Flick's Writing

End of summer garden thoughts

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 17:41:48 GMT

It’s officially autumn, now, and the weather agrees. So, how’s the garden doing?

( Gardeney )

In other news, the second half of the concert happened successfully, Benny is slightly lame and the vet is trying to sort him out, we have Eaten Out To Help Out (once), Lettice stole a clutch of eggs (v unusual for a runner) and today I went to Little Quilt Club, where we sat catching up for a couple of hours and then went home without any actual sewing taking place: masks made it hard to listen to what people were saying across the room, so it was a bit hard work, but everyone was present or accounted for, so that was good.

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Concerts in a time of Corona

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 19:55:25 GMT

Yesterday, we went to a gig.

The local folk organisers have been experimenting with tiny concerts (25ish audience, to keep it below the limit of 30 people) in their back garden. They’re quite fortunate that there are a lot of folk musicians living in the area, including Alan Prosser.

He was a bit nervous to start (three days’ notice, and he’d not had a gig in months), but he did a good first set.

Just as he finished the last song, the thunderstorms that we’ve had warnings of for the last week made themselves known. Cue brollies, tarps, and frantically putting bin bags over all the equipment, followed by standing around chatting and comparing rainfall radar apps.

Eventually, the tech guy shook his head and said he didn’t dare turn anything back on until it had had a few days to dry out, so we folded up our socially distanced chairs and headed for home, Mike driving the ten minute trip very carefully in the pouring rain.

It had slackened off by the time we got home, which was fortunate. Then we noticed that the ground wasn’t actually very wet, and... 0.3mm of rain when roads were flooding in the village. Hey ho.

They’re hoping to put on the second set later this week, provided the PA still works!

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Too hot

Sat, 08 Aug 2020 09:42:30 GMT

That is all.

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That time of the year already?

Sun, 12 Jul 2020 14:03:19 GMT

I came off Benny a few weeks ago, and bashed my hand on the fence. It’s still not right, so I took myself off to the hospital this week and had it x-rayed, which confirmed that (as I thought at the time) nothing is broken, so now I’m going to play “hunt the physio with in-person treatments”.

(And speaking of in-person treatments, I’m off to get my legs waxed next week! But I can’t have my eyebrows done, even though it takes two minutes and I can wear a mask during it. But men can get their beard trimmed, sans mask, and that’s safe. Hmmm.

And I had a probably-illegal-but-sod-it Pilates session, which was nice.)

Although the sore hand hasn’t stopped me from riding, last week Benny went A Bit Funny in trot. We had the vet out, and he’s to have a couple of weeks off in the stableyard. At least we don’t need to take them up and down the hill, I guess.

The broadbeans are pretty much over, but the mange tout are just starting to be useful and the peas aren’t far behind. One of my experimental attempts to grow lemongrass seems to have worked; I have no idea what the actual plant will look like or how one goes about harvesting it once it’s grown, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

I need to decide if I’m going to do Christmas hampers (I know, I know, but it’s cherry season). On the one hand, it’s getting a bit dull. On the other, I’m not sure it’s as dull as trying to find over a dozen quirky, thoughtful, non-tat presents every year.

I really should change my default usericon. Not sure I’ve got any good ones of Bob.

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I stand with Jo

Sun, 14 Jun 2020 13:02:31 GMT

Like a lot of women — like Jo Rowling — I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the subject of transgenderism over the last couple of years.

In my case, I went looking after receiving rape threats for saying “you need a uterus to have periods”. What on earth was so staggeringly wrong about saying that you couldn’t shed your uterine lining without having a uterus? How did a statement of biology lead to such a violent and sexualised response?

So I went looking. I spoke to lots of people, and read lots of articles, on all three sides of the debate.

( It got long )

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Start of summer

Sun, 07 Jun 2020 15:33:58 GMT

Bob started the week with a wobbly front tooth, and was anyway overdue for his jabs and checkup, so I booked a visit for him. The tooth came out before the visit, but we went ahead with it anyway, which involved waiting in the car, speaking to the vet by phone, and then putting Bob’s lead onto a wall hook and stepping away while the vet took him inside on a disposable lead (repeat in reverse order afterwards). He’s got a clean bill of health, and the tooth was probably just bashed when he was chewing a stick or playing fetch. He has, however, rather scraped his nose trying to get his muzzle off, so we’ve gone back to just his (newly tightened) head collar and being careful. Things do seem to be getting quieter again, with not so many strangers about, which is presumably a combination of the weather changing and there being more things for people to do now.

