Full Metal Wheelbarrow
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "cat63" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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09:06 pm
[Link] | Started my first batch of comfrey liquid today. This is a quite simple process involving a bucket of water, some comfrey leaves and a wait of two or three weeks.
Apparently it'll be quite apparent when the stuff is ready on account of it smelling "like an open sewer" as one site nicely put it. But it should be worth it, because it's supposedly the bees knees of tomato food.
Current Mood:  contemplative
Tags: allotment, comfrey
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12:14 pm
[Link] | A ray of hope in the ferry situation - Rob emailed the lady we're renting the cottage from, who had understandably wanted to know which ferry we'd be arriving on, and explained the situation to her. She replied that we'll more than likely be able to get on the ferry on Saturday as a lot of people book but don't turn up. Which is bad of them but good for us :-)
Current Mood:  hopeful
Tags: hols
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08:16 pm
[Link] |
Further details
Rob tells me that this morning's incident happened on one of the fastest stretches of his commute - a downhill bit with a 30mph speed limit, which was pretty much what Rob was doing.
Mr Stupid passed him (more than likely going over the spped limit to do so), and then slammed on the brakes, leaving Rob the choice of going into the back of him or round the side. He chose to go round whereupon Mr stupid pulled out and hit him three times. At this point they were approaching a set of bollards, so Rob braked to avoid being forced into them and Mr stupid drove off.
Sounds like deliberate assault to me, as I can't imagine someone doing that by accident. I hope, in addition to whatever other punishment may eventually find him, that this person acquires a set of painfully incurable piles.
Current Mood:  angry
Tags: cycling, fuckwit drivers
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10:12 am
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/64374102/12735228) [Link] | Rob called me from work today to tell me that some charming individual hit the Quest - three times - with his car this morning. Rob isn't hurt and he says there's no obvious damage to the machine, although he'll need to check it over thoroughly this evening.
Alas, he wasn't able to get the registration, but he says he thinks the car is one that often overtakes carelessly on that stretch of road.
He called the police, but they were reluctant even to give him an incident number. I get the strong impression that at best they don't give a toss about cyclists and at worst they share the bad motorists' view that cyclists shouldn't be on the road.
I have never understood why inflicting injury and damage with a motor vehicle is viewed any differently from doing so with any other object used as a weapon.
A pox on all drivers who don't realise that cyclists are human beings too, dammit!
Current Mood: irate
Tags: cycling, fuckwit drivers, the law is an ass
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08:23 pm
[Link] | Time for an allotment update I think :-)
The runner beans have finally decided to put in an appearance, lazy things that they are, and several of them have pushed their heads above the soil today.
Yesterday I did a fair bit of potting on - peppers, tomatoes, fennel and coriander (cilantro to those on the other side of the Atlantic). Lots of the greenhouse tenants have gone to play outdoors, including the two biggest lemon balm seedlings, who will doubtless be taking over great swathes of the herb bed by the end of summer.
Most of the brassicas have been planted out now, although there are a couple of trays of them still in the greenhouse and I've promised some excess sprouts to Rob's friend Tom, who's just starting with a vegetable patch of his own.
I was vindicated in my decision not to bin the Ferline tomato seedling whose leaves had been eaten off - it's grown new ones and the warm weather has caused several of its friends to germinate too! I am pleased.
Since I've cleared away the trays that were occupying the greenhouse floor, I've been able to extend the small bed I'd planted up with salad leaves. I planted the largest of the Tamina tomatoes in the corner. It's a variety that can be grown inside or out, so I'll be interested to compare the two, always supposing I get a crop this year :-)
The new Humphrey (all comfrey plants are called Humphrey just as all mattresses are called Zem) was getting badly wilted in the heat, so at Rob's suggestion I removed the two big leaves and he's now doing much better. It was a little cooler today too, which probably helped.
I was checking the water level in the shed water butts this afternoon and found a dead bird (a starling, I think)floating in the blue one :-( I don't know if the poor thing fell in and drowned trying to get a drink or if it died from some other cause and fell in afterwards, but either way it was rather sad. I fished it out with the fork and buried it, and I've put a sheet of coroplast over the butt to keep any further feathered friends from meeting the same fate.
