Christmas 2011

A somewhat different Christmas holiday experience from the past few years -- having previously spent the holiday on our own, this time we're visiting sister Lynn and her husband Chris in Derbyshire (both having recently taken early retirement from their formal jobs, the lucky sods, but carrying on with various bits of part-time, fill-in, "consultancy" and other work); joined by Mutti who would otherwise have spent the holiday on her own in Lyme Regis; and (briefly -- they arrived on Christmas Eve and departed earlier today) sister Gail, her husband Franck and their daughter Chanel.

This has meant that instead of seeing how many jigsaws the Wugster and I can do in four days, we've been walking Lynn's and Chris's dog Wesley in a nearby bit of the National Forest, a twenty-year-old project to create new woodlands on what was formerly rather degraded arable land across the three Midlands counties of Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire. As can be seen from the photographs attached to this post, the planting is a wee bit regimented: I daresay the theory is that some of the young trees will die young (disease, damage by animals or the wind, nutrient-poor soils) thus leaving room for the surviving trees to grow into the newly opened spaces and form a more natural-seeming woodland cover. (Either that or some army of the unemployed will be engaged in feats of heroic uprooting and replanting, which seems most unlikely.) Anyway, the attached photographs show, in order, two panoramas of the walking party passing through (or by) National Forest planatations; a stretch of newly planted land, the seedlings encased in plastic tubes to prevent them from being nibbled to death by rabbits and deer; the walking party passing through a patch of conifers (apparently only one of these trees has ever been cut down for use as a Christmas ornament); and a hilltop copse of the kind which existed here when the land was still used for arable agriculture (farmers traditionally left the hilltop copses alone because they always had -- some superstitious Tudor-era or earlier prohibition on disturbing the fairies, doubtless).

Today's Potato Harvest

Today's potato harvest, posted purely for consistency with last week's photograph. The two varieties in question are Ratte (the small elongated ones) and Valor (a main crop). As far as can be determined, this photograph contains no naughtiness of any kind, posed or otherwise, and has therefore received the Frightfully Upstanding Certificate (King Indicative Number, General, High Express Long Lasting) stamp of approval.

Yesterday's Potato Harvest

Contains naughty vegetables. Not suitable for children under fourteen years of age.

There's Something Wrong with this Blackcurrant, Sarge....

We're in the second week of October, its leaves are turning brown and dropping off, but otherwise it thinks it's spring -- as this photograph shows, there are new buds forming!

A Quick Catch-Up

Lobbing in here after several weeks of busy-ness, but not having time right now to post much of a catch-up. Last time, I celebrated the abundance of our fruit and tomato crops; but while the fruit has continued to do very well (we've had so much of it that we've had to make at least one apple-and-pear pie a week in order to keep up -- when a fruit pie is something we usually make only once or twice a year), the summer weather (or lack-of-weather) has heavily impacted the tomatoes. The summer has been no damper than usual, but the cooler temperatures and lack of sunshine that we've experienced since the highs of May have magnified the impact of the damp, and much of what was on display in the photographs posted less than six weeks ago has succumbed to blight, and has had to be yanked out and thrown away. Judith will perhaps be able to provide a better estimate, but I reckon we've lost at least a third and possibly as much as a half of the crop. Bum donkey poo smells! (as we say here)

On the other hand, we have kept up the leisure travel and culture programme -- a weekend in Hastings with a side visit to Bodiam Castle on 13-14 August, followed by a few days in Weymouth on 8-11 September, with a walk around the Isle of Portland (partly in and sometimes above the low-level cloud blowing in from Lyme Bay to the west) and a walk along The Fleet from Abbotsbury to Weymouth, part of it in the rain. But at least we can say we've finally done it....

