Silver Lining

Snowy Sunday

We woke up to three or four inches of snow, this morning.  Not that you'd know it, now...

So I made a snuggly for the nibling's pram.

I also built a hutch, into which the guinea pigs (Harry and Ron) are now safely installed.  Let's hope they're warmly installed, too...

 

Harry	Ron

I raced home today, pitting my wits against the storm clouds and the sunset.   The arcing canopy of trees down Gibbet Hill  - still wearing their skeletal winter clothes - were starkly lit, their trunks deep, heathery purple and their tops flaming burnt umber.  The  occasional smattering of cherry blossom stood out in stark contrast - a tinted negative of the road.

Onto the main road: storm clouds lowering and roiling behind me, the sky ahead laced with seductive traces of orange, caressing the fields and flirting over the tops of the trees.  It was a strange light for the road: bright and summery above and ahead, but headlights cutting through the gathering gloom at eye level.  A man stood on the verge, part of a gang clearing overhanging branches.   His high-vis jacket was stained to a murky-vis in the twilight.  He looked spectral; an aura marking the spot of the day's labour, flashing past in peripheral vision.

I turned east, onto the motorway, and the sky swapped over.  Driving into the gloom, I had to dip my rear view mirror to avoid being dazzled by the orange netball, hovering around the rim of the horizon before dropping below.

I beat them both home; turned on the lights in the kitchen, and watched the house become gradually enveloped in the greying quilt of the storm.  Raindrops fell fatly on the window, as I opened a bottle of wine.

Driving to work today, I was held up by some cows, who had escaped from an animal carrier after it crashed into the central reservation, and decided to go for a stroll down the motorway.  On the way home, I tried to pinpoint the spot where it happened.  After all, if something held me up for 45 minutes on a 10 minute stretch of road, there might at least be a sirloin steak left to show for it, no?  So I paid attention to the verges and hard shoulders.

It's the time of year for feeling out of sorts, it seems.  While I am torn between looking out and looking inwards - cross eyed soul - the road verge is showing its true colours.  Too early yet for the fresh green of leaf bud, and too late for the bareness to look arty, the roadside is a camouflage splodge of khaki olive green and brown, with areas of sere black.  As I passed the first, I thought there'd been a burnout - the ground, grass, trees and branches covered with black soot, to about 3 trees deep.  A couple of hundred yards later, the same again; and then again and again.  It seems cars burn out at regular intervals along the A46.

Or not.  It's just dirt, of course.  The accumulated crap thrown up from the wheels and spewed out of the exhausts of a couple of thousand cars, vans, wagons over the winter months.  Thinking about it, there's less surprise in the level of filth in the dark areas - rather more surprising are the areas which have hung onto their minimal levels of green, despite the roadfilth.

I cannot work out, this week, whether I'm a green bit or a bit of burnout.

I have a headful of chickens.  It's turning into an obsession.

I've wanted chickens for a while, but the cost of providing housing for them has been a prohibiting factor.  Up till now.  It's not that I've won the lottery, nor that the price of chicken housing has fallen.  I'm not sure the chicken Chancellor is fully on top of inflation in the chicken housing market, to be honest.   I think prices are running riot, and I blame Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (and probably placenta pate, too.)

Anyway.  Chickens.  Last week, a friend in Lincolnshire offered me six of hers, and a chicken house she no longer needs.  The only downside is the house didn't have an integral run and I don't particularly want to free range my chickens when I'm at work.  They all *tell* me the fox won't visit in daylight hours.  They all *tell* me my chooks will be safe in the garden whether I'm home or not.  Its just that, when I look out of my bedroom window and see the fox waving jauntily at me from the field on the other side of my garden hedge, I'm disinclined to believe them.

Well, by the time I'd looked into the cost of hiring a van, filling it with petrol, driving it to Lincolnshire, giving my friend £50 for her chickens, and buying a run, it came to roughly the same amount of money as buying a new house and run all for my very self.  Back to the inflated chicken housing market. 

But an interesting thing happened on the way to the forum, Flavia...

While I was researching the price of chicken runs, I came across lots of blogs about people building their own chicken sheds.   Building their own.  Chicken sheds.  People.  Just like me.  Building their own chicken sheds.  The seed of an idea has begun to germinate in my mind.  And we all know how dangerous that can be!