Could do with a few sprightly showers to top up the water butts really. Metcheck teased us with hints of rain last weekend, but never delivered. Bah!
Current Mood:  sad
Tags: allotment, veg, wildlife
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04:39 pm
[Link] |
Drat
Rob has just phoned up to book the ferry to Mull for our holiday. They're full. Bugger.
We're currently on the waiting list for a standby ticket :-(
We have a Plan B, which is to park the van in the free long-term car park, go across as foot passengers and then come back for the van on Sunday, but that's not without its problems either, since the ferries back on the following Saturday are mostly full too - except the 7.20am one for which there may be standby tickets.
I suppose we should have booked further ahead, but we didn't realise there'd be so much demand on a Saturday evening. Bother.
Current Mood: concerned
Tags: hols
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08:22 pm
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/60786638/12735228) [Link] |
New Books!
Today involved going to town for various bits and pieces that can't be got in the village, such as bootlaces made of something with slightly more tensile strength than Cheese, and bath bombs from the lovely Lush shop. I told the nice lady therein that they could probably get away with charging a small entrance fee, the place smells so nice. I must be slightly more girlie that I thought I was too, as I simply couldn't resist their new Godmother soap - it's pink, it smells of candy floss and it has glitter in it, what more could you want? (Oh yes - it's vegetarian too).
I also had some Book tokens to spend. I was hoping to find part 2 of Lois McMaster Bujold's The Sharing Knife, but no such luck. I did get the next book I hadn't read yet in four other ongoing series though :-
The Harlequin, by Laurell K. Hamilton - I can't seem to give up reading the Anita Blake series, even though it's been going in a direction I don't care for since about book 8 (this is book 14). I can't quite give up the faint hope that Hamilton will remember that Anita has a job and get a bit closer to the supernatural mystery style of the earlier books.
Saturnalia, by Lindsey Davis. The Falco series of detective novels set in ancient Rome has also been going downhill a bit in the last few books, but not nearly as far or as rapidly as the Anita Blake series - I have a lot more hope of a recovery for this one.
Winning Conditions, by Elizabeth Moon. Fifth in the Vatta's War series about a young woman who's kicked out of Space Navy training just in time to get involved in a war between her trader family and a mysterious group of space pirates.
Blood Rites, by Jim Butcher. This isn't the most recent book about Harry Dresden (the only wizard in the Chicago phone book) but it's as far as I've got.
Then, because the first two books were in the 3 for 2 sale, I could pick another book. The selection in the sale wasn't huge, so I decided that since the book was doubly free (it was not only a present but a sort of extra present, if you will), I'd pick one by an author I hadn't previously read. I picked The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill, because it was favourably compared to Alexander McCall Smith's Botswanan books, and because it 's set in Laos, a place I know nothing whatever about.
Current Mood:  content
Tags: books
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07:54 pm
[Link] | More Mantis-ing today - nearly all the beds are done now, but I still need to do the weedy area between the herb bed and the rhubarb (which should be about ready for picking by now - rhubarb crumble ahoy!
On the downside, I appear to have accidentally Mantis-ed my orange geum :-(
I now have five baby pumpkin plants, the largest of which is nearly ready for planting out . I want to get as much as possible planted out in the next couple of weeks in case it's hot while we're on holiday and the greenhouse plants fry...The calendulas are about ready to go out and I planted some of the kale today.
The first sweetcorn plants poked their heads up today too.
Yesterday I dug up a comfrey offshoot and planted it in line with the other four, but the sunshine seems to have been too much for it this morning - it was badly wilted when I got to the allotment. I've watered it several time ssince, but it may not recover, poor thing.
Called the greenhouse people and their next shipment of parts is arriving in mid-May. I gave them our holiday dates, because the luck we've had with this thing, they'll try to deliver the parts while we're away otherwise.