....and in a few days' time we're off to Eastern Crete with the holiday company Travel Editions, with whom we visited Western and Central Crete in 2007. Part of the reason for going back is (as it were) to "complete Crete", so that we can tick it off the list; another part of the reason is that our guide will be the same hugely knowledgeable and enthusiastic local we had in 2007, which was a real bonus. After which, winter will be closing in, and it will be time to concentrate on my promised (to myself) winter projects: albumising the physical photographs of our trips to Andalucia, Madrid and Catalonia in 1998, 1999 and 2005, and uploading to Facebook public photo albums of our visits to Sicily (2007), Provence and the Loire Valley (both 2009), Purbeck aka The Land of My Boyhood (2009 and 2010 -- and in due course 2012 as well) and of course Crete. In the meantime, here's a photograph from the window of our B&B in Weymouth, one of a terrace of tall Regency-era houses at the southern end of The Esplanade backing onto the harbour. Under its former name of Melcombe Regis, it was through this port that the Black Death entered England in 1348, resulting in the loss of a third of the population and -- as a consequence -- the end of the feudal system.

This Year's Crop

We planted fruit trees in our garden in the first couple of years we were here -- a cherry tree, a redcurrant bush, three apple trees, a pear tree and a plum. The plum died almost instantly; the redcurrant succumbed to woolly moth after a few years and had to be dug out and burned; one of the three apple trees took years to produce its first flowers and for years afterwards never gave us more than a couple of fruits, so was eventually dug out as well; the cherry produced lots of fruit every year but was generally stripped bare by the birds before we got anything, so that eventually went as well. That has left us with two apples and one pear tree, plus a blackcurrant bush purchased later and inserted into a likely-seeming gap, and a blackberry bramble which The Wugster introduced and which we have to keep severely under control lest it take over one whole side of the garden.

So that's round about fifteen years that we've been growing fruit in one form or another, and for most of those fifteen years we've never got very much -- the blackcurrant and the blackberry are fairly reliable, but the apple and pear trees generally crop poorly. They give us lots of blossom in the spring, but then seem to lose a good half of their buds in the "June drop" while those remaining are either nibbled by squirrels or invaded by coddling moths. Most of the time, the fruit is boiled for its pectin, used to help jam set; we seem to eat very little of the fruit as fruit.

Except this year. This year, for what must be the first time ever, we have a bumper crop of apples and pears -- fruit which looks as though it's staying on the trees to ripen, which is not being pecked or nibbled or attacked, which is starting to give me the lunch I take to work every day. Here's some photographs:




Our tomatoes are also doing rather well -- there's a lot of green fruit at the moment, because the weather's been rather cool and damp, but those in the greenhouse are starting to turn and soon those outside will follow. Ace!

Another Visit

This afternoon we went to Fulham Palace in west London, but saw rather less than we expected because parts of it (the Tudor Great Hall, the Gallery, the Chapel) had been taken over for a private function (a wedding, by the look of it) and therefore weren't open to the public. (Hire of venues such as this for private functions is one of the many things that small museums in local authority ownership have to do these days in order to support themselves. As the chair of the Friends group for our own local authority-owned museum, I understand this completely.) As the museum's helpful volunteer staff pointed out, the fact of the closure was posted on their website; we should have checked beforehand (and therefore only have ourselves to blame. Poot).

Oh well. It's only in west London, after all, so we can always go back in the autumn. In the meantime, here are some photographs of, in order, the Tudor west court (seen through the gate -- we were allowed to at least look at it); the Tudor chapel with its diagonals of darker brickwork (fired clay bricks were then a new and expensive building material, and those who could afford them wished to show them off); the 1814-1818 extension (creating another court to the east of the Tudor original) with its "gothick" windows allegedly inspired by Horace Walpole's gothick "castle" at Strawberry Hill; the restored interior of Bishop Sherlock's room in the 1814-1818 extension (much of the decorative plasterwork had to be recreated from scratch because decades of municipal use had damaged the original work beyond repair); and The Wugster seated in a chair carved from (and attached to the stump of) a huge elm tree in the grounds of the palace which was felled in the Great Storm of 1987. Zena will undoubtedly recognise the jacket as one she donated way back when.

