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.

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (9)

Another jigsaw....a 300-piece map of the world with teeny-tiny pieces each no larger than a thumbnail, packed into an 8cm x 7.5cm x 3cm box without a picture, and which when assembled measures 25cm x 19cm. (A cup and saucer is included in the first photo to provide a sense of scale.) It took the two of us just over two hours to complete. Now to read some History Today magazine to recuperate!

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (8)

Third jigsaw finished -- what heroes we are!



Now to watch some St David of Attenborough, from our St David of Attenborough DVD collection....

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (7)

We've moved on to our third jigsaw, of one of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries woven at the end of the 15th century and now displayed in the Musee National du Moyen Age, Paris. As you might imagine if you follow the links and examine the tapestries for yourselves, there are hours of fun to be had just sorting the pieces into colours and shapes, never mind actually assembling the jigsaw....

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (6)

We're on to our second jigsaw of the holiday -- a scene from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, from the British Museum's collection.