(Oddly, the dog vets were pretty relaxed about his jabs, saying that he only needed to start from scratch if they were more than three months late. In the horse world, you can’t even be a day late before you have to re-start the sequence.)

In good nature news, the swallows have hatched at least five chicks. In less good nature news, the horse flies have arrived (although the change in the weather seems to have slowed them back down). The change in the weather? It has indeed gone colder and grey, although I was hoping for something a little better than the 8mm of rain we’ve had this week.

The garden work is starting to slow down a bit, with the last of the squash planted out, the damaged polytunnel plants replaced, the pruning up to date, and the weeding much more leisurely than it was. (The tomato side shoots that we put in water are starting to root, but we also realised that we had a couple of the right variety in the spares tray, so the new ones will probably go in pots in the conservatory.) We even shared a strawberry, but have strong competition from animals domestic and wild so I’m not sure how many more we’ll get....

Today, we moved the horses up the hill to their summer pasture. They seemed quite pleased with all that grass!

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May rainfall: 18mm (average: 45mm)

Sun, 31 May 2020 16:05:36 GMT

The veg bed is now all planted out for the summer, and we picked our first broad beans (at least ten of them! There are lots more coming on, though, and the first courgettes, and bean flowers). The kohl rabi is just starting to swell at the base (note to self: check if it wants to be earthed up a little, or have straw put around it to support the bulb).

When I pinched out the tomatoes, I kept a couple of bigger side shoots of the variety that ZuZu’s been at: they are apparently very easy to root, so we’ll see what happens. I’m also having a go with some left-over lemon grass, as apparently that’s quite easy to get going as well. (Also some tarragon from a bag of supermarket cut herbs, but I don’t have any great hopes for it so am still keeping an eye out for some in a pot.)

All that’s left to do veg-wise is some more autumn squash, that are going in the front garden: we took out a bit of overgrown hedge, liberally “underplanted” with ground elder, so I was planning on dumping a load of manure on it, covering it with weed fabric, and seeing how it looks for planting something new later in the year, and if I’m going to do that anyway then I may as well leave the manure in heaps, cut slits in the fabric, and stick the spare squash in there. We’re just waiting for the boys to produce a bit more organic matter and then we can sort that bed out.

I’ve even finished the first big weed of the garden that I’ve managed since September, so now it’s the much easier job of tidying up occasional seedlings: at least the lack of rain is good for something?

I was worried last week about some of my sewing ladies: predictably, all the missing ones got in touch shortly after I sent the newsletter out, and all are doing ok.

We went to check on the orchids, and the monkeys are doing splendidly now. We also saw some fragrant orchids, just coming out, and a fine butterfly orchid, although whether Greater or Lesser is a mystery to us.

Mike finally cracked and had me cut his hair. It’s a bit shorter than he usually has it, but I think it’s ok and he hasn’t shaved it all off in a panic or anything.

The woods seem to have got a bit quieter again, so we think we can risk leaving off Bob’s muzzle, at least during the week.

This afternoon, we went to set up the boys’ summer pasture. Mike did a lot of clearing of brambles and nettles, while I plodded up and down the hill setting up the electric fence to keep the boys away from the barbed wire.

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I could do without the excitement....

Sun, 24 May 2020 17:17:39 GMT

In the garden, everything except the autumn squash and the sweetcorn is either planted out or in final pots. Fenced off from the beans, Zu Zu is taking it out on the tomatoes and has managed to kill at least one plant; I’ll have to figure out a way to keep her out of the polytunnel, at least until they get bigger, which is annoying as I want the runners in there (and in the veg bed, really) for pest control.

We ate the last of last year’s squash this week, and are near to the end of the passata. I’m hoping to pick a few broadbeans soon, as there are a few plump pods.

We were very hopeful about yesterday’s thunder storms, but in the end we barely got a quarter of an inch of rain (and hail). They were sharp but short.