I have emailed another friend.  Her husband, confusingly, is called Mr Fox.  He's an expert on chickens.  He says I need an area 6' x 4' with a concrete base.  I have an area 15' x 8' available, so that would seem to be just the ticket.  He says if I have kicking boards and a roof on my run, it will keep the litter dry and so will make cleaning out easier.  He suggests I use 2" x 1" slate laths.  I'm not sure what slate laths are..... they sound like stone, to me.  (There's no reason *why* I shouldn't build my own chicken shed, right?)  I think I should probably use wood.  I email him to check.  (No reason.  Right?)  It's so much better to expose my ignorance, than simply to Google.

Anyway, I have pictures of other people's constructions.  I'm sure I can make a plan.  Sure I can.

I think I may be spending this weekend pouring concrete.  Now, in the unlikely event that it turns out I *can't* build a chicken shed after all, what alternative uses can I find for a 15' x 8' stretch of conrete???

As the little chicken says, I only hope I don't cluck up...

Compact review

Someone asked how the compact was going, today.

Variably.

I have done really well with big things - the new washing machine was a reconditioned one.  When the lawnmower became unusable after I hurt my neck, it was replaced with a lightweight, A Graded electric one on a factory refurb.

I have bought lots of clothes from ebay, and got the only piece of furniture i still needed from my house from Freecycle.  I've also got rid of lots of things on freecycle.  Freecycle rocks.

However, I've spent a lot of money on totally new plants from the garden - as well as being given plants, and growing plants from seed and cuttings, to be slightly fair.  I've also bought some clothes - a new suit for my second interview when I probably could perfectly well have worn the same one twice and a couple of tops and jumpers.  I've bought cones of thread for my overlocker (which has allowed me to sew clothes from fabric I already owned...) and fabric for Sissy's quilt.

I've been reading some green blogs, though, partly to look for ideas, partly out of sheer interest and partly (although this part is retrospective) to make myself feel better.  So this year, I have achieved:

• turning down the washing machine (I only wash at 40 deg. now.  I did change to bio powder, to up the power, but DBO didn't understand this change, so I've got a big box of non-bio to use at the moment, and it doesn't seem to be hurting.  I should probably get some eco friendly powder, but don't like Ecover (soap based, and soap is bad for anything you need to be absorbent), and haven't found an eco-supplier for anything else, here.
• turning off the heating between March and October.  This year, we only used the boiler for water for 8 months.  Didn't tell the kids, and they didn't notice!
• not taking plastic bags.  I already had a collection of hemp/cotton/string bags and Sainsburys boxes, but rarely remember to take them with me, so took the carrier bags anyway.  Now, if I don't have my reusable stuff, I put the shopping in the boot loose, and pack it into bags to get it into the house.  I take stuff from other shops loose, on the whole, but have to 'fess up that I do take carrier bags occasionally from such as clothes shops,  etc.
• If I do take plastic bags, they're re-used. Usually for clearing dog poo out of the garden.
• greening my shopping - I have a veg. delivery from a local organic farm (not a national scheme.  Genuinely a local farm.  They pick on a Friday morning, and deliver on Friday afternoon).  I get very little other veg. now.

Things that seem to be exercising other people include:

• Re-usable menstrual products.  I've been using my mooncup for over 5 years, now. 
• Not having a fresh bath towel every day (really!).  Well, I'm a natural born skank.  I only wash my bath towels when they look dirty.  Same with bed linen.
• Hand washing rather than using the dishwasher.  I should do this, I know.  I really should.  When the dishwasher dies (not too far off) then I'll convert that part of the kitchen into another cupboard, and do it by hand.
• Turning off the fridge.  This one is tempting.  I could quite fancy making do without a fridge.
• Not using an oven.  Difficult, this.  I can see the logic, but would find it difficult to do big meals - I don't often do big meals but when i do, I don't necessarily want to do something on the hob only.
• Not using toilet paper (cloth wipes instead).  I wondered about this when the kids were in nappies, and I used cloth wipes on them.  But there's something about baby poo that is so much more acceptable than the adult variant.  I figure there's little virgin forest in toilet roll these days - although much of it is virgin fibre, it's from farmed forests. 
• Using hankies rather than tissues.  We do this for the most part.  My only problem with hankies is that they seem to go to that mysterious lost universe inhabited  by odd socks and teaspoons.
• Grey water collection.   I'd love, love, love to do this.  I think the cost of installing a collection tank is prohibitive for me at the moment, but it's definitely on my list.  I'd use it for toilets, showers, dishwasher, washing machine, and all but one sink.  It'd be fab.  Also on this eco-wish-list is a reed bed sewage system.  Think I'd actually need a bigger garden for this one!!
• Solar power.  Also cost prohibitive at the moment.  Also on the list.  Solar water heater, and possibly household heating.  Backed up with a wood burning stove...  yum.

