Wet stuff

4 km swim yesterday -- 160 lengths in 140 mins! Particularly pleased that I wasn't knackered afterwards, but able to settle down to 'working at home' -- with laptop on a tray across my knees, in my upstairs study comfy chair, with view of back garden and lots of little birdies playing around the bird feeders.

This weekend, we have the annual local street party on Sunday -- Joseph has made an info display on what being a 'conservation area' for local architectural heritage means; I'll be working on the book and/or plant stall. The last few weekends, we've visited Sutton Hoo in Essex, and Rye Gate House and nature reserve up the Lea. Next weekend, we're off to Lyme Regis and JN's parents for the end-of-August Bank Holiday.

Sutton Hoo is like Tolkien's Barrow Downs: a field where rich Anglo-Saxon burials, two of them inside ships, were found; the barrow down is on a ridge looking down on the Blacwater estuary, at the furthest point that ships could navigate up the river Debden. Around the pagan warrior burials there are later Christian-era Anglo-saxon bodies, some decapitated -- thought to be criminals who were hanged from a gallows up there, their bodies left with the ghosts of the heathen damned.

Rye House is just a local train trip up our river valley: it was one of the first houses in this country built of bricks, when they were a new-fangled architectural innovation. Then it was the base for an attempt to assassinate Charles II when he was due to ride along the road past it -- but he headed off early, so the assassins missed him -- but were caught when one of them betrayed the plot and got the chop themselves. Just the gatehouse now stands, on an island moated by a channel dug from the river. Beyond the old house, the wide flood plain is now nature reserve, partly managed by Royal Society for Protection of Birds, partly by the Wildlife Trust: Jospeh saw his first ever live kingfisher -- a fast-moving turquoise and russet streak that, every now and then, went into its nest hole in an artificial sandbank beside a weed-choked pool then headed back off towards the river to hunt more fishies. Masses of luscious blackberries ('please leave for the birds'), water buffalo keeping the grazing marsh grazed, grey heron, lots of wood pigeons.

Meanwhile, this is harvest season: masses of lettuce, runner beans, raspberries. Some blackberries. Tomatoes just starting to come ripe (a race against the blight which is taking hold on their leaves). Main job down the allotment is transplanting broccoli and cabbage seedlings so they can grow big and fat for winter harvest. Freezer already stuffed full -- but we think its time we got a new (energy efficient) fridge, and we've spotted one that offers an extra, fifth freezer drawer...

How are you all?

A Grand Day Out

One of many lists which I carry around in my filofax is of places in and around London to visit. I've had it for some years, and it gets added to from time to time -- and just as occasionally, a tick appears next to an item to show that it's been duly visited. These ticks don't appear very often, even though Judith and I tell each other at the start of every year that we really must make an effort otherwise we'll never see them at all....but then ordinary everyday life gets in the way and before we know it the summer's over, we've spent most of our time gardening, and places are closing up for the winter.

But this weekend just past we made an effort, and took a train up the Lee Valley to visit Rye House Gatehouse and Rye Meads Nature Reserve. There's not much to see at the Gatehouse, although the late medieval brickwork is worth more than a passing glance; one would probably see more from the roof during the winter, when the trees aren't in leaf, but as the property is closed to the public from October to March inclusive, only the Lee Valley Park Authority's maintenance staff ever have that opportunity. There's more at Rye Meads, mostly waterfowl; at this time of year, the meadows are being grazed by three water buffalo advertised as of Romanian origin (although how these animals differ from the water buffalo one finds in southern Italy was not at all obvious), and there was an excited notice in the visitor centre announcing that kingfishers had bred in the artificial sandbank in the northeast corner of the reserve. Predictably, the hide overlooking that sandbank was crowded; but we got seats, and waited. And waited. And waited....

When it arrives, kingfishers are less like the bird one sees perched on a branch on television wildlife programmes, and more of a linear phenomenon: a bright blue and red blur as it zooms down into the burrow (presumably with a fish in its beak), followed some seconds later by another bright blue and red blur as it zooms back out again in search of more food. In the fifteen minutes or thereabouts we sat watching, it zoomed in and out three times. But it does mean that, after a life of never having seen a kingfisher except on television wildlife programmes, I have now finally seen the bird for real.

Not something else to tick off, because we don't do that sort of birdwatching. But it was a grand day out just the same.