(My mother has potted on her tomatoes. I’m still getting photos twice a week and detailed updates on how they’re doing!)

GB’s been looking quite stiff, which is worrying: it won’t be long before he has to walk up and down the hill to the summer field, hopefully he’s still up to it.

We had a bit of drama in the week, when Bob slipped his head collar and went for a couple of dogs. We were very relieved when all that came of it was a tiny cut on one of them, because it looked like it was going to be bad, but we’ve taken to walking him with his muzzle on for now. The woods are much more crowded than usual (both with locals who don’t usually go for walks and with people driving here) and seeing lots of strange dogs seems to be making his behaviour go backwards. A shame, given how much progress he’s made over the years.

We went to Costco in the week (no part-baked bread or vitamin D, still one-per-customer on pasta), and to the garden centre (vain hope of getting aubergine plants).

I was wondering how my sewing group ladies were doing so I emailed around and got them to send me updates, which I’ve put into a little newsletter and sent out for them all (didn’t want to risk them sending photos to the whole group, which was definitely the right call based on what they sent me). Slightly alarmed that one of the ones I know is good with email didn’t reply, but hopefully there’s a benign explanation.

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In the veg bed

Sun, 17 May 2020 14:02:59 GMT

Busy week in the garden. We earthed up the potatoes for the first time, as we expected (and got) a frost, then yesterday we planted out the summer squash and the beans, as we’re fairly sure that that was the last frost. Today, we put the peppers and aubergines in the polytunnel, but the aubergines are very pathetic-looking, so we might have to try to buy some plants. Just the autumn squash and sweetcorn still to go, and the chillis and tomatillos to pot on.

I do feel sorry for all the people not in frost-prone areas who lost plants to the frost. I guess there are advantages to having to be cautious. I don’t think we took any real damage from it, although a few of the leaves on the wisteria look a bit frazzled.

My mum (stuck in the UK for the summer) was vaguely thinking about trying to get tomato seed, so I suggested that she cut up a tomato and put it in a pot. She now has a pot full of little seedlings, which she’s very proud of!

I’ve bought a little temporary wire fence, small enough to step over, and put it around the veg bed to keep the ducks out: they are good slug control, but they also have a habit of stepping on things and partially uprooting them. Once the plants are a bit more settled in, I should be able to take it down and let them back in there.

In non-garden news, I had a riding lesson yesterday. We had to wait until our instructor got the go-ahead from her insurance company, but they decided it was ok with the new guidance mid-week.

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It’s raining!

Sun, 10 May 2020 15:04:21 GMT

Only a tiny bit, but it is rain.

I’ve been doing a lot of weeding, again. Nearly at the end of the first big pass around the garden, so hopefully it will slacken off a bit now. We’re thinking that we’ll start to plant out the non-hardy stuff next week, weather forecast permitting.

After several weeks of being unable to buy sacks of flour (despite all the reports saying it was just a packaging issue with small bags), Mike managed to score sacks of white and wholemeal bread flour. The former we buy regularly anyway, but wholemeal doesn’t have a great shelf life: we bagged half of it up in 2kg bags and Mike very quickly sold it to people in the village. Interestingly, unlike the last couple of times he’s offered them, there was no interest in boxes of eggs, so I guess retail eggs are now back to normal. We have many eggs.

We had One Of Those Days in the week, or rather One Of Those Fifteen Minutes: I broke a joint on the outside water pipe (local out of work builder came and fixed it the next morning) and Mike dropped a bottle of balsamic vinegar on the kitchen floor, which went everywhere; I even found glass on the dining table. Not fun, but Bob seems to have learnt that, when things get dropped and smash, he’s to go and wait in the hall until we go to fetch him.

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Masks, flour and gardening: such is life, these days

Sun, 03 May 2020 10:16:08 GMT

Things are starting to happen in the garden. The potatoes are sprouting, and the tomatoes are in the polytunnel. I planted out kohl rabi, and Bob promptly ran through the middle of the bed and snapped off a load of leaves....

We had an unexpected hail storm in the week, and it was only after watching it for a few minutes that I remembered the seedlings, hardening off on the patio. Fortunately very little damage done, although I got drenched.

