Tag Archives: carrots

Friday 7th September 2012 – WHAT A GORGEOUS …

… tea 😉

New potatoes, beans and carrots straight out of the garden and into the vegetable steamer, all cooked with all my own surplus electtrical energy.

Then a veggie burger, onions and garlic fried in a mustard sauce with the vegetables and tipped, for the first time in I really don’t know how long, onto a plate.

No eating out of the saucepan for me tonight!

Yes, a meal fit for a king – with all of this surplus electrical energy from the glorious day that we had today, I had to do something with it. Cooking sounds like a good plan, and it’s one in the eye for my critics back in the UK.

I was up early today but somehow I couldn’t find any motivation for the website – no idea why. I’ve not advanced very far along the fortifications of Québec today.

But outside I cracked on and I’ve done quite a bit. Tons of progress today.

So much so that before I restart on Monday I need to take down half of the scaffolding. The half nearest the fence is now totally surplus to requirements so I need to remove it.

When that’s out of the way I shall rake out the soil to remove the stones, bits of cement and so on, and so I can kneel on the ground and finish off the last rows on that bit.

You’ve no idea how much I’m looking forward to taking down the scaffolding. There’s been scaffolding there of one sort or another since 2002 – that’s how long I’ve been trying to organise this lean-to.

Give me another 7 or 8 days and with luck the scaffolding will be gone completely.

It’s still rather sad though. This week I should have flown out to Canada for the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival at Fredericton.

But like I said the other day, if I do that, and then go back out to Canada next Spring too, this lean-to won’t be started again until next June and that’s far too long to wait.

I’m pretty-much determined that I want to finish the outside before I plan any trip anywhere. Finish it all off this year and that will be that – one of the most important projects around the house all finished off

So, where shall I go to in October? That is, of course, always assuming that I will have finished this blasted lean-to by then.

-1

Tuesday 28th August 2012 – DESPITE MY …

… early night last night, I somehow managed to sleep right through the alarms this morning.

It was 09:22 when I finally heaved myself out of my stinking pit. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done that, hasn’t it

It was raining too – which makes a nice change. It’s been a while since I’ve had any. But it didn’t rain for long, but long enough to put 100 litres or so into the water butts and I am grateful for that.

The garden and my water butts needed it.

Despite this being a day where I was at home, I didn’t do any pointing at all.

I have done 75% of the painting of the woodwork for the window frames though – two coats on one side and one on the other – I’ll have to do the second one on there before I fit it all in

And while I was waiting for the coats of paint to dry, I was doing other things.

One of the things that I did do was to dig up some carrots and pull some beans. Proof, if any were needed, that thanks to all of Rosemary’s help my garden is coming up with the goods..

Add them to the new potatoes that I uprooted the other day, and then some cauliflower that I bought on Saturday, a veggie-burger fried with onion and then some vegan cheese sauce, it was absolutely gorgeous.

What a wonderful tea it all was too!

Another thing that I did was to empty Caliburn out. His load bed is now empty. I’m taking Rosemary to Brico Depot tomorrow and also to Lapeyre so I may well need the space.

I need some more guttering and also some more glass to replace that which … errr … met with an accident, and I need a very narrow springy trowel to replace the one that I broke here on the wall.

Finally, I’ve been tidying up downstairs too looking for my mobile phone which I appear to have mislaid somewhere. I didn’t find that but I did find the missing LED light strips, which pleased me greatly.

I’ve also thrown away about 1 big bin-liner full of rubbish – and there’s plenty more to go at too.

That took me to 19:00 and then I knocked off.

Montlucon tomorrow and then Thursday I can get cracking again.

-2

Monday 30th JUly 2012 – YOU CAN TELL …

… what kind of day I was having today. When I looked at the clock after heaving a bucket-load of concrete into the lean-to wall, I noticed that it was 19:24 – 24 minutes after knocking-off time.

But at least, the one part of the wall, outer shell, inner shell and infill, is now complete. That’s the part from the field-end up to the window aperture. I can now turn my attention to the next bit.

But not tomorrow – I’m fixing Liz’s car. and not Wednesday either – I’m walking with Marianne on another one of our Wednesday walks.

In fact, Marianne and I were out walking this afternoon for a couple of hours. In a few weeks time she’ll be doing a walk around the village of Vergheas and she needs to plan for it.