Perhaps next on my list should be a resolution to use only eco-friendly cleaning products - hydrogen peroxide instead of bleach?  Citrus based rather than bleach based?  I should look harder for an outlet that stocks such stuff. 

And a more efficient household recycling system.  I compost all raw food products in my own compost heap, and garden weeds etc.  Grass clippings go in the council compost bin.  Most paper goes in the paper bin, but since the shredder died not all of it.  Cans go to the council.  Glass goes to the council.  At the moment, I'm throwing plastic away, bad Silver!  I need some recycling bin things that are good for being visible in the kitchen - any ideas?

Admire my butt!

Hmm.  I suppose there's little point in having a journal if you never update it!

We started the compact on 1st April.  So far, so good.  I can absolutely confirm that it is entirely possible to survive for 17 days on only the stuff you already own.  Totally possible.  No let or hindrance.  Absolutely nothing to report.

Except, except...  the ongoing battle with the mice?  My water paranoia?  The fact that the hammock in the garden is so much more appealing than the PC and the journal, nor even the working from home...

I dug a vegetable patch over easter.  There's a fenced off corner of the garden which was just ideal for putting something you need to keep the dogs off.   It was never a place of great beauty; there is a built-in thingummyjig for storing garden stuff, and it's the only bit of garden which is in shade for half of the day, so the lawn was substantially mossy, and anyway too small to to comfortably turn a lawnmower in.  So  I dug up the turf, used an old pallet to build a compost bin,  edged a path with some spare decking planks I found in the garage, lined it with opened out  potting compost bags topped with slate chips taken from the raised beds on the top tier of garden.  Then I dug over the rest, and planted.  So now we are waiting for french beans, carrots, peas, mangetout, beetroot, maize, and purple sprouting broccoli.  It is all pushing up nicely.  Except, except...

Every once in a while, in the first few days post planting, I'd come out and find a dint in the earth.  Mostly over the maize.  A dint like someone had poked a finger into the soil, up to the middle knuckle.  I'm not experienced in this vegetable growing malarkey, so it took me a while to figure it out, but eventually it dawned.  The cunning, burrowing, bastard little mice were digging up my maize!  And it's not on!  So I took to leaving the cat more outside than in.  And when that had no effect, I contacted the Warwick District Cat Protection League, and now I am on the waiting list to give a feral cat the position of head gamekeeper on my estate.  So the vegetables are safe. Except, except...

It has been glorious out.  Not a drop of rain for a fortnight.  Barely a drop of rain since I installed the little rain butt in the back garden.  No rain is not good for vegetable patches, leading as it almost inevitably will to a hosepipe ban, I fear.  And in the event of a hosepipe ban, my little rain butt in the back garden will not be adequate to the task of watering both the veggies and the new front garden, and the hedge which must not perish.  So what I need is a bigger rain butt.  I could put one at the front and one at the back of the house, and keep all my precious plantings safe.  Only, I don't have another rain butt.  And I can't buy one; no shopping.  No new stuff.  So that's a dilemma.  I begged and pleaded and debased myself on freecycle, but it appears that all that anybody wants this year is everybody else's spare rain butts.  And then I discovered a nice man on ebay selling recycled wine barrels (like these, but wine not whisky). Recycled, see?  Not new.  And with a tap fitted.  Ideal for water storage, and less ugly than a lump of green plastic, to boot.

So that's that problem solved, then.

Which leaves nothing to report, except the hammock.  Mmmmm...... hammock.......

 

I have bought seeds for the vegetable bed.  Peas, mange tout, dwarf french beans, tomatos, purple broccoli.  Also beetroot, borage, corn and carrots. 