We’ve had a fairly respectable amount of rain this week, which is good for the garden and the field. The horses are a lot happier now that there’s something for them to eat.

Given the way things seem to be going, I’ve started making face masks. I sent the first couple to my sister, as she’s out and about a lot working, and now I’m just waiting for some more hair bands to arrive in the post to make more. I’m using the Olson pattern, if anyone’s thinking of making some. I recommend writing the piece numbers on the fabric (wrong side) the first time, but once you’ve figured out the method they’re pretty simple.

Mike not only managed to buy yeast at the local hippy food shop but also placed an order online for flour delivery. The white flour will be fine where we normally keep it, but we’ll have to freeze most of the brown (which is why we don’t usually get brown by the sack, but there’s been none in the shops for weeks, and we’ve run out). I do wonder if it’s worth a post to the local Facebook group: “flour for sale, village hall car park from x-y pm tomorrow”.

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Weather whinge

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 10:56:17 GMT

Still no more rain. They’re saying we’ll get some at the start of next week, and I hope we do because the field is looking very short and dead. We had another frost last night, but only a light one.

Mike gave GB a hair cut, but continues to change the subject when I point out that GB isn’t the only one in need. For some reason, Mike doesn’t trust me....

I’ve been doing lots of weeding, and am now getting towards being on top of it. Not being able to get onto the flower beds from October to March meant I wasn’t able to get in and clear the autumn weeds, so it’s all a bit of a mess.

For my birthday last year, Mike got me a kantha embroidery kit, which I finally got around to doing over the last couple of weeks. It’s understated, but I like it:

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Several things make a post

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 14:22:40 GMT

As the garden centres are (mostly) closed, and the online suppliers are (mostly) falling over under the strain, I sent an email to the lady up the road who opens her garden under the National Garden Scheme and arranged to buy some plants from her. She had some alliums that she was going to have to plant out, so amongst other things I got a tray of 20 for £10.

We had a whole half inch of rain on Saturday. That’s all we’ve had so far this month, and we’re now back to sun and a dry wind for the foreseeable future. The garden’s getting very dry, but I’m more worried about the grass not growing; we shouldn’t be having to give the horses more hay at this time of year. We also had a frost, but fortunately it wasn’t bad enough to damage the wisteria flower buds (which are looking very promising this year).

Mike took out some of the overgrown beeches in the garden, and the tree surgeons came and took out some more (they were both more overgrown and had the phone line running through them, so it seemed safer to get the pros in). That should mean more light and less competition for the veg bed this year, which is good.

In what I doubt is an unusually occurrence right now, Mike went to do the weekly trip to the farm shop and found that the car battery was dead. Fortunately, I knew that the Up The Hills have a battery jump start thing, so we borrowed that and got the car going again. Mike has now ordered one of our own, just in case.

It’s become noteworthy to see an aircraft contrail. Starting to feel like a Pacific Island cargo cultist, next thing you know we’ll be worshipping Prince Phillip (or should that be Boris?)....

The swallows have arrived, and the early purple orchids are in bloom. The wild garlic is going over, but I did pick a bag to make experimental wild garlic jam. ( Jam-ish )

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Cookoo

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 10:20:19 GMT

(Heard one this morning, not turning into one.... Also saw a swallow a few days ago, but it didn't stick around.)

I've just counted up how many days there were over the autumn/winter that the field was to wet for the horses to go out: 41 days, which is very nearly twice the previous highest (22). Which makes it especially annoying that we're now desperate for some rain. The once-muddy bits of the field look like a drought-stricken lake bed from a nature documentary, and the grass isn't growing like it should.

The veg bed is starting to get populated, and the conservatory is filling up with things that need it to be just a bit warmer (although we've just had several days around 20C, I'd be astonished if we didn't get a frost in a few days when it cools down). The potatoes are in their tires, and the polytunnel is ready and waiting to be planted up.

The warm weather seems to have really kicked the bluebells into action: they're pretty much as good as they get, and smelling lovely, even though the anemones are still in full flower. It is lovely when they're both out at the same time.

We should be at Eastercon this weekend. Odd not to be there.

