More tidying up

Today I took on the challenge of turning this…

…into this! It was quite nippy… by the time I was done, the compost heap was piled high and my toes were a bit numb.

I’ve also restarted clearing out the area behind the garage – we’re thinking it might be a good place to put a greenhouse as it’s sunny but sheltered from the wind, which was a problem last year…

Day 1, tidying up

veggie patch pano before veggie patch pano after some tidying up

(click to embiggen pictures)

It’s technically winter, so not a lot to do in the garden other than tidy up and get ready for planting later in the year. And buy seeds, I’ve ordered a load of seeds, which constitute about half of what I ultimately plan to get.

Also, in a repair and prepare theme, Steve sent off for this.

Snigger.

The last one was broken when Lily crashed into it with her skateboard. Emptying the butt out yesterday was very satisfying if quite wasteful… still, the paving around there is lovely & clean now!

Plants! Growing from the ground!

 

Plants are beginning to grow out of the ground, all of a sudden! Not all of them “official” as the strawberry above demonstrates (I may, or may not hoik it out, it depends on whether it develops friends or not)(or if Steve takes an Executive Decision while I’m not looking). In the image below, we have definite peas, lettuce, spinach & chard, and a possible hint at carrots (although that might just be leaf debris…)

In the next image, right to left, are garlic, a space where the shallots will be, potatoes saved from the end of a pound of Tesco’s best, and camouflaged against the soil, some garden-centre-bought “early” potatoes that are significantly more sprouts than when they went in. The plan is to build up the earth around the potatoes at the weekend, when it’s not threatening to rain like the end of days and we have a bit more time to get grubby…

 

And, just for good measure, this toadstool growing through the path is about 2 inches tall, and looks SUPER tasty (JK, I still love life), and I took an arty shot of the peas…

My love bought me a shovel

Another weekend at home in the garden… The 3 panoramas are “before”, “after day 1” and “after day 2”. We had a serious focus on covering over the big old veggie patch, and tidying up along the left hand side. Steve sorted covering the veggie patch. We think reviving this space might take more than one season. It’s always been really really weedy, so it’s as well to take the time and do it properly.

I weeded and mulched around the raspberries, supported them with some bamboo canes, and then attacked the overgrown bushes next to them. I also put up the second compost bin.

Day 2, for Steve, was all about our new toy – a wood chipper. Depending on how leafy the input is, we’re either generating mulch, or chewing stuff up to go on the compost heaps. Having had the tree taken down that was overshadowing the old veggie patch, we are not even slightly short of mulch. The large pile featured below is where the car is usually parked.

The above picture also features my favourite new tool – a shovel! We’ve been “struggling” with a short-handled shovel and a spade for ages. Steve acquired this silver beauty while getting the covers for the veggie patch. He also got weed suppressing cover for making paths, which will then be covered with (you guessed it!) mulch. Having a decent shovel makes a massive difference. I know, I’m easily pleased.

We’ve been lucky with the weather this weekend, and have both ended up feeling a bit sun-kissed. The rain has set in now (Sunday evening) and happily its onset coincided with the time where we had both pretty much had enough gardening fun for one weekend.

Below is the view from the new compost bin. The incinerator’s on the go here – I think it was because of how long it took to burn stuff yesterday that Steve decided a wood-chipper was a prudent investment!

And, because I’m writing this so of course it’s all about me, here’s a close-up of my awesome work on the raspberries.

The canes still have buds & fruit on them, so I’ve concluded they must be autumn fruiting as well as summer fruiting, so I’ll chop these canes back in the spring.

Today’s big achievement, which probably means I won’t be able to walk upright tomorrow, is that I’ve cleared the shrubs to the left of the raspberries back at least another 6 feet (a fence-panel’s worth), including digging out the roots. I nearly had Steve take a picture of me standing over them like a big game hunter, but decided at the last minute that that would be in poor taste. Suffice it to say, I was dubious that getting them out was within my capabilities, and I’m please to report that my dubiousness was misplaced.