Back at the Allotment Again

It was the first sunny day after a fortnight of overcast and rain, so we spent several hours at the allotment this afternoon. Afternoon and early evening, in fact -- we returned home only half-an-hour ago. (It's potatoes, salad leaves and the last of the broad beans for dinner tonight.) On our next visit -- hopefully next weekend, if the changed weather holds -- I shall have to do some serious grass-cutting and grass-strimming. In the meantime, here's a photograph of a frog on the edge of the pond. We don't often see frogs at the allotment pond because, unlike the frogs in the garden pond, they're not as habituated to our presence, so tend to hide in the pond vegetation when we're there. However, this one held still for long enough for me to take its picture before thrusting itself into the woodpile and out of sight.

Something for Daniel's History Exam

Probably a few months too late for Daniel's history exam, in fact, but if the Battle of Agincourt comes round again he might like to have a look at some recent research by Leeds University which suggests that the armour worn by the French knights was so heavy that by the time they closed with the English lines they would have been too exhausted to actually fight:

...people wearing armour expended up to 2.3 times as much energy while walking and 1.9 times as much energy while running compared with wearing no armour ... The doubling effect was greater than could be accounted for by the extra weight of the armour alone. The researchers worked out that if the knights had carried the total weight of the armour in a backpack, they would have experienced just 1.7 times their unloaded energy expenditure.

"Carrying a load of about 30kg spread around the body requires more energy than carrying the same load in a backpack ... because, in a suit of armour, the limbs are loaded with weight which means it takes more effort to swing them with each stride" ... In addition, the armour constricts breathing. "Being wrapped up in a tight shell of thick steel makes one feel invincible, but also unable to take a deep breath," said Federico Formenti of the University of Auckland, who was a co-author of the research. "You feel breathless as soon as you move around in medieval armour."

The news report (with video of a volunteer running on a treadmill in armour to measure his respiration rate) is here, with a link to the abstract of the scientific report here.

Back on the Tourist Trail

Following an enforced hiatus, our "leisure visit programme" (i.e., what we do when we're not gardening or working) resumed last weekend with a trip up to Oxford to visit the exhibition of Macedonian artefacts from the royal tombs at Aegae which is currently at the Ashmolean Museum, followed by a visit to the nearby Pitt Rivers Museum to marvel at its eclectic jumble of ethnographic materials, all still arranged in their nineteenth century cases (and thus in many ways a museum of itself). Today, we went across to Harrow in northeast London to visit the recently restored (and thus re-opened to the public) Headstone Manor House, the only surviving moated medieval house in the London area and the centrepiece of Harrow Museum's collections. Not that there's much to the collections beyond the buildings themselves -- the manor house, the two post-medieval barns, and the granary, but since it was the old buildings we were going to see that didn't matter too much.

Here are some photographs of the Headstone Manor estate (the remnants of what was once a large working farm) -- the Small Barn, the Tithe Barn (so-called -- it never was one during its working life, but the moniker seems to get attached to any barn of this size), the Granary, and two views of (respectively) the front and back of the manor house. Note that, in the second of the manor house views, the oldest part of the structure is the yellow lime-washed tower to the left; the half-timbered part to the right is actually later, added in the eighteenth century (and the small lean-to arrangement at the extreme right is later still: a Victorian laundry, added in the nineteenth century). The front view shows the Georgian brick facade added in the eighteenth century to smarten it up by concealing the timber-frame and lime-washed wattle-and-daub of which much of the house is actually made.

For further information about these buildings (and the two Oxford museums), follow the links embedded in the introductory paragraph.

The Final Flight (Photographic Evidence)

Two photographs by my brother Ian, showing the Sea King helicopter approaching The Cobb from the Charmouth direction and (on its second pass) emptying the urn containing Vati's ashes into the sea off Monmouth Beach. As the Boscombe Down people said, "This was a real pleasure, especially to mark the passing of someone so influential in our Air T[esting]&E[valuation] heritage".

I have some video of my own, which I hope to upload once I've edited it to remove the rough patches and similar. For now, enjoy the photographs.

The Final Flight

Vati's ashes were scattered in the sea adjacent to The Cobb in Lyme Regis yesterday afternoon, from a military Sea King helicopter on a "routine training flight" from Boscombe Down. It was in accord with his wishes, and the family gathered on the end of The Cobb to witness it, on a warm sunny day with a gentle onshore breeze.

