mostly left clear for roses, lavender and a magnolia which will be sent when the cold has stopped growth -- but we put crocuses and muscari, dotted the surface with purple bugle, forget-me-nots, creeping jenny etc just so it didn't look too bare in the meantime.


Thank you to everyone who helped -- Audrey grew violas, wallflowers and primroses, Oscar stored the bulbs, brought chairs, tools and an impressive fencepost-digger spade, Paul vigorously de-turfed; his and Dorothy's hose watered it all in at the end; Lynda gave alliums, amelanchier, much advice, a hamamelis, a magnificant ice-plant (sedum sempervivum) and more plants; Sue L brought acanthus, bergenia and japanese anemones; Sue P gave many plants and loaned tools and gloves; Kazuko baked a delicious banana cake; Ben, Alice and Scarlet planted up the scarlet and orange bed; Jon and Christine, Maysie's nephew and his wife came down from Herts bringing some Hayhow family plants; Anne, Sarah, Gloria and others popped in for an hour or so to pitch in. Gavin at Grace Baptist Chapel loaned tables. Mahomed and parks staff from the Council dropped by -- the latter bringing slabs for the pathways and bags of compost and manure. Breannan and Thomas from the Bernie Grant Centre's 'Great Book of Tottenham' project took photos.

And a BBC news crew, following up the 'eight churches in one road' story about Lawrence Rd -- front page of Tottenham Journal last week -- saw us all as ideal local colour for getting some residents' comments on the story.

Photographs from Scotland (2)

On Saturday 9 October, we drove a circular route from Crianlarich through the Pass of Glen Coe (see previous photograph) to the coast at Ballachulish, down the coast to Oban, and back via Lochawe and Glen Lochy. (I give this information so that those of you who are inclined can look it all up on a map.) While in Oban -- where the sun shone, and we had a wonderful sea food lunch in Ee-Usk on the harbour -- we took a short boat trip out to see the seals on a small island offshore. Here's a photograph of them basking in the sun.



P.S. Our waitress in Ee-Usk was Latvian. Our waitress at the Crianlarich Hotel the night before was Hungarian. One almost begins to wonder whether there are any Scots still in Scotland....

Photographs from Scotland (1)

Here's a photograph of the Pass of Glen Coe, taken mid-morning on Saturday 9 October. It was a wee bit windy; but the blue skies! The (almost) shirt-sleeve temperatures! Very unseasonal, for the Scottish Highlands, but you wouldn't have heard us complaining -- oh no....

Happy Birthday Rosie!

Hope you had a good day!

Adventures in plumbing...

Grand planting up day for my 'Maysie Memorial Garden' on Sunday -- so busy list of things to do today. Sitting on loo working out which to tackle first -- go down allotment to dig up plants for the community garden? No, better wait until the washing machine had finished doing the sheets and hang them out to dry before I set off, so could draw planting plan while waiting.... When I noticed steam coming up around the hand-basin next to me:whaaa? Before brain had got much further than 'really shouldn't be doing that -- what's going on?' water started dripping down around the hand basin, then a full-scale little waterfall, sopping carpet. Aaargh! Emergency! emergency!

By the time I'd managed to clear the stopcock cover in the greenhouse, found a screwdriver to unscrew it, another to lift it off, and turned off the water, there was a fine lake on the kitchen floor downstairs, water dripping through the kitchen light fitting, and sopping carpet upstairs. Phoned plumber: £140 all-in, with you within 2 hours -- seemed reasonable so I went for it, with 12 month plumbing insurance cover thrown in. Next hour or so was mopping up the kitchen lake -- always have a floor mop, even if you routinely never bother mopping; putting newspapers down on bathroom carpet to soak up the sop; borrowing more newspapers from neighbour to soak up the sop.

Plumber arrived: flexible woven-silver connecting hose to the hot tap had burst, routine replacement job for him. Just last year (or so), our previous bathroom flood, had been caused by similar flexible connecting hose to toilet giving way. So I got him to replace the cold tap flexible connector before it too got around to giving way, like I just know it would have done before long...

Current state of play: kitchen floor may still have puddles under washing machine and fridge, but its too dark to check them out today. Can't turn kitchen light on or it blows the house lights circuit -- so we will go out for supper this evening. Apart from lack of light to cook by, I just feel a mite too shattered to cook. Bathroom carpet taken up, airing over a couple of chairs until the bed-sheets on our clothes-horses are dry.

Didn't get down to allotment -- but did manage time to dig up forget-me-nots, lung-wort, bearded irises, golden creeping jenny, purple bugle, foxgloves from the back garden to help populate my new community garden at the end of our street.

A Week in Bonnie Scotland

We returned from a week of (mostly) glorious autumn weather in Scotland late yesterday evening, and the Truepeople will be on their way back to Australia via Singapore in a few hours' time. I'll post some pictures of iconic scenery and castles later, once I've organised the 500+ images on my camera chip into folders on my hard drive, but in the meantime here's a slightly blurry photograph of the seven of us (minus me) at dinner on our last night in Collegehill House at Roslin, outside Edinburgh. Mitchell is (as usual) clowning about instead of sitting soberly like the rest of us. (Children, eh?)

Pumpkins

We nipped out to the allotment this afternoon, between the rain, and harvested our pumpkin crop -- eight of them, of various sizes. A photograph appears above. Note the "handle" left on them, to guard against the possibility of rot getting into the stem, and thus into the pumpkins themselves.

It's our best crop for many years. We look forward to enjoying them over the winter....