Avignon Old Town (Part 2)

Following on from a couple of days ago, a selection of some of the notable 18th and 19th century buildings in the old town. We begin with the Hotel de Ville and l'Opera (misleadingly renamed the Theatre; although opera en Francais does not have quite the same meaning as in English, "theatre" is not really a synonym); move on to what is now the Galerie Ducastel but was originally the Theatre Comedie, founded in 1660 and taking its present form in 1825, home to the opera bouffant tradition for many years; and then drop by two eighteenth century mansions which have been converted into museums -- the Musee Vouland, which houses a display of pre-revolutionary furniture and asociated objets collected by the 1920s industrialist Louis Vouland; and (in the very magnificent former Hotel de Villeneuve-Martignan) the Musee Calvet, based on but expanded from the collection of the 18th century's Dr Esprit Calvet: an engaging collection of paintings and portraits from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, which includes a number of singletons from famous Northern European artists such as Brueghel and Vlaminck as well as many pieces from less well-known French artists such as Nicolas Mignard, Horace Vernet and Jean Louis David plus any number of Provencal artists whose local fame did not survive their demise. But such is the way with art of all kinds....

Avignon Old Town (Part 1)

After a longer delay than I'd anticipated, I return with some photographs of Rue des Teinturiers, supposedly the most atmospheric street in the old town. It would also have been, at one time, the smelliest, for it was a street lined with workshops occupied by cloth dyers and fullers, who used the power provided by the water wheels to drive the wooden hammers that threshed the wool and cotton....and then tipped their waste dyes and other gunk back into the same small channel. At least the water flowed away from the centre of town, so that the smelliest smells were concentrated by the medieval walls, from where our walk along the street started. (Whether anyone would have wanted to buy cloth which they knew had been dyed and fulled in the workshops closest to the walls is left as an exercise for the reader.) The modern street is enlivened by sculpted blocks depicting a variety of scenes: animals, memento mori, whatever. Their exact function is a mystery, but then who said art had to be functional?

For those fascinated by the circumstances in which photographs are taken, these images were collected during a torrential downpour -- rain which had held off during the whole of our time in Provence but then arrived all at once on our final afternoon. We spent almost as much time standing in doorways waiting for the rain to pass as we did walking along the street.

Yet More Photographs

As promised yesterday, some views from the roof of the Palais des Papes, over Place des Papes. The first view is a general view southwest towards the River Rhone, just visible towards the top right of the picture; at the bottom right of the picture can be seen part of the exuberantly decorated facade of the seventeenth century Hotel des Monnaies, formerly the papal mint and now the music conservatory: it is seen to better advantage in the second picture. The third picture shows the view north, towards the Petit Palais, formerly part of the papal complex but now a museum of religious art, mostly of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; the building is seen to better advantage in the fourth picture. The River Rhone appears again on the left of the third picture; if you look carefully, the Pont de Benezet can be seen to the left of the Petit Palais.

Next time: selected buildings in Avignon's old town.

More Photographs!

Last weekend, the spring bank holiday weekend, we had an archaeologically and historically themed visit to Hadrian's Wall with some LJ friends. I ought to post some photographs of that, but we only returned on Tuesday evening and I haven't had the time to even download them from the camera, never mind sort them into labelled folders. Instead, therefore, we resume our tour of the Palais des Papes in Avignon, first with a couple of images of the Cour d'Honneur, a courtyard formed by the construction of the New Palace (on the south and west sides of the square) next to the Old Palace (on the east and north sides); then of the Cloister, the central square of the Old Palace; and concluding with the Grand Tinel and the Chambre des Notaires, respectively the banqueting and the audience chambers. (In theory, you're not permitted to take photographs of the interiors of the Palais, but you can take photographs of the exteriors, which include the courtyards and the cloister. In practice, this means everyone takes their cameras around with them and the interiors are photographed by default....when you're sure that the guards aren't looking, even though they're too few in number to properly police the photography rules.) Tomorrow: views from the roof!

Life aquatic and other notes

1) Yesterday 120 lengths (3 km) in 95 mins -- first time I've managed it within the 100 min barrier. Today a mere 1 mile (64 lengths) in just under 50 mins.

2) Sunday: despite the dodgy weather 60+ turned out for 'Palace Gates Railway' walk I suggested to Tottenham Civic Society and co-led -- principally the stretches that now run through two allotment sites, one of them ours. Railway enthusiasts waved a slim vol on the 'Palace Gates to North Woolwich Railway' by JE O'Connor, and pics in a hardback vol titled something like Old Passenger Railways. JN was hero of serving refreshments -- raised £25 for the local Save Wards Corner campaign.