We weren't the only people there, of course, but we were certainly the only people who knew to expect it. And at "1400 local" there it was, appearing through the Charmouth gap and skimming across the sea directly towards us. The crew had a flight plan, but of course had to wait for us to identify ourselves; we waved vigorously, and as the helicopter clattered overhead we made eye contact with the pilot, who nodded his acknowledgement of us.

The helicopter slowed, and made a wide circle to port off Monmouth Beach, to the west of The Cobb. As it circled back towards us, its speed slowing and its nose pitching up in forward hover mode, we could see that the starboard door had been slid back and that the winchman was in position, with the urn collected from my mother that morning. The helicopter came back abreast of us; and as we watched a couple of plumes of diffuse grey matter went streaming back from the doorway. Vati's remains, drifting down into the water.

The helicopter made another wide circle to port, coming back to present its starboard side to us again. We waved again at the crew; the crew waved back. Then the Sea King's door was closed, its nose lifted, its speed increased, and it set off back inland over the Undercliff to the west of The Cobb.

The other people on The Cobb who'd witnessed the event were looking at us with some curiosity. But although it was a public act, it had an entirely private meaning, and we felt under no obligation to explain anything to them. Instead, we walked back to The Royal Standard Inn, on the seafront, and had a few beers in Vati's memory.

Last Thursday

Vati's funeral took place last Thursday, and was surprisingly religious for someone who had evinced no religious sentiment throughout his entire adult life and as far as I know hadn't been to church since he was a boy (apart from weddings and other people's funerals, that is). The order of service, which he himself had drawn up before his death, included two hymns, two prayers, an address by one of the local vicars....and two tributes, one from a former colleague in the aeroplane business which had been his career and the other by the eldest of my brother's two sons. (Although I had previously thought that the turn-out from former work colleagues would be low, the number attending was larger than first calculated. And we have received a huge stack of cards from the various people who knew him.) Both sons were a bit teary, as were I and my three siblings. Not to mention my mother, who looked utterly bewildered by the whole thing -- as one might, when one's just lost a life-partner of such long standing (their sixtieth anniversary was last September).

At the wake afterwards, I was approached by a number of people who remembered me from when I was a child and hadn't seen me for fifty years or thereabouts, but of whom I had no memory at all. Apparently this isn't unusual -- "childhood amnesia" is the technical term for it, and most of us have only sketchy and isolated mental snapshots of our first few years (whereas of course the adults who remember us as children have the clearer memories that come with being an adult). But this amnesia should only apply to the first three or four years of life, not the first eight to ten -- so what does it say about me that so much of my life before we moved to the bungalow in Porton, near Salisbury in 1963 is such a blank?

That evening, I, my siblings, Judith and my elder sister's husband took my mother out for a slap-up meal of expensive oysters and such at Hix's overlooking The Cobb at Lyme Regis, at which many toasts were offered and much champagne quaffed. (The restaurant's young maitre'd was very sympathetic, since his own grandfather had died just a few months before. But he didn't give us any discounts.) Apart from the toasts, our repartee was fairly inconsequential family and work-related stuff; but that was probably exactly right for the occasion.

Keeping You Up To Speed

Vati (my father) died in Exeter hospital early on Monday morning, having been unwell -- low blood pressure, not eating -- for many weeks. We got a call from the hospital late on Saturday to say that the end was near, so most of us were able to travel down to see him on Sunday afternoon and make our goodbyes. He was in a terrible state -- shrunken to perhaps a third of his bodyweight, unable to speak, the sight already gone in one eye. By the time we left later that day, he was beginning to slip in and out of consciousness; that he passed away so shortly afterwards was perhaps a merciful release.

There's nothing else I can think to say right now.

One for Daniel

Two of the twelve books I read during our recent Australian holiday -- on the parts of it when I was hiding from the kiddies in the bedroom at Albany, rather than the parts of it when we were swimming in waterfalls, photographing crocodiles and flying over the Arnhem Escarpment in the Top End -- concerned Alexander the Great. He is clearly something of an obsession of mine, although it's taken me some years to realise this -- you buy a book on post-Alexandrian Hellenism in the early 1990s, watch Michael Wood's In The Footsteps Of... television series later that decade, buy the DVD of Oliver Stone's film some years later, read the classic biography by Robin Lane Fox....