Digging out the garden

We saw several things while on holiday that inspired us (mainly Steve) to think about the many marvellous vegetable-related things we could do with the garden… and so we are embarking on a revival and expansion project on the vegetable garden. First, the obligatory “before” picture:

The highlights, above are… a new fence that stretches from side to side of the whole garden #security, and unfortunate gap in the lilac tree screen to the left of the gate, where two of them have mysteriously died :-(, and on the right, the original vegetable patch with 2 years worth of rampant weed growth and bits I’ve cut off trees and bushes around the garden. The bed straight ahead is knee deep in wild strawberries, apart from where it’s thigh deep in nettles. Really, the only things worth salvaging are the rhubarb and the raspberries.

And so, here is the same scene after a day’s effort last week:

I picked up the litter, dug out half of the strawberries, and dug over that bit of the bed, then built one of the new compost bins (a wooden slatted effort, barely visible off to the left, next to the raspberries) and moved the contents of the old compost bin into a combination of the new bin and the emptied strawberry patch. And moved the rhubarb.

Steve was a complete hero, and cleared away A LOT of the old veggie patch. There was all sorts on there – bean frames, wooden planks, piles of dead wood, plus the “hedge” had grown out at least 6 feet from the fence. Oh, and a bit of path that mum & I started to build about 10 years ago. There’s a big pile of concrete rubble in the back corner as well, which he’s moving out of there.

I cut back the lower branches of the lilacs, as they kept attacking me when I was emptying the compost… sadly, the Hayes-manufactured compost bin has pretty much had it – any slots that stay together are doing so more out of habit than anything, by now!

The big tree that’s overhanging the main patch has gone today, as well. We finally got rid of the last mulch pile from the yard over the summer – and now we have a fresh one! Having said that, we have big plans of new veggie patches with mulch paths around them for the big green patch in the foreground of the panorama shots above, so hopefully we’ll get this one moved a bit quicker…

Book review: Redshirts by John Scalzi

I’m quite the sci-fi-fan, so this book appealed to me before I’d even heard the title. I put it on my list as it was brought to my attention by my friend Hannah (a properly proper computer scientist, she teaches stuff to other people and gets excited about robots, and stuff). As I put it on the list I read the other reviews in Goodreads, which were quite scathing. Some stuff about the author being very pleased at how clever he is and how the book read a lot like a series of blog posts. At least, I think it was this one they were talking about: that’s how I remember it, anyway.

The premise draws on the well-known sci fi lore that any un-named redshirt who goes on a mission to a planet’s surface with named characters who feature regularly in the narrative in any film or series is doomed. The book starts by describing the back story and current predicament of a red-shirt who is on a planetary mission with the captain and the chief science officer of _The Intrepid_. Take a wild guess what happens. For a moment, I had a strong fear that this book was going to be a long series of very short stories with a lot of back-story explanation. I didn’t want to read *that* book. It was all fine, though, that was effectively a prologue. The main character in *our* narrative, one Andy Dahl, joins _The Intrepid_, and it doesn’t take him long to work out that there’s something odd going on. His colleagues in the ship’s lab disappear whenever any senior crew appear, people seem super-reluctant to go on surface missions, he’s warned off going to the bridge by someone that looks like a Yeti, and one of the senior crew members seems to get horribly injured and near-death, and then make an amazingly quick recovery, only to go on an off-ship mission and be injured/infected again.

I like this idea, and I enjoyed Scalzi’s take on it. The book is divided into sections – the main narrative, which concludes neatly, followed by two codas. I had (another) moment of fear when the main narrative completed with about a third of the book to go. Previously I read a book that was crowd-funded on a Kindle, and the last nearly 20% of the book was a long list of credits naming contributors. It’s fair to say I felt utterly cheated on that occasion – I was expecting 20% more book, and it just ended. I don’t think the narrative was incomplete in that case, but I was enjoying it and my device told me there was more. I was ready to get really cross at the ridiculousness of wasting trees on a third of a book of people’s names, when I turned the page to find the first coda. It took me a short while to settle back down again, but I did, and managed to get quite into it before we switched to the second coda. While some might find this “overly clever” and “showing off” I think it was a neat way of extending the story beyond the obvious frist narrative.