I know where the vegetable bed will be.  I just need to build the frame for the raised bed.  Until I do that I can't get earth to fill it, so I will put one bag of earth in my compact as I doubt I'll be able to beg enough topsoil on freeserve to even nearly suffice.

This weekend I have taken out the 'water feature' which just eats electricity (or it would, if the mice hadn't eaten the cable) and doesn't tinkle nicely as water features ought.  I have left the reservoir in place, with its covering over it, and built a shallow alpine bed on top of it all.  It looks lovely, with a cyclamen, some saxifrage and a couple of sempervirens.

So next weekend we're away; I wonder whether now the clocks have changed there will be enough light in the evenings to build a vegetable bed after work.  I expect there might be.  I'm going to use wood that was left in the garage when i bought the place - left over decking and some bits of what might be an old child's bed.  I also need to build a compost heap.  Two pallets on the drive will give me enough wood for that.

But first, more turf must be removed.  It's never ending, this turf digging malarkey!  I have acquired a hippo bag for the waste.  And the side fence at the back of the vegetable garden needs fixing (or removing) as at the moment it's simply balanced on top of the retaining wall.  Oh, and I need to build a gate for the vegetable garden, to stop the dogs fertilising the carrots!

Daisy wants to build a scarecrow.  I can think of some old clothes which might do, but have no idea what we'd stuff it with.  A neighbour two doors along is clearing some scrub from his garden, and I'd beg some of the dead brambles to stick in my scarecrow shirt, but I'm afraid it'd be full of seed heads and completely bugger the whole project.

I've mulched everywhere, and planted sweet peas along the middle fence.  I've put a ribes speciosum into the raised bed where I cut out a flame tree.  It's been waiting patiently on the patio to be planted for weeks, and I swear it smiled when I dug the hole.  That bed has been dressed with slate chips, though, and the soil is incredibly stony so I'm not convinced anything will do well there.... Fingers crossed for the peony (Duchesse de Nemours) I put in in January...

I'm not at all convinced the water butt I've bought will be big enough (100L only) to give me watering water, if we get a hosepipe ban.  But it's too bad, I've bought it now, and short of anyone giving me a bigger one, it's the only one we've got!

Mum said this weekend that one of the things she admires about me (I didn't ask, honest!) is that I never whinge.  Which just goes to prove my theory that she never listens to me!  But hey, thank goodness for a little deafness, eh?

We went to see Merry Wives the Musical yesterday.  Fabulous.  I gather it's had some hideous reviews and it's not *exactly* orthodox; but it was funny, and entertaining, and pacey.  And Dame Judi Dench!! 

And we booked a holiday.  The kind where you pack up a carful of stuff and drive for hours and hours, and actually go away.  Far away.  I'd almost begun to forget such excitement was possible!  Turns out, not only is it possible, but we're doing it!  For half term, natch, since I am not quite a scummy enough parent to take the children out of school.  And we will see wild horses, and cattle grazing on the moor, and fishing lakes, and King Arthur's castle.  And we are excited.  Oh yes.

I have finally, finally stopped spreading topsoil; another tonne today.  With a cunningly found railway sleeper acting as a retaining edge on the downhill side.  And *that* took a lot less manouevring than the man who drove the crane which delivered it thought it would, I can tell you.  (But I rather suspected it might, when he told me I was a 'strong little thing' because I lifted a pallet!)  So I've planted my choisya, my wigelia, and my something shrubby beginning with P whose name I can never remember; all of which have been thriving in pots sinced I unearthed them from the Manchester garden a year and a half ago.  I have planted and raked and mulched, and it looks ace. 

So next weekend I shall be going to a garden centre.  Which is exciting, too.  Not as exciting as a holiday, on the moor, with wild ponies.  But exciting, even so...

Sissy reckons that cos I used to be a gnarly climbing dhude, I'll be interested in this.  And I am.  It's a fantastic challenge, and I love Ian Parnell's work, and his writing.

Kenton Cool, though.  What a silly name!

You can sponsor the expedition here.  It's got to be worth a fiver, hasn't it?  I mean, it's a serious mountain , and he's only got 1 1/2 hands (and a double coronary bypass...)

Anyway, I've passed it on.  Duty done.