Anway, a few days after we returned to the UK, I ambled into the branch of Model Zone near my office, looking for a box of model figurines entitled "Ancient Life" -- featuring characters reclining on couches drinking wine, reciting poetry and all the other things that ancient characters did at home -- which had been drawn to my attention by Maureen and which I thought might be quite amusing to assemble and paint. The shop didn't have that, but rather than leave immediately I found my attention drawn to the various boxes of model soldiers of the ancient world produced by the same (Russian) company -- Republican Romans, Carthaginians, Scythians, cataphracts of an indeterminate nationality....and Macedonians and Greeks of the 4th-3rd centuries BCE, as led by Alexander into Asia to destroy the Persian Empire.

Yes. (You're surely ahead of me here.) I bought a box each of Macedonian cavalry, a Macedonian phalanx, and Greek hoplites. "It's just as well you have plenty of free time, isn't it?" said Judith when I showed them to her later. Indeed it is. With a bit of luck, I might even get around to painting and mounting them before I retire from full-time work in a couple of years' time. Even though I really ought to acquire some Persian model soldiers to oppose them as well....

Home Again Home Again, Bippety-Boop

We are back home in London again, safe and well, save for one moment of excitement as we approached Singapore Changi airport at the end of the Darwin-Singapore leg of the flight: the aircraft descended towards the runway, the flaps extended, the wheels were lowered, the engines began to be throttled back, the runway lights slipped past underneath us....and then suddenly the nose pitched upwards at a sharp angle, the engine noise increased to a roar, and the aircraft climbed back into the sky. I suggested to Judith that the landing had been aborted at the last moment because of another aircraft on the runway; this was confirmed a few minutes later by the pilot apologising for the "missed approach" because of a "slower than expected" aircraft ahead of us. "Two landings for the price of one," said Judith. How close we came to going KABAM! KABOOM! KABAMMY-BOOM! may be known only to the Singapore Air Traffic Control people investigating the incident (and perhaps to the inattentive ATC officer who may now be in peril of their job). Certainly, if we'd actually touched down before the abort instruction had been given, it would have been very difficult to take off again....

I then slept most of the way from Singapore to London (more than Judith, in fact); since arrival home, we have unpacked, been to Tesco to replenish the larder, had an early lunch (because we had an early breakfast, at 4.00am, so it feels later than it actually is), and then I cut the grass and sorted my mail while Judith napped for a couple of hours. She is now processing the worm compost in preparation for a trip to the allotment tomorrow, to catch up with things there. The only other issue of note to report is that our robin's nest has not survived our absence, having been pulled out of its hiding place on the fence (presumably by a cat or, more likely, a fox). What happened to the chicks (if indeed they hatched) we cannot say. However, it seems unlikely that any bird would wish to use that nest site again: thus the end of the first and perhaps last attempt by a bird to nest in our garden. Bum poo donkey smells, as we sometimes say.

Exciting News!

There are five eggs in the robin's nest. (Photograph taken a few minutes ago -- presumably the bird was off foraging somewhere.)

Zena - arrival time?

Z have tried dto email you, asking what time on Thu 14 you actually arrive Perth, so we can plan when to head for the big cottage to meet you... Pls email Rosie and me with your flight time details. Hope you all had a good time at Smith Lake...

Spring Flowers

Not sure what this one is called. (Were there a Wugster about, I could ask.) It's growing against the shady fence, where it never gets direct sunlight, which is presumably its preferred habitat.