It just so happened that this afternoon someone from the regional tourist office was giving a talk in the church to another group of people about the history of the village. Marianne accordingly blagged a couple of invitations, I went down to Pionsat to pick her up and off we went.

It was quite interesting too, for Vergheas is a very important place for such a small village, with something of a history.

It’s right on the border between the Limousin and the Auvergne and during the 17th Century many of the locals made their living by smuggling salt. The salt tax, or gabelle – was at a different rate in different areas and while Vergheas was a cheap area, the Limousin just down the road was one of the most expensive areas.

Buying salt outside your home area was not allowed, but the inhabitants of the Limousin came to Vergheas by their hundreds, with just 6 tax collectors to stop them.

But if Vergheas is famous for anything, it’s famous for its statue of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. This was brought back here by some Crusaders after the 4th Crusade and may well have been loot gained in the Sack of Zara (modern-day Zadar) in 1202 or even the Sack of Constantinople in 1204.

The Crusaders donated it to the Church and here it sits, attracting pilgrims from all over the place and it is said that various miracles have been performed here.

The biggest miracle of all, though, is what happened to the statue in 2001. Nothing can surpass this.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have mentioned on several occasions that the Religious Authorities every now and again take an inventory of the relics and possessions of the churches.

In 1973 there was an inventory taken of the treasures of the church here, and as soon as this was published, the church was raided by burglars and the statue was amongst the items stolen.

And that was the last that anyone heard of the statue until the astonishing events of 2001.

In 1997 an antique collector from Le Mans died and his executors spent the next few years hawking his collection around the antique shops of Paris in order to obtain the best price.

They called at one antique shop in 2001 to offer the articles for sale, just as the owner was reading a 1943 book that showed a photo of the statue.

And, by pure coincidence, at the same time on his desk was a newspaper article with a photo of the statue. It was the anniversary of the theft of the statue and the local residents using the medium of the Press to plead that someone might have a pang of conscience and return it.

Truth being stranger than fiction, the shop owner recognised the statue straight away, bought the collection and promptly returned the statue to the village.

From the church we then went for a tramp in the woods. Unfortunately he got away and so we went for a ramble to the edge of the village and the fontaine – the spring from where the locals formerly obtained their water.

Pretty similar to the one that we visited last week in St Maigner but, as far as I am aware, no miracle has ever been acclaimed for this fontaine

I suppose that one miraculous event is enough

And I was told that I am apparently persona non grata with a couple of English people in Chateau sur Cher.

At the petanque yesterday, one of them went to pay his entrance money with a €50 note. Me being me, I turned to Marianne and said “I know these people. Make sure that that note is dry!”.

Apparently my comment was not appreciated.

Ahh well – ask me if I care. I hate people who don’t have a sense of humour.

And while we are on the subject of the petanque, I forgot to mention yesterday that I saw the doppelganger of a very dear departed friend. That quite knocked me back a little.

Apart from all of that, I’ve had the usual few hours on the website this morning.

This afternoon though, I managed to find an hour or so and I’ve planted some more carrots, spinach, radishes and some lettuce that I had setting in a few pots.

I’ve also noticed that a few of the lettuce seed that was out-of-date and so which I threw away on the garden a few weeks ago, some of that is sprouting.

Fancy that!

Tuesday 10th July 2012 – YOU KNOW WHO …

… your real friends are when you ring them up and as if they fancy a trip to Montlucon on Friday morning – arriving there (45 mins from here) at … errr … 07:00.

“What’s the score?” asked Terry
“Brico Depot has some interesting stuff in the arrivages that has caught my eye but it’s big and bulky, and we need to be there early”
“I’ll bring the trailer then”.

I hate to tempt fate by making announcements about things that are outside my control but if this comes off it won’t ‘arf be a stunning development for round here.

So where was I? Ahh yes.

After the usual couple of hours on the web pages I went outside and spent a good deal of the afternoon putting the second coat of paint on the rendering of the lean-to.

You can see what the rendering was like prior to the painting if you look at the bottom left-hand corner where I couldn’t reach. I know which one I like better.

That took me until 17:00 when I went off and attacked the garden.

Clotilde gave me some of her lettuce thinnings yesterday and so I weeded and hoed a few spaces in a couple of the raised beds and planted them in … note to self – when I thin out the leeks, send some round to Clotilde in exchange … and then gave them a really good watering – not that they need it of course in this weather.