3) Last week: at Norderns Ark (the Northern Ark), a conservation zoo in Sweden which focuses on breeding and re-introduction of northern temperate species. I got to go in the wolverine enclosure while they were being fed (and given their cinnamon aromatherapy fix), and since we were very good, to then go in with the otters while they played with their food. Did not go into the Amur tiger or Amur leopard enclosures while they were being fed; and 'dinner with wolves' kept the wolves on the other side of a glass-wall, though their keepers did walk among them dishing out their scraps. Lots of charming 'groda' and 'pada' (frogs and toads) in new wetland area -- all under threat from pollution, the chytrid fungus, and habitat destruction. Bronze Age rock carvings of ships just outside the zoo boundary -- where fresh water runs down to what would have been the shore of the fiord at that time. We were there as a bunch of international experts invited for a workshop on why society doesn't value nature as it should, and what role Norderns Ark could play in remedying this: discussion highlighted new parents and their babies (training and follow-up 'club' possibly including birthday books for the first 5 birthdays); Young Ambassadors scheme; and hosting key political meetings in the zoo, so politicians make decisions where they are reminded why they, and other people, actually really love nature when they encounter it (feeding them to the tigers if they make wrong decisions wasn't discussed). Special star visitors to bring in press attention were Jane Goodall (the chimp lady) and Crown Princess Victoria, whose entourage included two very impressive Arnie-Schwartzenegger look-alikes). Sure enough: double-page spread in the main Swedish newspaper on the morning we said our goodbyes.

4) Week before: Provence -- Roman remains, picturesque medieval towns, Cezanne's delightfully peaceful studio a long climb above the town centre of Aix... Must write up properly...

5) Next weekend: walking bits of Hadrian's Wall

6) Hello garden? hello allotment? First swifts spotted here last Friday. Today, about half a dozen just-fledged great tits perched fluffily gormless all around the back garden.

study break

Three weeks of study break - what a wonderful thing. Fantastic opportunity to weed the garden, re-organise my linen cupboard, clear out the old magazines and all those other jobs that just haven't got done when I have been too busy studying. I suppose I will have to do a bit of study too - but with three weeks up my sleeve it doesn't seem there there is too much urgency surround this yet!

Uni is going well - but it has been a bit hectic. I've done (or at least they will be mostly done after exams) three units so far - English, Learning and Assessment and Primary English. I have another intensive unit with Art, Drama and PE (crammed into one week)and then a Special Neeeds unit in third and forth term.

Next year I need to do Science, Technology and Environment (1 unit), a Maths unit and a nine week prac. Then it'll all be finished and I'll have to figure out what to do with this teaching degree!

Anyway ...back to re-organising my sock drawer and cleaning out the fish tank.

Feeding the wolverines

In Sweden last week, at Norderns Ark conservation zoo as part of an 'international experts' seminar on what NA should do to influence society at large to value nature and look after it. This meant I got to help feed the wolverines and otters -- going inside their enclosures with the keepers, and have dinner with wolves. But I didn't go inside with the tigers or the snow leopards. I also met Jane Goodall and Crown Princess Victoria, who arrived with a couple of Arnie Schwartenegger look-alike security guys among her retinue.

Today and tomorrow: catching up with gardening and the spring weed surge!

More anon, possibly even with pix... time and energy permitting. Cheers!

Yet More Photographs of Provence

Here's another selection of images of the Palais des Papes in Avignon, this time showing (in order), a view of the tower of Notre Dame des Doms from the southwest (the gilded statue of the Virgin Mary was added in the nineteenth century and is now regarded as rather kitsch -- but as the Palace complex is on the UNESCO World Heritage list nothing can be done to remove it); a view of Notre Dame des Doms and the adjacent Campane Tower of the Old Palace; a view of the Pont de Benezet from Rocher des Doms (note the papal vineyards on the slope immediately below the point from which the photograph was taken); a reverse view from the bridge of Rocher des Doms, a very defensible position which was the site of the very first settlements of the area, in the neolithic and bronze ages, against which the Palais des Papes was built and which was transformed into a public park after the French Revolution; and, lastly, part of the steps up to the top of the rock from the road. No prizes at all for identifying the figure trudging up those steps....