Current Mood:  busy
Tags: allotment, flowers, veg
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10:34 am
[Link] | Yesterday Rob booked the boat trip we want to go on during our holiday to Mull - I don't much like boats really, but I'm looking forward to this nevertheless as it's out to the Treshnish Isles to visit the puffins, who are apparently pretty blase about people and basically ignore them as long as they stay out of grabbing distance. There's also the chance of seeing whales and/or dolphins. I may be a teeny weeny bit excited :--)
Current Mood:  bouncy
Tags: mull, wildlife
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08:42 am
[Link] | Happy Star Wars Day folks! :-)
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08:04 pm
[Link] |
Welcome to Brassicaland :-)
Funny thing, when I was younger I didn't like anything cabbagelike at all. And yet today, I've been merrily planting out brassicas of various types and potting on others of the family. Primo cabbage, red kale, calabrese , purple sprouting broccoli and brussels sprouts. Erm, yes. Actually I think I may have overprocured ever so slightly on the Brussels sprout front, but it's a good idea to have a few spare plants, right?
There are a few non-brassica things on the allotment though, honest. I planted out my module grown carrots [1] this week and sowed seed for several more varieties, including some little round ones that ought to be nice in salads.
I've got netting up for two rows of peas and sugar snap peas planted on one of them with a tray of "normal" peas to go in on the second and a second tray of sugar snaps just sown. I also got the supports up for the runner beans this week and sowed the first lot of those today.
I harvested the last of the leeks today and froze them. Tomorrow I'll dig up the remaining parsnips and then I can use the Mantis on the beds they were in. (I think I'm going to need the space for the sprouts, to be honest).
It's not all veg either - I've planted three sunflowers at the back of the greenhouse, and inside I've got marigolds (french and calendulas), nemesia, oriental poppies and mesembryanthemums. Lots of mesembryanthemums. It's a good job they can't interbreed with the sprouts or their offspring would take over the world. In about a week probably.
A third pumpkin seedling poked it's head up today - the first one will probably be going outside in a week or two. I've sown the sweetcorn that will be sharing the patch with the pumpkins.
Tomorrow, I have to go and pay the rent for the allotment. The princely sum of £7. Worth every penny I reckon.
[1] I know you're not supposed to transplant carrots, but from modules they shouldn't be able to tell the difference. It's not like carrots are particularly bright, after all.
Current Mood:  creative
Tags: allotment, flowers, veg
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07:58 pm
[Link] |
Third in an occasional series...
Following on from the child-size cauliflower and the tiny tomato, I bring you the latest in my unplanned series of Unintentionally MIni-Vegetables - the Pygmy Purple Cabbage
Current Mood:  amused
Tags: unintentional tinyness, veg
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12:26 pm
[Link] |
A couple of photos from todays wander round the village.
Firstly, I met this little creature on the path from the allotments. As far as I can make out, it's a female Speckled Wood butterfly, who posed most obligingly for her picture.
Secondly, I thought the juxtaposition of the vintage car and the thatched cottages made a nice anachronistic picture
Can you believe that :they wanted to pull these cottages down in the 1960s? Thank goodness "they" didn't get their way.
Current Mood: contemplative
Tags: history, wildlife
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08:19 am
[Link] |
Book Meme
A slight variation on the Librarything book meme, pinched from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) trishtrash
In an attempt to be more true to the original LT "unread tag" search - here's a version of the Unread Book meme that acknowledges the sorts of tags actually included in the search.
So, your mission should you choose to accept it, is to mark these as follows:
("Please read this list carefully, because some of our options have changed!")
Strikethrough: started but never finished and don't intend to
Italics: finished under duress or out of a sense of duty
Bold: finished because you liked it
Underline: haven't read it or finished it yet but intend to
... and, add your line by line commentary in parentheses.
Tags: books, meme
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09:16 pm
[Link] |
Bats!
Just spent the last ten minutes or so watching a pair of bats flying up and down the row of gardens behind the court. Magical!
Current Mood: uplifted
Tags: wildlife
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11:30 am
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/66067615/12735228) [Link] |
Splorfle, chortle, guffaw, and similar expressions of incredulous mirth...
The greenhouse people have sent Rob a Customer Satisfaction Survey.
If you hear two muffled thuds today that'll be us laughing our arses off.
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Roxette, Almost Unreal
Tags: greenhouse, irony
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08:04 pm
[Link] | Put in a couple of hours work on the allotment this afternoon and feel I got a fair bit done.
I used the Mantis on my own for the first time, without breaking it or me, which is good :-). I used it to make four rows for planting peas and put up netting on the first one, where I then planted the sugar snap peas I'd been hardening off under a cloche for the last week or so. They were past ready to go out - their roots had grown well beyond their modules and I had to tease them out very carefully to avoid damaging them.