After that I checked on the carrots and beetroot that I planted a couple of weeks ago. They seem to be doing fine and so I planted another row of each. Certainly covering the sowings over with old caravan windows seems to be the way to go here

That took me until 19:00 when I knocked off. Thoroughly exhausted – you’ve no idea how much like hard work all of this is.

-3

Monday 2nd July 2012 – What do you think …

… about my nice environmentally-friendly scaffolding? I’ve no idea what that plant is that has decided to grow up it, but it has heart-shaped leaves and small green berries and it’s growing like crazy.

Yes, you’ll notice that I’ve lowered the scaffolding. The roof is finished and, seeing as how I finished the rendering off around the front this afternoon, I’ve started to paint the woodwork with the LIDL wood treatment. That means that I have to lower the scaffolding. I’m only doing the outside now – the inside can wait until the weather is bad.

Once the woodwork is painted, then I need to paint the rendering off around the front of the lean-to so that it matches the house. For that, I need to move a pile of stuff that’s around the front, although I’ve not worked out where I’m going to put it yet. Still, It’ll All Work Out in Boomland, so they say.

Once all that is done, then I can start on my secret project, to put Krys out of her misery, or else I can carry on rebuilding the wall that you can see in the photo and then put the guttering on. Probably guttering is a good idea as Thursday I’m hoping to have the water butts for there. That’ll mean that Krys will still be in suspense for another couple of weeks.

So that was this afternoon. This morning I was on the website again, and then I was outside in the garden. Apart from tbe usual weeding, I planted another row of carrots and some more beetroot and then spent a pleasant hour thinning the cabbage and cauliflower. The sprouts need thinning too but I’m not sure where to put the ones that I pull out.

But this is all progress, isn’t it? I’ve never ever reached the thinning stage with the brassica. Usually this time of year I’m hunting for the survivors but there aren’t half some impressive plants – and all grown from seed too.

-2

Thursday 28th June 2012 – ONE OF THE REASONS …

… and there are many of them, to be sure, as to why I keep a blog is that I can refer back to it and find out when I did something.

I forget all too easily these days what I’ve been up to and when I was up to it – and just remember, before you start laughing, that you will be as old as me too one of these days too.

So I looked back and found that it was exactly a week ago today that I planted the courgette, cucumber, gherkin etc seeds, and sowed some lettuce seed in pots.

And while I was sorting out the herb buckets (those nice heaps of oregano and tarragon have gone – cut down now and hanging up to dry in my attic) I happened to notice that the lettuce were growing.

Blimey! That was quick!

So they had a really good watering, and they need it too in this heat.

And so, out of curiosity, I went to look at the beds where I had planted the courgette etc seeds.

And guess what?

Absolutely! They are rearing their pretty little heads too.

There’s even some beetroot from what I planted a week earlier, but the carrots are once again doing nothing at all.

Anyway, it seems to be all go in the garden again.

I didn’t manage an early start today, unfortunately. It was so hot that at 03:00 I was still up and about and I would probably still be flat out on my back right now if a hornet hadn’t come in at about 08:45 and chased me around the bedroom.

Still, makes a change from Percy Penguin, who doesn’t feature in these pages half as much as she deserves, chasing me around the bedroom.

This afternoon I started to draw up the plans for the next stage of construction work, and began to make a list of the bits that I need. Right on cue, Rosemary rang me up and asked if I would be interested in going to the Brico Depot in Montlucon.

Seeing as how it won’t be very easy getting all of this wood onto Caliburn’s roof rack all on my own, and it’s no skin off my nose whether I go tomorrow or Saturday.

And when I heard that half a day’s gardening was the reward on offer, then that was it, mercenary that I am. It’s a good job I emptied out Caliburn yesterday, wasn’t it?

In between the surveying I dragged out the tabletop washing machine and did a load of washing seeing as I had a pile to do, it was gorgeous and warm, and the water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the surplus solar energy was at 60.5°C.

To finish off the day I treated myself to yet another solar shower seeing the temperature of the water in the black plastic solar hearing box had reached 41.5°C. And that was gorgeous too

It’s all go here right now, isn’t it?

-3

Thursday 21st June 2012 – I’VE HAD ONE …

… of those days that doesn’t happen very often, where I can sit back at the end of it all and say to myself “haven’t I done well today?”

Take the garden, for instance.

