More Garden Gubbins
Posted: Fri 24 August, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised Leave a comment »Today, we’re getting a bundle more stuff for the garden.
We’ve purchased (another) petrol-driven strimmer/brush-cutter, which will help remove all the thistles, nettles, weeds, and crap from the far end of the garden. We bought a small cheap-ass brushcutter a while back, but it’s been a pain in the arse ever since purchase. (And of course, wouldn’t you know it, it’s the only thing that we can’t find the fucking receipt for) That’ll teach me. The new one is nearly 150% more expensive, but it’s a Stihl one, purchased from a local decent supplier – they’re even putting the damn thing together and checking it all out before we collect it. So I’m faintly optimistic that this one will do the job far better than the one we bought first time round.
In addition, we’ve got that 100L water-butt being delivered today too, as well as two more wooden compost-bins.
So that should all keep us busy during the Bank Holiday weekend. Particularly when we’re also out for at least one of those days, and quite possible two of them.
Butt Monkey
Posted: Thu 23 August, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Green 2 Comments »One thing I forgot to mention while whittling on about our current garden set up is the sheer number of water butts we’ve now got scattered about the place.
Near the house we’ve currently got two 100L water butts connected to the garage on one side, and a 750L butt on the other side. All these are currently full, and we’ve another 100L one on order at the moment.
Down at the other end, by the greenhouse, we’ve got another four standard 200L water butts – again, all full.
All told, that makes 1,750 litres of rainwater that we’ve currently got stored. I make that 385 gallons of water. I think we might be OK in a drought – not that one’s going to happen this year…
Mind you, I still don’t see the point in water butts shaped like tree stumps and the like.
The Good Life
Posted: Mon 20 August, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green 2 Comments »Ye Gods, we’re going to have to change our names to Tom and Barbara if we’re not careful.
The garden at the new house is turning out to be very productive. Considering that we’ve done close to bugger all in the garden this year (well, since moving in three months ago) it’s really quite surprising.
The greenhouse has produced – OK, for the pedantic, the veg in the greenhouse has produced – five or six cucumbers, about 50 chilli peppers, a bundle of tomatos (both cherry toms and larger plum toms) and a selection of normal sweet peppers, although they haven’t been great. We’ll try a different type next year.
The veg patch produced three full rows of spuds, of which we’ve currently only harvested one row. The rest’ll be coming up soon, believe me. It also produced more radishes than we could use, and about four or five meals-worth of broad beans. There’ve also been plenty of courgettes (and a couple that’ve grown into marrows) as well as some pumpkins that’re developing well.
And then we get to the fruit trees. The plum tree is awash with fruit, even though we’ve already taken about eight Kg off it. The two apple trees are equally laden- we’ve taken about 5Kg of fruit already, and there’s probably three or four times that on the two trees. The pears are still growing, so hopefully they’ll take a couple of weeks to sort themselves out before we have to set to with them as well.
Over the weekend we ended up buying a decent preserving pan, as a lot of the fruit is going to be made into jam. Should be fun.
And then at the start of next year, we’re considering getting some chickens. (If nothing else, it’ll be amusing to see how Hound and Psycho Cat handle that development!) And yes, Razorhead, I’ll be asking for advice on that one sometime soon, bearing in mind your copious knowledge…
So yes, it looks like we may somehow be becoming refugees from “The Good Life“. Oh dear….
Shocking News
Posted: Sun 19 August, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism Leave a comment »Stop Press : NPower are cheating extortionist bastards.
Not that we didn’t all know it already, but the BBC News site seems to have caught on to it anyway…
Writing Ambition
Posted: Sat 18 August, 2007 Filed under: D4D™, Introspective, Thoughts, Writing 1 Comment »Having seen D4D™ hit its fifth birthday recently has made me start doing a fair amount of thinking. Well, it’s more the combination of D4D™ being five, and watching “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip“. Which just makes things even weirder.
One of the things that I wanted to do with D4D™ when I started it was to build up my writing. I used to do a lot of writing of other stuff, and along the way I churned out two novel-length (OK, if I’m honest, one novel-length, one novella-length) pieces of work. At the time they were more about therapy than anything else, but they were OK – and Herself had copies of both of them from when I initially did them. I re-read them recently and while they’re not good exactly – there’s stuff that’s too self-referential and/or indulgent, and a lot of it is “of it’s time”, shall we say – nor are they bad, either.
Anyway, along the way, D4D™ has become a bit of an entity of its own. I’ve written (at the time of doing this piece) some 4,500 posts over five years, amounting to just under 630,000 words- not including the rants and thoughts. A fair amount of it is crap, obviously – but with a fair amount of OK and good stuff thrown into the mix too. (He said, modestly) But at the same time, D4D™ is a greedy beast, and I spend more time writing odds and sods for here , which means that rather than fuelling the drive, impetus and maybe even need to write, instead it’s become the outlet, and that requirement to write is the fuel for D4D™ instead.
And where does Studio 60 come into it? Simple, really. Aaron Sorkin is one of my writing gods – I absolutely adore West Wing, and I think Studio 60 is another part of that pantheon, although I can also understand why it got canned after one season.
Over the weekend, Gordon pondered what would we do if we won the lottery. The thing I would do in that circumstance would be to take a year completely out of work (well, out of paid work, anyway) and instead use that time to put fingers to keyboard, and work to bring about some of the writing ideas that’ve taken up residence in my head over the years.
And that’s the dream, really. A life/job where the creative side takes precedence, so that I can both write and take photos for a living. The odds are fairly long that I’ll ever get there, although I still want to try.
But if I’m going to do that, perhaps D4D™ needs to go on pause, so that I have to find another outlet for the writing. It’s not going to happen just yet, but it’s something to think about. And it’s something I am thinking about. I don’t know whether it would work, but it’s something that I might just have to try…