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I ent ded

Sun, 05 Apr 2020 10:38:11 GMT

I've had a couple of tellings off for the lack of updates: sorry chaps.

We're fine, life is going on much as usual for us, other than a bit more use of the farm shop and a bit less supermarket delivery. I would quite like some self-raising flour, though. We've been doing lots of gardening now that it's dried out and warmed up, and I've been inspired to stick some spuds in the mix this year: if nothing else, we're unlikely to be driving around nearby farms buying new potatoes fresh out of the ground, this year.

The horses are doing well, although Benny's a bit unfit after the horribly wet autumn and winter (and, just when the weather has improved, the BHS is advising against hacking, which makes sense). Bob had a little lump removed from his leg at the start of the year; it was cancer, but incredibly low-grade and it's not spread anywhere. Unfortunately, the wound got infected, so he's had a much slower recovery than he should have done, but he's almost back to normal now. The ducks are pottering happily, laying an egg or two a day, and I've been trying to decide if I want to get some more eggs for ZuZu to hatch, and if so what breed.

The bluebells are coming into flower and the anemones are looking lovely. There's a pair of jackdaws building a nest in our disused chimney, which we've not had for the last couple of years. The seagulls seem to be flocking inland, which is presumably a reflection on the lack of chips to steal at the seaside. The wild garlic is going over now, but I have several tubs of pesto in the freezer.

We had our drive re-done, the work was finished just in time. Hopefully this will be the end of the winter mud bath at the end of it. The delivery drivers all look pleased about it. Frequent visitors beware: there is now a step down from the drive to the garden path!

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Never again will we get Anagrama and Lucy mixed up

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 16:29:49 GMT

We took Anagrama off to the vet this morning. As it happened, the boss vet was in the building, so he had a quick look and said he was pretty sure that the eye would need to be removed.

It turns out that this is quite a complex operation. Because bird's eyeballs are much bigger than the eye socket, they need to shave the bone away to make room to get it out. They charge accordingly: the quote was £600. The vet was also talking about problems with granulation tissue.

Given that I'm increasingly worried about the rest of the flock, who are still highly stressed and not eating properly, £600 seemed too much for something that would result in weeks more stress for them, so they took her downstairs and put her to sleep. (The vet seemed not at all surprised by our decision.)

The vet also suggested grapes for the rest of the flock, as a high-energy treat* that ducks generally love. We dutifully bought some, chopped them up, and added them to the bowl of corn that they have in the garden. The ducks ignored them entirely. The crows were delighted by the bowl of eyeballs we'd provided, and carefully fished each one out before realising it was less tasty than they'd anticipated and throwing it on the floor. Given that grapes are bad for dogs, we then scrabbled around in the fallen leaves to pick them all back up and put them back in the bowl: we'll see if the girls eat them overnight.

* The vet asked if there was anything we usually feed them as a treat, and I said not. In the car later, I realised that there is actually something, but I'm pretty sure that Tesco doesn't sell live snails.

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Head. Desk.

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 17:25:10 GMT

When we left the vet last Monday, they gave us cat-strength metacam and a syringe marked in 0.1ml intervals and told us to give Anagramma 0.3ml a day.

The 0.1ml syringe doesn't fit on the metacam bottle, so I've been drawing out 'some' into the metacam syringe (which is marked in kg of cat weight), then dribbling it into the 0.1ml syringe, spilling at least as much as made it into the syringe in the process.

Yesterday, Mike suggested that we bring both syringes into the house and experiment with water so that we can find out how many kg of cat equals 0.3ml, and just use the metacam syringe in future.

Today, I did that and it turns out that the cat dose of metacam is... 0.1ml per kg.

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Duck news

Fri, 15 Nov 2019 18:23:00 GMT

(It's still raining. Bah.)

We were back at the vet this evening with Anagramma. Good progress, and the swelling's all gone, so now it was time to have a proper look at it.

( Mike left the room for the gory details )

"We do have a standard price for eyeball removal, but it's for dogs so I'll have to ask my boss for a quote."

Either way, she should make a good recovery and cope well if she does end up blind on one side.