More Photographs of Provence

Here's the first of two groups of photographs showing the exterior of the enormous Palais des Papes in Avignon, the home of the Popes from 1305 to 1378. The move from Rome was prompted by political and military upheavals caused by war in Italy between two powerful families contending for control of (or the defeat of) the Holy Roman Empire, which made stable government of the Holy See almost impossible. Avignon was chosen as the alternative residence because it was owned by the Count of Provence, who was also the King of Naples and thus the Pope's vassal; the Pope could therefore exercise temporal authority there without interference from other rulers.

Although the Papacy returned to Rome in 1378, a French Pope continued to hold sway in Avignon because the French cardinals disputed the circumstances of the Roman Pope's election; both factions had a high old time excommunicating each other until a Papal Council in 1409 declared both of them deposed and elected a third Pope. By that stage, the last French Pope had been driven from Avignon; he died penniless and forgotten in Spain in 1423, still convinced he was the rightful head of the Church.

These five photographs show, in order, the west facade of the New Palace, built between 1347 and 1351; the enormous buttress which supports the weight of the New Palace's Grand Chapel; a view of the Pope's Tower and the Trouillas Tower, on the rear (eastern) side of the Palais; a view of Notre Dame des Doms, the cathedral attached to the Palais, from the north; and a composite view (apologies for the odd curvature) of the western front the the complex -- the Old Palace, built from 1335 to 1346, on the left and the New Palace wings and towers on the right.

Photographs of Provence

Here we go, then -- the first of a projected series of uploads of selected photographs of our recent short break in Provence. The first set, rather fittingly, is of the famous bridge of Avignon -- or, to give it its proper name, the Pont de Benezet, originally constructed 1177 to 1185, probably of wood re-using Roman foundations, at the urgings of a shepherd who claimed to have received dreams from God telling him to construct a span across the Rhone. (They obviously treated loonies differently in those days.) That bridge was destroyed during a siege of the city in 1226 and rebuilt in stone, but the river was never very kind to it -- it was repeatedly damaged by flooding -- and attempts to repair it were finally abandoned in 1633. Only four of the original twenty-two arches now remain.

The first photograph shows the bridge taken at evening on the day of our arrival in Avignon, where we stayed throughout the trip; the others were taken during our visit to the bridge a day or so later. The fifth and final photograph is a panorama looking back from the end of the bridge, showing the Rhone and Rocher des Doms to the left and the Palais des Papes in the centre.

Speaking of Makeovers....

One of the things we had done last year, as part of the work on the house, was the construction of a (glass-)covered passage down the side of the house, to provide a dry storage area for garden stuff which was otherwise exposed to the weather or taking up space in the kitchen. Here are a couple of photographs, showing the linked water butts, the long wooden bench, and the fold-away shelving. And, of course, the clutter. Mostly Judith clutter, but clutter nevertheless. I'm sure there must be some way of surreptitiously slimming it down!

Pond Makeover

Without a "before" picture for comparison, it's perhaps difficult to show the extent of the remodelling of the garden's pond area, although the photograph of the frogspawn attached to my previous post of 1 March may give you some idea of its former look. Nevertheless, here's a photograph of it as it is now: enlarged, deepened, the front bank raised (with the help of the extra soil dug out) to the same level as the back, and new coping laid. We've also taken the opportunity to clear out the rubble deposit in the corner and lay down (re-using the old coping stones) some proper staging for the pot plants (where previously they were just plunked down on a convenient bit of level ground). The fence, where we've ripped out the old dark green ivy, looks a bit bare at present, but we have plans to plant some golden ivy to replace it. You may notice the netting laid over the bank at the front of the pond: this is to prevent the birds and the local cats from interfering with the new plants until they've become properly established.

We have been intending tp remodel the pond for some years now, because of a known pinhole leak somewhere in the upper part of the old liner, which necessitated its frequent topping up; the issue was always getting around to doing it. But this year, we were finally impelled to get on with it by the death od the tadpoles shortly after they'd hatched, presumably because of a sudden deterioration in the quality of the water. So we ordered a new liner, and in three days over Easter had installed a new and better pond. We are obviously getting very good at this pond-building lark, to have managed it in so short a time; but then, to be technical, this is the fourth one we've dug. (The allotment pond has also been redug and relined.) Of course, it probably helps if you start with an existing hole to work from....

