Each week I’ll try and post quick links to things that I’ve seen, read, inspired me or just sparked my interest in the previous week, with a little background and my thoughts and other things that I’ve been up to in the previous week. Mostly gardening, cooking and environmental stuff but not always.

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Life In General. – It’s been a pretty shit week outside of my own little world; the US pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement; another terrorist attack, this one in London. Inside my own bubble things have been much quieter. I’ve been getting on with various work related things, and doing some family related stuff.

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Work – A lot of business development work this week; some meetings related to that; and I feel like I’ve packed a lot in for a four-day week after the bank holiday.

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Allotment. – The weeds have been having a whale of a time with all the recent wet and sunny spells, but so also have some of the plants. the broad beans are doing phenomenally well, but the radishes are now over, although the second sowing is coming along. I’ve had to pull up all of the rocket and mustard due to flea beetle. I might sow some more, but I’ll need to get the bed ready again first. My courgette, sweetcorn and first lot a cucumbers all went out onto the plot at the weekend. If the weather holds, it won’t be long before they’re producing.

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Currently Reading

I’ve not had much time for reading this week, and have gone to bed pretty tired out most evenings, so haven’t managed anything other than a few pages of Song of Susannah by Stephen King [GoodReads] – which I’m reading for an online group.

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The Week In Wildlife – In Pictures

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Truffle Shuffle Pizza

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When I was  at primary school about 5 or 6 years old, we were studying the Blue Whale. The biggest mammal on the planet. We tried to build a life size drawing on the wall of our classroom, needless to say we were unsuccessful, although we did manage to get the length, other dimensions were not to scale. It went from the playground entrance, through the cloakroom area into the classroom and all the way to the fire exit at the other side of the room. I remember it to this day, over 40 years later. Maybe it was that memory, but I enjoyed this Atlantic article even more, probably as a result of that experience and memory. [LINK]

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Apparently if you can explain to the security guy at the airport why you have a 3-D printed mouse penis in your luggage, you can explain any kind of science to anyone [LINK]

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Paris Climate Change Agreement – There has been plenty of media coverage on Donald Trump’s announcement regarding leaving the Paris Climate Change Agreement, so I’m not going to link to any one particular piece here. You also probably know what I’m going to say next. It’s a bad decision. It’s a stupid decision. It’s a decision by someone who probably hasn’t bothered to look at the facts.

It matters, and it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter because it won’t stop many others taking action. It doesn’t matter, because there is time for the USA to retract it’s decision.

It matters because there are several hundred thousand US jobs in the renewables industry, if the US shift towards oil and coal (where jobs are declining, and are unlikely to grow due to automation in those industries), those jobs will be at risk as production ramps up in China and Europe. It matters because other countries are already talking about additional taxes on American goods.

It’s too early to say exactly how this will play out, but I am in no doubt in my mind that it is a bad decision.

Each week I’ll try and post quick links to things that I’ve seen, read, inspired me or just sparked my interest in the previous week, with a little background and my thoughts and other things that I’ve been up to in the previous week. Mostly gardening, cooking and environmental stuff but not always.

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Life In General. – It’s been a bit of a week with things that have been happening nationally, it hasn’t directly affected me and I’ve been plugging on with some work things and also trying to do things around the garden.

After have quite a wet spell the weather has shifted in the other direction and now we are getting some really hot sunny days, broken by thunderstorms. It feels like summer is just around the corner, and so far the predictions of the drier and hotter weather outweighing the cooler wetter weather seem to be holding true.

We’ve bought the dogs a paddling pool to allow them to cool off if they want to. So far they’re just seeing it as a giant outdoor water-bowl, but maybe they’ll get the idea sooner or later?

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Work – I’ve had a couple of work related meetings this week, and outside of those have been working on some ideas based on the report completed by Solent University from the presentation that I attended last week. The ideas are good, the pricing points are never going to make me rich but I’m okay with that.

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Allotment. – The dry weather has been a challenge, and watering has been the main order of the day, particularly for the Cavlo Nero plants that went in last weekend. They need some additional support to make sure that they “take” properly, particularly on the watering side, as they will not yet have developed a proper root system. The rain that accompanied the thunderstorms has helped in that department.

Broad beans and radishes are still very much the current harvest.

My tomatoes are doing well in the potting shed, and there are signs of the first tomato of the season (hopefully being one of many).

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Currently Reading

I read Empire Games by Charles Stross [GoodReads] this week. It’s going to be book one of a trilogy (I think), and I really wish I’d waited to read it until all three were available. I think things will make more sense reading them all together, rather than what will probably be three or more years apart.