A Forest of Dandelions

I went to the allotment this morning, to strim the grass before departure for Australia; that took an hour, which was about half the time I expected to spend on the task. It was such a lovely sunny day -- unseasonably warm for April; so warm in the sunshine that I was, as is my wont on such occasions, legging about in next to nothing -- that I was tempted to stay, and dig out the dandelions which always sprout at this time (but only, thankfully, in the beds we didn't dig over in February or March to take the bean and potato crops). But I couldn't because this afternoon was the 2011 AGM of the Tottenham Civic Society, of which I am (and was re-elected as) the secretary. (I was sorely tempted to propose an emergency motion to move the meeting, in a hired room at Bruce Castle, to the lawn outside, but then our guest's presentation wouldn't have worked -- no cabling of the length required, ambient light too strong for anyone to see the screen, etc. etc..) Instead, I took a couple of photographs of the dandelion crop. By the time we return, a month from now, the flowers will have been replaced by puffballs, and indeed the seeds of the puffballs almost certainly have been released hither and yon, generating colossal quantities of dandelions all over the plot next spring. So be not surprised if I utter a curse or two about the timing of Kellie's wedding as I fork over the soil in April and May 2012....

Photographs of Spring 2011

I've added some more photos to the Facebook photo album of the signs of spring in our back garden over the past couple of weeks. Use the embedded link to view the new images.

Robin Redbreast Again

The robin on its nest in the ivy, photographed about half an hour ago this morning. I took several such photographs; it seemed remarkably unperturbed by the whole business.

Robin Redbreast

We have put feed out for the birds every day since we bought our house. Having started with a wooden RSPB birdtable (which ultimately succumbed to the weather, and disintegrated), we now have an array of feeding stations, caged or hung in such a way as to prevent the local squirrels from getting at them (and, inter alia, also excluding the larger birds such as feral pigeons -- in fact, the feral pigeons seem to have given up on our garden, and "larger birds" now means exclusively wood pigeons and collared doves). But not once in the past seventeen years have we ever had birds nesting in our garden -- chiefly if not wholly because we have no suitable nest sites: the only trees are fruit trees and, except for a few spots, the wooden fences are kept clear for food plants to grow up.

The weekend just past, however....

On Sunday, Judith was cutting back some sweet cecily on the southern side of the garden (i.e., adjacent to the north-facing fence) when she spotted a robin fluttering around the ivy which cloaks the part of the fence next to the greenhouse. It flew past her and down onto our small lawn, which had been given its first cut of the year on Saturday afternoon, and picked up some of the newly exposed moss. Nest-building material? Indisputably -- it flew back into the ivy, and a minute or so later came out in search of another beakful.

We retreated into the greenhouse, to both give it more space and get a better view of the nest it was constructing. By evening the following day (i.e., yesterday) it appeared to be finished: you had to know where to look, but the curve of the bowl was quite clear. But of the bird itself there was no sign -- not sitting in the nest, not flitting about the garden, not singing from the trees in the adjacent gardens. Nor was there any sign of it this morning (although the drizzly, blustery weather this morning was not conducive to birds being out and about).

The overriding problem with the nest site, however, is that it is startlingly low down: on the bottom of the fence's two horizontal rails and thus only about a foot off the ground, which makes it hugely vulnerable to predation by the neighbourhood cats (not to mention the local squirrels and the local foxes whom we know have visited our garden in the past). Although adult robins are tough little birds which should be able to escape if attacked, whether their nestlings will make it to the fledging stage (if indeed the eggs aren't taken before they hatch) is another matter altogether. But was the bird's absence a sign that it had already been attacked, and was either dead or had abandoned the nest before laying a single egg?

We don't know. Nor, if the bird has survived, will we know what happens in the immediate future, because we are shortly due to depart for a few weeks in Australia, and will therefore be away for most of the period during which we can expect eggs to be laid and hatched. We hope very much that will happen, and that a brood of robin chicks will be there on our return; otherwise, we may have only the bowl of the nest to remind us that a bird was once there at all.

Another Sign of Spring

The pear blossom in our back garden, taken about an hour ago.

Spring is Sprung, the Grass is Riz....

Well, maybe not quite yet. But, posted to Facebook (and tagged as public so that everyone can see them) are five photographs of the back garden -- pear blossom, daffodils, other flowery things -- that I took this morning while the sun shone and the temperature, though not exactly warm, was bearable enough. But then I'm part Scots, I can wander around outside in a pair of running shorts and look suitably macho (or nearest equivalent) for the neighbours. Must be my Scottish genes, or something....