I was out there at about 13:00 hoeing at the raised bed that you can see in the foreground.

The front two rows are spinach, and I weeded and cleaned out a space behind them and that is where I planted 5 of the tomato plants that François gave me yesterday.

You can also see that I planted some bamboo canes there and I’ve tied the plants to them to keep them off the ground. And they needed it too – they are over 30cms tall.

As for the other 5 tomato plants and the chili, they are in the mega-cloche. You can see the bamboo canes that I put in there to hold up the plants.

If you look in the bottom left-hand corner you will see two old caravan windows covering part of another raised bed.

When I grubbed away a pile of weeds from in there, I discovered that half a dozen or so beetroot had taken and were busy growing away. So what I did was to clear a corner of the raised bed just there and plant a few more to see what happens

The carrots though have been a disaster. I planted a few rows before I went away and I have ONE CARROT. I hoed right through the part of the bed where I planted the seeds and I’ve put in another row to see what happens with that.

Everything that I planted, I covered with the caravan windows. It worked in spades for the leeks and spinach, covering them over while they germinated. It’ll do no harm to see what it does to the carrots and the beetroot.

At the bottom of the garden, the beans that I planted before I went (well, the four that did anything) are now really running wild.

As well as that, those that I planted the other day are bursting out of the soil like nobody’s business.

I had a rummage around in the barn and turned up with a couple of offcuts of wire netting and so I grabbed a few of the laths that we ripped off the barn roof in 2010 and made three climbing frames for the beans.

I’m going to need a lot more than three and so does anyone want to swap some brassica thinnings for any wire netting? Otherwise I’ll have to go into Commentry on Saturday and buy a roll.

You’ll notice too that the pea frame is doing fine too. The peas are finally starting to appear and the frame will give them something to cling onto too.

This morning I spent three hours on the laptop (I was up early for once) and I made an index page for my recent journey to Canada and uploaded another few pages.

I’m up to late morning of Day Four so far. It’s going to be a long, hard trip.

This evening I had a lovely, warm shower. The solar heat had pushed the temperature up to 37.5°C this afternoon but by 19:00 it had cooled down to about 34°C. However the hot water in the dump load was running at about 62°C and so 5 litres of that into the solar tank pushed that back up to 39°C and it was gorgeous.

And so this new nice and clean me then then went and hit the road to St Gervais d’Auvergne to see this music extravaganza that I had been promised, and much to my surprise I met Liz and Terry there, as well as a few other people who I know.

That’s a group that features on keyboards the young guy who is the assistant at the controle technique. They weren’t too bad but the drummer wasn’t up to much.

But then I come from a background that is much different than here and I have greater expectations. Living in this part of the world, I have to bear in mind the words of Samuel Johnson, who once famously said “it is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all”.

However, all in all, a good time was had by all and if the temperature hadn’t have plummeted I would probably be still there now. A good way to celebrate the Solstice.

A very good day for a change.

-3

Monday 23rd April 2012 – I’m blogging early tonight

And for two reasons too. Firstly, seeing as how this is my last night here for a while, I’m going to have an early one. And secondly, I had tea early. And that was because I was round at Bill’s for a while setting him up as he is going to be doing the communication for the Anglo-Français Group while I’m not here, and by the time I was back from Bill’s it wasn’t worth coming up here to relax for half an hour.

Tea was nice as well – I used up all of the leftovers. So it was two large spuds, an onion, some garlic, some mixed veg and some mushrooms. And while the spuds were boiling, the rest was frying and then it was all fried together and covered with mixed gravy and spices. and I’ll eat that again.

While I’m away, Liz says that she will keep an eye on the garden once or twice in exchange for the thinnings, and so I thought that I had better do a map of the garden so that she will know where everything is, now that it’s all finished.

There’s just one empty bed and that’s for the leeks that are hopefully growing in a seed tray. Mind you, the leeks that I planted in the open soil have taken, and they are coming up now.

In fact some of the stuff is doing really well while the rest is taking its time, although I seem to remember that this is what always happens.

Anyway, I sowed some more carrots, parsnips, sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, spinach and beetroot, and that will be my lot. When I come back, I’ll just have to see what didn’t take and plant some of that. And the chicory in the new potato bed and that will be it apart from weeding.

I raked and hoed the two cloches today and in the small one I planted (in their pots) all of the shrubs and bushes, so that they will be ready for when I come back.