I found this to be readable, and the story moved on at a good pace. The only “violence” was fairly cartoony (“and he got eaten by space worms with sharp teeth”), there’s no hanky panky (not on-the-page, anyway) and although in my head it was quite sweary I’m writing this a week later and I can’t remember if it actually *was* sweary or if I thought the characters should be swearing in the context they were in.

I’d recommend it for any sci-fi fan, but this is not my new favourite book.

Snapshot

I’m currently…

Listening – traffic, snuffling, silence
Eating – in a minute, bran flakes
Drinking – in 5 minutes, a cuppa tea
Wearing – wedding band, engagement ring, stud earring, sleeper earring, Erasure t-shirt, underpants
Feeling – like I need a wee.
Weather – bright. I think.
Wanting – to make sure I don’t waste today
Needing – a plan
Thinking – about vegetables. And my job. And the mousetrap.
Enjoying – possibility

re-entry

The tension between stuff-I-need-to-do and the desire to sleep/sit on my arse is almost unbearable. Joel was keen for me to get up at 8 which, given that I slept until 0730 (hurrah for nearly over the time difference – I woke up at 0430 the last couple of days) wasn’t something I was super-keen to do.

We also discussed homework:

me: what homework do you have, then?
joel: maths, spellings and learning log
me: *big groan* oh no, not learning log
joel: it’s OK mummy, this one isn’t so bad – I have to do 3 things and I have 3 weeks to do them in
me: Oh, OK, well I suppose that’s manageable (while trying to think if we have anything planned for the next 2 weekends and work out if we need to do 2 today to stay on top of it)
joel: *pause* except that this is the second weekend, and I haven’t done any yet.

😐

So today brings food planning & buying, laundry and 2 lots of learning log homework. Huzzah. Oh, and Steve will be back this evening.

nearly done…

This morning we headed out early, but before we got to Ndongo we got word that our safari friend was waiting at the lodge to help bring the donated clothing to the school, so Vish was sent right back to go and meet him.

This morning, I wrote up the charcoal agreement and put together a return form for the schools to report weekly on what they have collected & how many students they have. Ken was teaching the teachers about SMART objectives, Emma was meeting with health visitors who were coming to weigh & measure children, and SUPER BONUS they brought vitamin A and albendazol (or something that’s spelt differently & sounds the same & is de-worming medicine) which was given to all the under 5’s at Glad Kids. This is a major result. Every other avenue we’ve explored for de-worming has resulted in a request for money or a bureaucratic wall, so to get people turning up with them and feeding them to children is outstanding.

Also, we (technically John) got a tap fitted to the 50L tank I bought the other day so that hand washing could be A Thing at Excel. I have pictures of children avoiding classes by washing their hands, and of the AWESOME flow-restriction device I fitted (Dad, you would be proud – it involves a bit of wood and some salvaged string), however, my phone has fallen out with the wifi here and although I’ve put the right password in a bajillion times it’s not connecting.

After Vish got back with the clothes we divided them into piles for the schools and distributed accordingly (we still have to work out how to get Vish’s suitcase back here by tomorrow night :-/ ) which were all very well received.

I was sent to Lizpal to gather financial information (Teacher Grenah very kindly walked me there before Steve starts worrying) and when I arrived, the upper school were being organised to move a big pile of rocks that they have collected from outside the classrooms to “round the back”. It was awesome to behold and again, I have pictures, but they are on the phone that won’t connect to the wifi. Grr! Imagine 2 lines of barely-organised 9-13 year olds carrying rocks that are clearly too big for them, and you get the gist.

Again, we were late back and this time we took a tuk-tuk for the second leg of the journey. Although we had privacy – just the 4 of us in a vehicle instead of 16 (in 12 seats) – my back may never be my friend again. Suspension is clearly a foreign concept.

Bacon & fried egg butty tonight and a (failed) 2-hour attempt to install SP3 on the Excel School laptop and I’m more than ready for my bed. Just one more attempt to get my phone back on the network and then I’ll turn in…

Hurray for finally connected this morning! Here are ingenious flow control device, instant popularity of hand washing & children moving rocks 🙂 IMG_6989.JPG

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