The Gardening Year Continues

To the allotment this afternoon, to plant out our potatoes....or some of them, anyway: there wasn't space for all of them in the one bed. So next weekend we'll have to dig up our remaining leeks and turn that bed over to potatoes as well.

Here's some photographs of Judith digging trenches for the potatoes we did plant out and then covering them over with some nice rich compost from one of our bins.





Meanwhile, having renewed one set of bed edging -- and having identified two other sets which also need replacing -- I sorted through the planks stacked against the side of the shed to weed out those which had been there for too long and had started to rot. That meant, in the event, most of them, which must teach me a thing or two about hoarding stuff: it would surely have been more productive for them to have rotted in the ground. But it does mean that before I can renew any more bed edging I'll need to break up the wooden fork lift pallet that's been on the allotment since, er, last September, I think....

Magnolia Stellata

Here is a photograph of the Magnolia stellata to which Judith referred in her previous post, looking very attractive in the cool of the morning. The photograph was taken at 7.00am on Monday (three days ago) in those few minutes when the sun is still rising above the horizon and the sky is still an opalescent grey. (I had just been out jogging to fetch the newspaper.)

Gardening Notes

This week, my magnolia
Is in star, a white galaxy.
Spring supernova!

Spring bursting out all over: purple-blue pulmonaria (lungwort) carpet the front garden, under the star magnolia, mixed in with crocuses. Grape hyacinths (muscari) are pushing up their flowering stalks, so are forget-me-nots. My Maysie Memorial Garden at the end of the street is a mass of crocuses and daffodils, with patches of lungwort and forget-me-not starting to do their stuff. Interesting to note that the west-facing (afternoon sun) side seems to be coming out about two weeks in advance of the east-facing (morning sun) side, which the sun has to warm up from night-time chill before it passes over to an already warmed up west side. Down the allotment, I sowed some rows of brassicas and radish today, lured down by sunny morning, with the soil warm to the touch. Then a chill east wind brought clouds, and I headed back to city life.

I planted out shallots and leek seeds into the same bed a couple of weeks ago, and have two beds of broad beans, early peas and lettuce. JN dug up what will be this year's potato bed at the weekend -- which may have something to do with his back now creaking and requiring pummelation. I'll probably 'pink manure' red orache and cornflower seed liberally over beds not needed for early planting -- let them fallow over April.

Having taken on co-chairing Growing in Haringey, the umbrella network for community gardens and sustainable food activity in the borough, I now need to do paperwork -- secured a small 'Local Lead' grant from Capital Growth, so have to organise getting it spent. The key thing we're using it for is to pay for at least a small amount of core organising work, to hold together communications. keep track of the various things being done on volunteer basis, and manage event organising particularly for the summer round of local outdoor festivals. Better get back to it...

The Gardening Year Resumes

The problem with writing about gardening is of course that it repeats -- unless you grow something different each and every year (which is perhaps theoretically possible), you'll end up with umpteen iterations of the number of broad bean seedlings you planted that day, or how much had to be pruned from the raspberry canes. But sometimes that is exactly what you want to say, irrespective of how many times it's been said before, because yesterday was a really mild, pleasant day -- the first mild, pleasant day we've had this year, and a welcome change after the cold weather that seemed to dominate February, with the wind out of the north and temperatures too low to spend any length of time out of doors.

So yesterday we hustled off down the allotment, me to dig over a couple of beds and Judith to plant stuff, and both of us to harvest stuff. The broccoli has begun to brockle, so we picked some of that -- and here's a photograph of a purple sprouting broccoli, our favourite -- and, with some of our leeks, turned it into broccoli cheese for dinner.



We also planted our broad bean seedlings, and here's a photograph of them, with their anti-pigeon and anti-fox defences -- the stakes keep the foxes out; the plastic bottles rattling in the wind stop the pigeons from pecking off the tender shoots -- and the cardboard tubes in which the seedlings were grown left to rot down alongside them.