She is getting pretty reigned to being netted and handled (although I do still have to stalk her across the grass like the mighty hunter I am), but the rest of the flock other than ZuZu are still very annoyed with me and run away to hide whenever they see me. Actually, ZuZu's not terribly happy either, after I caught her this afternoon so that Mike could clip her wing!

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Bugger

Wed, 13 Nov 2019 20:33:59 GMT

I went to order another box of the lovely hamper boxes that I use for Christmas, and they've been discontinued. I even emailed them to double check: they still have the die, so they can do me a special order if I would like 250 of them....

(They were brilliant: two drawers, and you could put a divider thing in the drawers to that wine bottles were safe and sound as long as the delivery driver wasn't a complete idiot. Only had two casualties in about ten years of using them. And I've still got eight unused shipping boxes for them. Bah.)

I have two of them upstairs, so I'm currently crossing my fingers that a) my mum saved hers from last year for me to re-use and b) that they come to visit before Christmas, so that I'll then have three boxes and (because they can take some of them with them to hand delivery) only need to ship three of them by courier. (Hi Mum! Obvs will be nice to see you too, but priorities!)

And now I need to figure out a new packaging solution for next year, or decide that I've had enough of doing hampers. They are quite fun, though, and mostly consumable. And I need to buy some less-good boxes for the rest of this year's.

(Anagramma's eye looks much the same, but when I was putting goo in it today she was closing it, which she hadn't been doing previously, so presumably the swelling's going down. The ducks are all annoyed with me and keep running off when they see me, but I remembered that we have a net for scooping leaves off the fish pond and I've started to use that to catch her, rather than herding them all indoors and then trying to grab her, so hopefully the rest of them will stop sulking soon.)

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Duck tales

Mon, 11 Nov 2019 19:36:31 GMT

Over the weekend, while Mike was at Novacon, I noticed that ~~Lucy~~ Anagramma's eye looked... missing. Nothing there, just smooth skin.

After a bit of wondering if we'd actually been so unobservant as to not notice she'd been born without one of her eyes, I dug through some photos and found some where it was definitely there.

I asked around some of my bird-owning friends, who thought it was probably an infection. When I went to catch her at lunch time, to get a closer look with that in mind, it turned out that they were right: the infection had burst.

( I'm going to put this picture behind here, although it's not terribly gory )

We took her to the vet this evening, and confirmed that there was an infection, that there was probably a foreign body causing it, and that it had probably actually pierced the eyeball: she's unlikely to keep her sight, but should be fine otherwise. Now I have to put goop on her eye three times a day, which should be fun. Even if she gets used/resigned to being handled, all the others will go nuts when I go in the house to actually catch her....

In other news, still bloody raining. Another half an inch overnight, on (still) sodden ground, so the boys had to stand in yet again. I've given up any hope of weeding this year.

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Soggy

Tue, 22 Oct 2019 17:24:24 GMT

Even though we had another inch of rain yesterday (we kept the horses in. It's October, ffs!), today was nice and sunny so I managed to do some weeding for the first time in weeks. I could only do along the edge of the drive, as I don't dare walk on the flower beds and am dubious about walking on the edge of the lawn, but it's something at least.

The wet weather and warm nights seems to be suiting grass seedlings, as they're popping up everywhere (and are tricky to weed when they're in amongst the bulbs that are starting to come up). One end of one of the garden beds, that backs onto the field, looks like it will need mowing soon, so that's going to be tremendously fun if I can't get to it before spring. I did put bark down around the strawberries, to see if I could stop quite so much grass coming up, but it's not been tremendously successful.

We had the muck skip emptied last week, and when it came back it was a nice fancy new one, rather than the one we used to have with a partly rusted-out floor. We were initially pleased, but then it rained some more and now Mike can't empty wheelbarrows into it because his boots are only fully waterproof to about two inches....

(And I took that picture before yesterday's rain. Mmmm, soupy.)

Other things that I've been doing:
- getting my first flower delivery (they are lovely, I'm glad to be getting them again);
- partially putting the polytunnel to bed for the winter (still need to clear out the old grow bags, but everything else is done);
- making jam (we're growing a different variety of hot chilli this year. The first batch of chilli jelly was a bit too hot, but Mike says the second is more normal, so I'll have to poll the usual recipients and see which they'd prefer);
- going to London for lunch (and a check up) with my dentist;
- going to the Brogdale Apple Festival, which was much the same as usual. We did go on the walking tour this year, which we'd never done before as they don't allow dogs in the orchards and we always used to take Jo with us.