I also tilled the area where the runner beans are going to go - later in the week I'll start putting up a row of canes to grow them up. I planted some more broad beans to continue the row that's there already and sowed leeks and beetroot in modules in the greenhouse.
I planted out the nasturtium seedlings in a patch at the end of one of the beds. I hope they'll be as nice a display as last year. I think I need to bung some more marigold seed in though, because germination has been very patchy in the ones I sowed earlier. I think one of tomorrow's jobs will be to plant out the sunflowers, as they're already growing through the bottom of their coir pots. The comfrey plants are growing well, and one of them has an offshoot that I can dig up when it's a little bigger and use to continue the row.
I think I've lost three or four of the artichokes, so I need to plant some more of those to fill in the gaps. It feels as if the growing season is beginning to take off at last. I just hope we don't have quite as much rain this summer as last year....
Current Mood:  tired
Current Music: Peter Gabriel, Digging In The Dirt
Tags: allotment, flowers, plants, veg
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08:05 am
[Link] | Sunday was a bit gentler than Saturday - we pootled about on the allotment. Rob did a sterling job with the weeding - he may not be able to spot the smaller weeds, but he's ace at spotting the dandelions. So much so in fact that the compost heap is now full to overflowing, but it's all soft stuff that should reduce down pretty quickly.
We tidied up the strawberry bed, transplanted some of the runners and added fresh straw. Some of the plants are coming into flower, so strawberries on the horizon - Yay!
I also put up the first of the sweet pea wigwams and planted out the survivors of the Great Greenhouse Disaster, one of which is flowering already.
Todays plan is to till some rows for the sugar snap peas (if I can get the Mantis to run - this will be the first time I've used it alone) and plant those out before they Take Over The World, and to plant the nasturtiums and some more broad beans, which I must hie me to the farm shop to procure.
That's if it doesn't piddle down all day of course.
Current Mood: anticipatory
Current Music: Natalie Imbruglia, Counting Down The Days
Tags: allotment, flowers, veg
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07:49 pm
[Link] | Yesterday was a long day. We got up at our usual weekday time of 6.30 and set off for Dorchester to collect a trike. Had a couple of unscheduled diversions on the way, once when we took the wrong exit from a roundabout (Rob and Jane the GPS had a disagreement about which was the third exit) and once when the road we needed to use was closed - and despite te fact that the road signs had been saying it was closed for about a hundred miles, they hadn't marked up a diversion route, so Jane was jolly useful there.
The chap we collected the trike from, very kindly let Rob have a go on his recumbent train :-
( Yes, I said train... )
Then we pootled off to Longleat for the promised safari. Lots of pictures under the cut, many of them by Rob, because he's a much better photographer than I am.
( Lions and tigers and giraffes, oh my! )
We could have spent a lot more time there if we'd got there earlier, and hopefully got a lot more photos. Definitely somewhere to go back to.
Three more photos from Longleat are in my most recent post to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) 100_snapshots
I'd post a link to it, but LJ is being arsy. I might have to stick it in a comment at this rate. Bah.
Current Mood: tired
Tags: trike, wildlife
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12:53 pm
[Link] | Today was planned as being mostly spent on the allotment after posting off an urgent tyre order first thing, and I was pleased to learn that the huge pile of topsoil on an adjoining pitch was free for the taking. I decided a few barrowloads of that would be a jolly good thing for my raised bed (a.k.a. the base of the dead greenhouse.) Naturally, I'd sieved about a barrow and a half of same when the heavens opened - literally, it felt like.
Oh, well, those seedlings had to be potted on sometime :-)
Last evening Rob had carefully extracted the first batch of compost from the new wormery, which I mixed 50/50 with commercial compost and used for potting on the latest batch of broccoli, cauliflowers and sprouts. It certainly feels like good stuff, so I hope they'll grow well in it.
On Saturday we're probably going to Dorchester to collect a demo trike that our supplier needs for a show in Nottingham next month. If we have time on the way back and the weather isn't too crap, we may stop off at Longleat and do the safari tour.
Current Mood:  hungry
Current Music: Theme from "Flipper"
Tags: allotment, excursions, greenhouse, veg
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