Our next tasks will be to plant out our potatoes and repair some of the bed edging. In the meantime, there is frogspawn in the allotment pond and new growth on the raspberry canes: at last, it really does feel like spring.

Our Spiffing New Door

After several years of thinking about it and some months of the new door sitting in our kitchen waiting to be painted, we have finally replaced the solid door of our "airlock" hallway with a glass-paned version that lets the light through -- and, inter alia, enables us to see the stained glass Chinese dragons in our front door. There's a photograph below. (Ignore the apparent curvature of the walls and the frame.)

Note the solid iron dachshund guard-dog in the airlock -- actually a bootscraper, but if we were to put it outside some enemy of democracy would probably steal it.

Restarting the Cultural Programme

A new year, and a a new programme of visits to various museums. This afternoon, we knocked off two: the Handel House Museum in Mayfair, and the Foundling Museum in Holborn. The two are connected: George Frideric Handel conducted a number of subscription concerts in support of the Foundling Hospital established by Thomas Coram, including performances of The Messiah, and later became a director of the hospital; and the Foundling Museum has a collection of material associated with Handel's life and work, including the original of his will and its four codicils (kep in a sealed glass case and protected by leather coverings to exclude the light).

I took some photographs, naturally. They show, in order; the Handel Museum itself at 25 Brook Street, Mayfair (the ground floor is occupied by a shop and the museum's offices are on the top floor; the rooms open to the public are on the first and second floors); the Blue Plaque recording Handel's occupation of the house from his arrival in London in the summer of 1723 to his death on 14 April 1759; the Blue Plaque on the house next door, 23 Brook Street, recording Jimi Hendrix's occupation of it (the Handel Museum also occupies part of this building); the Foundling Museum, on part of the site of the (much larger) Foundling Hospital (it was demolished in 1926, but the oak staircase from the west wing and the fabulously stuccoed Court Room were preserved and re-erected); and, outside the Museum, a statue of its founder, Thomas Coram, a sea-captain born in Lyme Regis (hence, of course, the name of the Coram Tower there).







Next weekend is Haringey's third annual Seed Swap Day, organised by The Wugster, which on this occasion is co-located with the Skill Share Day organised by Sustainable Haringey; and the weekend after that is the Local History Fair at Bruce Castle Museum. So no more jaunting about by us until the last weekend in February, when we have visits to the Vestry House Museum and the William Morris Gallery, both in nearby Walthamstow, lined up. And after that, it will undoubtedly be time to get stuck into some gardening!

Hadrian's Wall, May 2009 -- Correction

The URL I gave in the previous post won't work for non-Facebook users, because it requires people to log in (as me). Please use this URL instead (which will work for non-FB users.)

Hadrian's Wall, May 2009

After many promises to myself to Get On With It, I have finally assembled a Facebook photo album of a long weekend Judith and I spent at Hadrian's Wall in May 2009, as part of small group organised through Facebook and LiveJournal. The album is tagged as available to everyone, so you should be able to see it.

(This means, Z, that you will have to swallow hard and look at stuff on the web instead of receiving it through e-mail. Deal with it!)

J&J dates for Oz 2011 trip

Provisional dates we're looking at for our Down Under sortie April time -- subject to sorting out minor details like leave from work and flight bookings. Posted here so you guys can shout out if the dates we have down to be in your neck of the woods is inconvenient for us to descend on you:

Sydney (Z+P+co): 3 - 8 April

Perth/Albany/Koji : 9 - 29 April
(incl Kellie wedding)

Darwin? 1 - ? May

(Easter is 22-24 Apr)

Any problems? Look forward to seeing you then or thereabouts -- allowing for volcanoes, collapse of UK/global economy, and any other minor eventualities....

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (10)

Another jigsaw....again comprised of teeny-tiny pieces no larger than a thumbnail (and most much smaller). As you might imagine from the image (large areas of not much colour variation), much of it had to be assembled by the "brute force" method of trying every piece in every possible place; it therefore took days to complete (excepting time for sleeping, eating meals, watching television, reading newspapers and magazines, and so forth). The Wugster's hand, holding a magnifying glass, is included for the purposes of size comparison.