Apart from that I’ve been doing stuff off my list today. As well as the water heater the dump load will be powering 250 watts of light – 5×50 watt bulbs. This is useful because I have the potential to charge up about 700 watts on the dump load circuit and there’s already a 500-watt water heater element there. So the lights will help to complete the load. and 5 bulbs means that if one blows, then it won’t be too much of a problem. Light bulbs and water heater elements are good because the will take a graduated load – it’s not all “on and off” like, say, an electrical appliance might be and so which would not be satisfactory for this.

I’m nothing like ready really – I can’t find the spare camera battery or the charger that I take on voyages with me, and lots of other stuff. But it’s too late now. I have my tickets, passport, money, camera, dictaphone and Moose, and when I’ve recorded my rock music programme tomorrow I shall go with what I’ve got and that will be that.

-3

Wednesday 18th April 2012- I’ve finished the heavy work in the garden.

That’s all that it’s getting this year anyway. It can whistle for the rest.

If you compare this pic with the photo from a couple of days ago you’ll be able to notice the new frame that I made this afternoon. The soil that is in it has been dug over, hoed, raked and then hoed again, and it’s now covered up with a couple of offcuts of corrugated sheeting, for nothing is going to be planted in it until I come back and I don’t want it running to weeds while I’m away.

I’ve also sown a huge pile of beans in one of the beds, a few more rows of peas in another, and in one of the beds for root vegetables I’ve sown another row of beetroot and a couple of rows of carrots.

Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be sowing some more brassica, some parsnips and some spinach, weeding both the cloches and that will be the garden finished until I come back. And when I come back, there will just be weeding to do and (hopefully) not much else. I’m glad I managed to do it all anyway but I can’t wait to crack on with other stuff. I want to finish the lean-to this summer.

This morning I have been working on my website again and I’ve finally finished what I want to do – namely cross the St Lawrence from the Charlevoix to the Gaspé from my voyage in early September 2011. Tomorrow I can bring up-to-date the radio pages and then start on the footy pages. No more footy for me this season which is a shame.

Another thing that is a shame is that one of the ferries that I was planning on taking on my journey in a few days’ time, L’Heritage from Trois Pistoles to Les Escoumins across the St Lawrence River, has had its annual opening put back. I’ve been on it before and it was a bit of a rust-bucket then, but this winter it failed its four-yearly inspection and so it’s had to go for a refit at a cost of … gulp … $1,368,000 or whatever the equivalent is in local currency, and the start of the ferry season has been put back from April 21 to May 15, something which is going to inconvenience me rather considerably.

There’s another ferry that does something like the same route but that doesn’t cater for cars. The advert says something like “don’t forget your bike”. I can imagine one polar bear looking at another polar bear as I go cycling past, and saying “oohhh look – meals on wheels”.

I’ve also started backing up all of the files on my computer – moving copies onto a portable hard drive. You never know what is likely to happen when I’m on an adventure. If the ferry sinks and takes my computer with it, I shall be sunk – I’ll tell you that.

And not only am I likely to be sailing over a route where a passenger ferry was sunk by a U-boat in World War II, I’ll be passing over the site of the wreck of an ocean liner that went down with the loss of over 1000 lives, within sight of land, in peacetime 2 years after the Titanic disaster.

So as you can see, anything is possible.

-2

Friday 13th April 2012 – I can’t remember now …

… what it was that I did this morning. One thing that I do remember however was sleeping through the alarm clocks and waking up at 09:35, and it’s been a long time since that happened.

I did spend some time on my web site again and did some more work, but round about 11:30 I must have been distracted because I’m having one of these mental blanks.

After lunch however, the interesting stuff. I phoned up my travel agents in Belgium and told them of my holiday plans. I was on the phone for about an hour because what I’m trying to do is not easy and neither is it straightforward. The net result of it all is that they have all of the details and they’ll work something out and call me back tomorrow. Or at least I hope that they will.

After that I went outside and dug over one of the beds that I’ll be using for root vegetables. and that wasn’t straightforward either. I put a plank across the beds to stand on while I dig the beds over, but this plank broke one of the sides of the bed. That caused a halt while I went to search for a suitable plank to cut down to size to remake the bed.