Spring, part 2

So, what have you all be up to for Easter? We've been gardening:

This Easter is timed just right for a fertility festival, though a bit more sunshine wouldn't go amiss. Our seasonal observance this Easter is Re-lining the Back Garden Pond. The new pond-liner arrived just in time, on Maundy Thursday. Today, Easter Sunday, Joseph got himself exceeding muddy breaking up the old edging structure of coping stones and old bricks cemented to hold together, then scooping out ooze, mud and earth to widen and deepen the old hollow and build up the front bank. I rescued edging plants, and scooped out the seven frogs of various sizes that insisted on lurking in the old mud. No tadpoles found surviving in the water which had become v. murky. Then I had to pot up all the rescued plants -- fundraising plant stall fodder. Tomorrow, when its all dried out a bit (fingers crossed, touch wood) we tackle putting in the new liner and re-building the pond edges.

So I still didn't get around to sowing parsnips and leek seeds in our accumulated collection of toilet paper cardboard inner tubes, nor brassicas. Friday, though, I pricked out tomato seedlings to grow on in individual pots. I thought I'd been very restrained in my tomato seed sowing: just four seed-pots per variety (double for Gardeners Delight and Tigerella), and just one standard size seedling module tray of tomatoes. All the packets were a few years old, so I scattered a few seeds in each seed-pot just to be on the safe side. I think almost all germinated: so the greenhouse is now crammed with: 24 Gardeners Delight, 26 Tigerella, and about a dozen each of (heritage seed library varieties) Salt Spring Surprise, Black Plum, and Big Rainbow. Seven sweet peppers (capsicum) are still in the electric propagator tray, which sits on top of the old fridge outside the kitchen door, under our new glass-roofed back porch. See, I only sowed five tomato varieties -- exceedingly restrained -- but still end up with nearly 100 baby tomato plants. Ah well, fundraising plant stall fodder. Get in touch if you want to drop in and adopt a couple of infant tomatoes...

Out the front, we have tulips -- three window boxes of them. First out was the windowbox of Apricot Beauty in with a flame-orange variety and white daffs, while the Magnolia stellata was still doing its starry starry sky flowering impression. As the magnolia petals dropped, so did the orange tulips. But Princess Irene was opening up in her window box: rusty-apricot petals edged golden yellow with flashes of green running through, double-flowered -- she's looking pretty speccy, at her peak now. And below, alongside the continuing Apricot Beautys, bronze Abu Hasan and a dark purple red variety are still developing, still to open up and do their stuff. Grape hyacinths (muscari) all along the path, and indigo and coral lungworts rampaging across the garden. We're also knee-deep in forget-me-nots. Columbines have put up their heads and are just opening -- nourishing herds of greenfly (aphids) which are the base of garden food webs, food for the ladybird, hoverfly and (if we're lucky) lacewing populations -- then when the aphids take to the air, they are the 'aerial plankton' that is needed to feed summer swallows, martins and swifts. Kill off the 'insect pests' and you kill off the birds that live on them, as I wrote indignantly to Organic Gardening magazine a couple of days ago -- but let the aphids have their heads on mere ornamentals and you support the web of life. In a couple of weeks, we'll have baby ladybird 'alligators' and the translucent bird-poo grubs of hoverfly eating the aphids back into balance.

Last weekend, I planted up a summer windowbox for the front: three varieties of ivy-leaf geranium, among dark-blue lobelia and yellow 'creeping jenny' (Lysimachia numularia). Today I planted up three varieties of purple pansies into a windowbox to sit outside the dining room window, a shady spot under the new glass roof; there's a large deep velvety purple black variety, and two small violas -- violet-edged creamy white petals of Magnifico, and Coconut Ice with purple upper petals and creamy lower petals.


Spring Part 1 is crocus time through to early daffodils, frogspawn, and the magnolia stellata and blackthorn come into bloom. Spring part 2 is forget-me-nots, tulips and muscari, fruit trees in blossom, tadpoles hatch, and the magnolia stellata drops its petals. And broccoli broccles. Spring Part 3 will (if I remember right) be branches clothed with leaves, flowering of elderberry, hawthorns and lilac -- and Springwatch back on TV with lots of baby birds. This week, though, we've had a huge and fluffily downy just-fledged wood pigeon (with the white crescent moons still to appear each side of its neck) perched on the arch in the back garden -- as if its parents left it there as a safe spot where it could find its own feet, wings and food.