We also went to a local riding school and had a lesson on a couple of their horses: we're still struggling with Benny's canter, so we hatched the plan with our riding instructor to go and have a ride on a different horse to remind us what it should be like. It incidentally confirmed that it's trotting on Benny that's been causing me back pain for the last year or so: we gradually narrowed it down to riding (and fiddling with his saddle helped a lot) and then to trotting, but trotting the riding school horse didn't hurt.

Mike's having a second play of Red Dead Redemption 2 and we've just finished the first season of Stranger Things, so I've been getting quite a lot of sewing done. Progress remains very slow, but I think it's about half done now:

(And I've nearly finished the cherry since I did that.)

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Bits and pieces

Mon, 07 Oct 2019 18:23:07 GMT

The weather's got a bit rubbish, which is a shame if not actually unexpected at this time of year. We had an inch of rain a couple of nights ago and, given that that was on the forecast and we had visitors over the weekend, we moved the horses back to our field at the end of last week. It does make things much easier when we don't have to keep going up and down the hill all the time.

Little Quilt club has twisted my arm into at least thinking about doing them a class on Foundation Paper Piecing, which is the type of piecing that I most often do on my quilts (which is how I get the fancy pictures rather than just geometrical shapes). Almost all, if not all of them, have done at least one class on it before but they're all firmly convinced that it's too hard for them to do. Oh, and at any one time at least half of them are carrying on two simultaneous conversations (one sewing, one gossip), so it will generally be like herding cats. Fun.

The animals are all doing well. We were a bit worried this morning when Anagramma suddenly started limping very badly, but she was ok again by the afternoon so we didn't have to put her through a trip to the vet.

Mike mentioned earlier that my laptop is soon going to stop running some older software, so I went checking to see what's going to die. SubEthaEdit is a bit of a shame but these days we mostly use Google Docs to fill that niche. It would be nice if Docs made it easier to see who'd made which edits, though. Most of the things on the list are either tiny programmes I downloaded to do a specific thing once and then never used again or decade-old games, so I guess I'm having a couple of days of re-playing them for one last time. It feels very odd to be playing a game on a laptop. Moving the cursor around is ever so slow!

At the Broadstairs food festival at weekend, I got talking to the guy on the Freddie's Flowers stall and said how I loved their flowers but had to stop using them when they swapped from DPD to UKMail, as our local UKMail guy is useless and kept just throwing them over the gate to lie in the sun/rain (and then, when I and FFs complained, started actively hiding them in places on the property that were much more effort than just walking to the front door and putting them in the porch). It turns out that they've swapped back to DPD, so he emailed the office and got them to reactivate my account. I'm looking forward to getting flowers again, although when I tried to log into my account to change the frequency to fortnightly I got a password error and, when I clicked on the link to re-set it, I got a 404.... The new website had launched that day, though, so I'll try again tomorrow before I phone them to ask what's going on.

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Squish squash

Wed, 25 Sep 2019 16:07:52 GMT

It's been rather wet here: 3cm in the last 48 hours. Things are getting a bit soggy, but at least the fish pond is looking fuller. I do wish I could get out and do some weeding, though.

I picked the cocktail kiwis about a week ago, and left them to ripen in a bowl. They turned out to be a bit of a russian roulette of tasty and sour, so I'm inventing a recipe for kiwis in syrup, intended as an ice cream topping: we'll see how it turns out. (I'm adapting it from a recipe for sour cherries in syrup, which I hadn't previously noticed, in one of my favourite preserving books; I might try it with sour cherries next year.)

We're generally getting toward the end of the harvesting season. The medlars are still on the tree, and there are still a fair number of green and green-ish tomatoes that I'm hoping will ripen further on the plants before I have to bring them in, but that's about it other than a last few courgettes.

Mike picked most of the squash this afternoon (in between showers), while I went around and picked the last of this and that.