This also meant that I hit my target of reading 25 books this year a little earlier than planned. Six-and-a-half months earlier in fact. So I’m going to keep going and see where we end up. This always feels like a bit of an arbitrary challenge anyway, so we’ll just see where it gets too.

I started reading Sharpe’s Fortress by Bernard Cornwell [GoodReads], which is the next book in the Sharpe series.

Also reading Song of Susannah by Stephen King [GoodReads] – for an online group.

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The Week In Wildlife – In Pictures

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Raven Vs. Rubbish Bin

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 Chop With Chris – Rocking Chair – I meant to post this last week, but forgot. YouTube has been recommending this guys videos, and he’s a pretty skilled craftsman.

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Dave Goulson – Comfrey

Each week I’ll try and post quick links to things that I’ve seen, read, inspired me or just sparked my interest in the previous week, with a little background and my thoughts and other things that I’ve been up to in the previous week. Mostly gardening, cooking and environmental stuff but not always.

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Life In General. – I’ve had a doctors appointment this week, and I’ve also taken my Mum to see a hospital consultant about getting a knee replacement. There’s quite a lot more involved in having a knee replaced than the hip replacement that she had a few years ago.

Otherwise it’s been a fairly quiet but depressing week, with the various political parties revealing their manifesto. Right now I think if I could leave the country I probably would, particularly if we do end up with yet another Tory government.

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Work – I mentioned last week about a meeting I had on Monday with the students at Solent University. I’ve been working with two groups who have been looking at different aspects of my business (or potential business). The group I went to see on Monday was looking at the potential business of how I might be able to turn growing your own veg into a greater business opportunity. They’ve done some great work, and there are some opportunities there, although it will never make me a millionaire (not that I actually want to be one btw). If I do decide that I want to make something of this, then it’s down to me to take it forward. I’ll be thinking about that going forward.

I’ve also been working on a proposal at the request of a client. They asked for a draft for a meeting, which I duly completed and then the meeting was postponed, so that’s on-hold for now at least.

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Allotment. – A lot more rain this week, which has done wonders for many of the crops. I harvested the first of the broad beans on Saturday and expect to be getting a steady supply for the next few weeks at least.

I’ve also planted out some Cavlo Nero (black kale) plants into their final growing place. Many of the other plants are showing signs of maturing quite quickly, but unfortunately so are the weeds.

I spent some time going through the branches of the apple tree, taking off some of the pollinated flowers that are turning to fruit, so that there aren’t too many apples weighing down the branches. It’s a shame to have to take off potentially viable fruit but the bees have been so successful this year, that there would have been a good chance of broken branches if I’d left all of that fruit on there. Hopefully by sacrificing a few now, we’ll get a bet harvest in the autumn!

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Currently Reading

I’m just finishing up Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King [GoodReads] – which I am reading for an online group, and starting the next book in the series Song of Susannah [GoodReads].

I’ve also been reading The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland by John Lewis-Stempel [GoodReads], and may well have finished it by the time this goes live. I’ve been reading quite a lot of natural history books and the standard is very high, this one is no exception.

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The Week In Wildlife – In Pictures

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There’s a new trailer for the War of the Planet of the Apes. I’ve enjoyed the rebooted franchise so far, so I’m looking forward to the next installment.

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Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut who covered David Bowie’s Space Oddity from the International Space Station has a new YouTube series “Rare Earth” coming.

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This rerun article on the Last Word on Nothing Blog [LINK] had me really thinking about different ways to store all sorts of things. In the modern age digital storage just doesn’t seem that reliable to me. I’ve had a number of hard drives fail on me, and have lost things each time. Cloud storage seems more reliable, but it’s not fully your own, and you’re relying on a third party to store your data and keep it up to date. Hard copy still seems to be the strongest in a number of ways. Over the last few months I’ve been looking through a lot of old photographs, mostly of family.

I’ve scanned a number of these, so that I can make additional prints and share them with other members of the family. The fact that I still have the “originals” makes me feel a little more secure in terms of keeping them for the longer term, and I wonder how the newly printed copies will fare compared to the older prints.

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I’ve also been reading this Atlas Obscura [LINK] article on forgotten bike lanes. It’s a shame that this country didn’t go the way of other European states, having separate lanes for motorised vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians, instead of the current state of play which simply doesn’t work for any mode of transport. Perhaps these forgotten lanes could be resurrected.