But anyway, that bed is dug over and properly hoed, and I’ve put two rows of carrot seeds and one row of beetroot seeds in, in order to see what happens. I don’t have any parsnip seeds, which is a surprise. What is also a surprise is that there seems to be tons of tiny plants in the bed, which look just like seeds that have germinated quite recently. And they look too focused to be weeds. I’m trying to think what they might be. It was brassica that was in there last year – did something run to seed maybe? Anyway, I’ve pulled most of them out but I’ve also left some of them in so that I can work out what it might have been. I’ll probably come home to a bed full of dandelions or something.

I checked over a few other beds too. The new potatoes are stirring now and so are the garlic bulbs. The peas too are looking as if they might be doing things but the beans are as yet quite quiet. Pride of place though must go to the brassica – the sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower. Those seeds were planted about three weeks ago, thoroughly watered and left under a black plastic sheet to keep the moisture in place and to heat up the soil. The result of this is that they seem to have gone berserk and there is brassica everywhere in the rows that I sowed. It obviously suites them under there.

Anyway, Liz will be coming to pick the strawberries while I am away. I’ve told her to help herself to brassica too. The rows will need thinning and so the thinnings may as well go into her garden.

Anyone else want any brassica?

-1

Thursday 8th March 2012 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… one of those nights last night – still awake at 04:30 and up again before the alarm went off at 08:00. And so I’m pretty whacked right now.

Today started with a major tidying up as planned due to my expecting a visitor. And while I was making good progress the aforementioned visitor rang up to cancel.

Ahh well. back to the computer for an hour or two.

Once the computer session had taken place I went outside and finished weeding last year’s potato beds.

There were about 20 potatoes that I salvaged but some of them had started to sprout. So what I did with those was to put them in the raised bed that I had laid down the previous day. We’ll see what happens with that lot.

But there is already a potato plant fully established in one of those beds. There’s no sense in moving that and so we’ll leave that in position to confuse the beans and peas that will be going into that bed.

After that, things became confusing. I have garlic growing in the next row of beds and so I started to clear out the row after that. In that row I discovered some carrots that I must have missed and so I started to clear out the following row of beds so that I can move the carrots.

But in there are some leeks, so I found out, and they need to be moved another rown higher …

Anyway, you get the picture. I’m going to start at the top and move downhill instead.

But then I was sidetracked by a row of nettles that was growing in front of the old Mercedes 240D that is festering in the field, and so I started tugging at that. This turned into something of a major session of weeding higher up the garden and by the time that I had finished (19:15 – isn’t that something of a record?) for the evening, I was well on my way to clearing a rather large part of the wilderness that will eventually be the lawn, whenever that might be.

I’ve worked really hard today. No wonder I’m knackered.

-1

Friday 11th November 2011 – I COMPLETELY FORGOT …

… about a sack of sand that I had in the barn. I’d bought it to use for storing the carrots and so I had put it on one side. But the carrots aren’t up yet and I can always buy another sack of sand another time.

I hadn’t forgotten that it was a bank holiday today, but when I finally crawled out from underneath the quilt and saw what a gorgeous day it was (23°C in November?) then I changed the habits of a lifetime and decided to put in a day’s work on the wall.

This was too good an opportunity to miss, especially as I had remembered about the sack of sand.

And I’m glad I did as well because even though I was still working outside when the light went, I managed to finish the wall as far as I could reach and I’m ever so impressed by that. All that remains of the wall is the bit that I can’t reach from the scaffolding, and for that I can put a ladder up on Monday and quickly do that if I get a move on, and then that will be that.

Just the wind turbine to mount after that (I have some funny … "you said that the other day" – ed …), and to anchor it to the wall, and then I can get on with putting the roof on the lean-to. I’ll be really pleased if I can get that far this year.

I took the camera up the scaffolding just in case we had Part Two of Wild Boar Wars but of course, with the camera on hand, they were conspicuous by their absence. No surprise there, then.

Tomorrow I’m off on a photo safari around the local area, and then shopping in St Eloy. Tomorrow night it’s Pionsat’s 1st XI against Methanol and the 3rd XI against Blot l’Eglise.

Ohh the joys of footy!

Talking of which, you can see last week’s matches which I have now put on line.

Monday 18th April 2011 – I’ve been gardening today.

Well, after all it is the full moon. Before lunch I planted all of the main crop potatoes – I put 64 into two of the raised beds – the last two that I installed the other week. I’ve had to be careful how I planted them because the baby lettuce that I bought the other week – they are in one of those beds and I’ve had to fit the spuds all around them.