A pretty impressive haul, but the last big one of the year:

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Guest Post: A Dog's Life

Mon, 23 Sep 2019 14:55:53 GMT

My humans sometimes say that I have a hard life and they are quite right, even though I think that they don't really mean it when they say so. I thought that I would tell you about how hard my life is, so that you all know about it. My humans helped me with some of the words, but only a little bit because I am a very smart dog.

My humans never feed me enough, and when they do they don't give me their food, which is much nicer than my food. That is very bad, and means that I am always hungry. Luckily, I'm a smart dog and sometimes when they leave food on the table I can eat it. They never seem to notice, as long as I do it when they aren't looking.

They also don't let me have the corner of the sofa when they're both sitting on it. This is very mean, because the corners are the best bits. I have to go in the middle, and that's not as good, or go on the other sofa, which is a long way from the humans and makes it hard to cuddle them.

Sometimes one or both of the humans goes away for ages and ages. I don't like it when that happens, because the pack is supposed to stay together. How can I look after them if they aren't here? Plus, it makes me worry that no one will feed me, particularly when the female human is the one that goes away.

The female human has been behaving strangely for a few days. She spends lots of time looking at the big screen on the wall, instead of the little screen in her hand, and pressing buttons on a thing. She says that this is a game, but I don't think that she is right because a game is what we all play together in the field, when the humans throw my toys and I run and catch them and get given sweeties. She is very boring when she plays her game, and forgets to cuddle me.

Yesterday, instead of going for our normal walk, we went in the car. I don't like going in the car, because once I went in a car and a bad thing happened. That was when I was in a pack with some different humans, but I still don't like to go in the car. Half way through our walk, the humans stopped and looked at some trees, but they didn't seem to be very happy about the trees and said that people would be sad at Christmas. I think Christmas is when lots of people come to join in our pack for a few days. I like Christmas because the people cuddle me, and there is nice food that they give me bits of.

Today, we went in the car again, which was very bad. The humans looked at even more trees, and said that they were much better than the trees from yesterday. Then they stopped and stood there for ages, pulling things off the trees and putting them in bags. I thought that the things might be food, but when I tried to eat one it tasted bad and was very hard. After that I had a nice roll, but then I was very bored. Eventually, the humans said it was time to go, but they only went a little way and then they started to pull more things off trees. They kept doing that. It was very boring. Humans are weird. Then it rained lots and lots and lots, and I went and hid inside the trees because I didn't have my raincoat on, and then when it stopped raining the humans said it was finally time to go back to the car but wouldn't run all the way, which meant I had to go very slowly.

On the way back to the car, we met an evil dog. I wanted to kill it, but my humans wouldn't let me. Instead, they made me go past it and then sit and wait until it had gone away. They did give me food, though, so it wasn't too bad. I'd still have rather killed the evil dog, but they never let me do that.

Then we went home in the car, but we stopped at the field. The horses are mean and won't play chase with me, but my human found me a stick, so I chewed that for a bit. The humans were going around the field collecting all the horse poo. I'm not sure why they do that, but I always help by eating the tasty bits. Then I had to stand and wait while they put all the poo into big bags. They do this all the time, and sometimes the bags go away. I hope that they aren't collecting it to give to another dog to eat. That would be bad.

That is what I did today, and I think you will all agree that I do have a very hard life. Now I'm going to cuddle my human on the sofa and try to go to sleep, so that I forget about how very very hungry I am.

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Grapes!

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 14:14:18 GMT

And a runner bean. I think that that makes it seven this year, and it is the last of them. We worked out last night that we've had, on average, about one pod per legume plant, across the whole veg bed. Not counting the ones that I direct sowed, which barely made it above ground before they got eaten. I don't want to rabbit- (and therefore duck, but not slug) proof the whole veg bed, so I'm having a little experiment with a chicken wire cage. We'll see how the peas, broadbeans and pak choi do in it, although as Mike points out it will be a sod to weed.

And a bizarre mutant yellow aubergine:

I've got no idea what's going on there, or if it will be edible or not. All the others from that plant have been normal.

Bob and I are home alone today: Mike's mother has come to visit, and he's taken her off to Lille for tourist things. Mushrooms for tea!

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