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Ed Yong, the author of I Contain Multitudes [GoodReads] has a new video series too [LINK]

Each week I’ll try and post quick links to things that I’ve seen, read, inspired me or just sparked my interest in the previous week, with a little background and my thoughts and other things that I’ve been up to in the previous week. Mostly gardening, cooking and environmental stuff but not always.

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Life In General. – I was pleased to see my first Swift of the year this week, I’ve been out quite a bit, stretching my walks. I’m trying to get my daily distance up a bit more than it has been. The Swift flew overhead when I was having a break at the return point of my Wednesday afternoon walk. I saw another later in the week, so it looks like that they really have arrived.

Ruby seems to have made a full recovery, so we haven’t had to make a return visit to the vets.

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Work – A few meetings this last week, which have been good. A little while after this goes live I have a meeting with the Solent University students to hear them present the work that they have been doing for me. I’m hoping for great things, more on that soon.

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Allotment. – We had our first rain this week in over a month, I wrote a couple of posts about it. I’ve also resown some sweetcorn and a few more cucumbers, as the slugs/snails had gotten to many of them. I had a good search for the culprits, and found quite a few which have now been evicted from the potting shed.

The rain hardly seems to have made a difference to the plot, the soil is still bone dry about an inch down. It’s more likely to make weeds germinate that anything else. More rain is in the forecast though so it might get deeper down and do more good.

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Currently Reading

I’ve been struggling to make much headway with any of the books that I’ve been reading and so things are pretty much the same as they were last week, I’m still reading my Wendell Berry, book, Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Triumph[GoodReads],and Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King [GoodReads] – which I am reading for an online group.

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The Week In Wildlife – In Pictures

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Speaking of Swifts, Oxford is now Swift city [LINK] , whereas many other cities are without their populations [LINK]

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Apparently avocado related hand injuries are a thing [LINK], who knew?

 

Each week I’ll try and post quick links to things that I’ve seen, read, inspired me or just sparked my interest in the previous week, with a little background and my thoughts and other things that I’ve been up to in the previous week. Mostly gardening, cooking and environmental stuff but not always.

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Life In General. – I started this week taking Ruby to the vets, she’d been a little lethargic and off colour and we suspected that maybe she had a urinary tract infection. The vet confirmed this, and prescribed antibiotics and anti-inflammatories. Her response to treatment was pretty miraculous, to the point of me asking if I could have what she was taking. She seems to be fully on the mend now.

Also been doing a few things at my Mum’s place in the garden, some weeding on her raised beds and some general tidying to get ready for planting out a few things when the weather warms up a bit more.

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Work – I’ve had a relatively quiet week, mostly been tucked up in my home office working on things, with no meetings outside, and with it being a Bank Holiday week I gave Monday a miss. I find working for myself, I work the hours that I want to and they don’t necessarily follow a rigid Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm. I find it more effective to work when it’s appropriate and sometimes this will be early mornings, evenings and weekends. I guess I probably work the same amount of hours overall, just not in a set pattern, but to be honest I’ve never actually counted them (except when a client wants me to for billing).

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Allotment. – The leeks mostly seem to have taken, although it’s still a little early to be certain. I’ve also been sowing some more seed. More radish (we had our first two harvests from the first sowing, so I wanted to get more in), a second sowing of lettuce, because the first doesn’t seem to have germinated. Also got some spinach in. Germination this year seems to have been a little patchy, sweetcorn in particular hasn’t been great, so I’ve got some more seed to get in.

 

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Currently Reading

I’ve still be working my way through Wendell Berry, but have started reading some of Bernard Cornwell’s “Sharpe” series, I’m currently reading Sharpe’s Triumph[GoodReads], which is the second in the series.

Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King [GoodReads] – which I am reading for an online group.

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The Week In Wildlife – In Pictures

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Roger Deakin – Cigarette on the Waveney – Roger Deakin died in 2006, but he wrote some of my all time favourite nature books; Waterlog, Wildwood & Notes from Walnut Tree Farm (the latter posthumously). I was pleased to see that the BBC have made his trip down the River Waveney in a cigarette canoe available again. Not sure how long this will be available for, or if you can access it outside of the UK but it is well worth spending half-an-hour on.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04hh8vb/player

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Carrot Clarinet – Although it looks as though this has been around for a few years, I don’t remember seeing it before, so thought I’d share it here:

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Morocco to Timbuktu – I think I might end up watching this:

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High Line Problems –  Interesting piece about disused rail lines and other similar habitats on the Last Word on Nothing Blog [LINK]

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The Dark Tower Trailer – In addition to reading the Dark Tower series at the moment, the movie is also in production and now there has been a trailer released. Looks good!