After lunch I planted this week’s seeds – things like cauliflowers, broccoli, carrots, courgettes, beans, peas and so on – they all went outside and into place. In the smaller cloche I planted into small pots some more peppers, chilis, cucumber and gherkins. And there are already some of those sprouting up from a fortnight ago. I’ve also weeded out the strawberry patch in the mega-cloche. That’s doing really well in there and it’s a mass of flowers, looking like there might be a bumper crop, and quite early too. But then again, this magnificent spring has a lot to do with that.

But there is a down-side to this magnificent spring. When I finished weeding and planting, I gave everything a thorough watering. And with no rain for 14 days, all of the casual water, that in buckets and bins and tubs about the place, that’s all gone. All that’s left is my rainwater for household use and there’s just about 150 litres or so of that remaining. I’m drying up and this could make things difficult here. I shall have to start a rain dance if it carries on like this.

But there’s still some water for a shower and at 36.5°C I had one as well. And then off to St Eloy and the Anglo-French Group where I set everyone an exercise – I’d found some old notes that I had made, with useful French phrases that are used in everyday life. And so I set everyone to translate them from French to English, to keep them out of mischief.

And so apart from working on the Newfoundland web pages this morning, that was my lot. Tomorrow we are in the studio at Radio Tartasse again. Don’t the months come round quickly?

-2

Wednesday 30th March 2011 – You can see …

… my apartment in Brussels on the internet if you like. But you’ll have to hurry. Someone has made me an offer already, and negotiations are proceeding.

That was quite a pleasant surprise at lunchtime, and it quite disrupted my flow of thought. What with crashing out yesterday late afternoon when I should have been catching up on my correspondence, I had to sped the morning doing just that. Until I was rudely interrupted, that was.

So while waiting for the Post Office to open I dug over another raised bed, and returning from my trip into Pionsat I planted my shallots and garlic. Well, not all of the garlic because I seem to have far too much. But I do know someone who can make use of it. But once that was out of the way I did some more digging over and I now have some sprouts, some carrots and some coriander in.

Tomorrow I shall have to make a start on making up some seed trays because there are a few things that need planting even though it’s too early to put them outside.

And then back up here and I crashed out again – it’s getting to me, all of this work.

-3

Friday 31st December 2010 – Happy New Year everyone.

And this year seems to have gone out with a whimper. I managed once more to sleep right through the alarm clocks – all of them – and so it was rather a late morning start. But once breakfast dissolved itself I set about chopping some more wood.

Not that I need it (I’m rather overflowing up here right now) but with needing some space in the lean-to and being depressed about the general overall quality of the stuff, I’ve stood some more outside and covered with some more of that clear plastic roofing stuff. The idea being that if ever the sun reappears, it might dry out the wood under the sheeting.

I also chopped up a huge bundle of kindling as there was plenty of that in the way too and it needs to be moved on.

Once that was done I connected up a couple of batteries to the Rutland WG901 wind turbine on the barn roof. We’ve had quite an amount of wind just recently and it seems to be a shame to waste whatever electricity is generated, especially when I have a few batteries loitering around and doing nothing. I’m planning to move the solar panels and the main batteries up that end in due course, but that’s not going to be for a while, until I get a huge load of 32mm saddle clamps.

Arno’s bed is now moved, and once we finished he invited me back home to look at his house. He asked me if he could give me something for my diesel, which was nice of him, and so we settled on a nice hot shower. I explained my difficulties about having a shower, to which he retorted “Yes – you aren’t a member of the OUSA Executive Committee any more” – keen reader of my blog is Arno. But a shower meant a lot to me just then. Nice and clean for New Year, and it saves me having to drive all the way to Neris and paying €3:00 for an entry. So that was fine by me.

I’ve also finally managed my Christmas dinner this evening – it was warm enough to stay down in the verandah for the one hour and 45 minutes it took to cook it. A slab of soya protein, with vegan sausages, roast potatoes, sprouts, chicory, carrots, broccoli and some thick gravy. Over a week I’ve been waiting for this, and it was well worth it.

What was even nicer was that it was followed by some Christmas pudding (I got to that today as well) and soya cream. And that was lovely too. It was just a pity that I’ve had to wait all this time to get to it.

And so that’s the year all done and dusted. And for 2011 I wish every one of you exactly the same as you wished on everyone else for 2010.

-1

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality