The Girls
Posted: Sat 29 November, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green, Green Garden, Photography 3 Comments »When it snowed last weekend, I finally got round to taking photos of our hens. It’s taken a year, but I knew I’d get there in the end…
Gladys
Elsie
Flo
And that’s the girls.
SkyTV, Carbon Neutral?
Posted: Wed 29 October, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, General, Green, Thoughts 2 Comments »Travelling behind a Sky TV van (sorry, their proper name is BSkyB, but who remembers that?) I noticed that they’re now saying that Sky is “Carbon Neutral”, according to the Carbon Neutral Trust.
And that’s just left me incredulous. Thankfully, I’m not the only one – as can be seen here, among other places. From that story, the following :
Sky’s carbon footprint has been calculated by measuring the CO2 equivalent emissions from its premises, company owned vehicles, business travel and waste to landfill. It claims to have lowered its site-related operational emissions by 47 per cent in the last 18 months and has also negotiated discounts for staff wanting to buy low emission hybrid cars
© Tech Digest 2008
So it’s not actually taking into account all the Sky boxes that are left on Standby overnight, let alone the Sky+ boxes etc. – and until it does, I for one would dispute the true “Carbon Neutral” status of Sky.
Ride-On
Posted: Sun 24 August, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden Leave a comment »With the size of our garden, mowing them has always been an issue for us. It’s a good two hours of work to do the lot, and neither of us is a great fan of mowing. In fact, with the size of it we need a petrol mower, and that’s proven too heavy for Herself to use. Over the last couple of months, we’ve had a gardener doing the mowing instead of us.
Over the weekend, though, we took delivery of a ride-on mower. We haven’t spent loads on it, it’s come second-hand from a friend of a friend, but it should do us just fine. It’s a Stiga Park 105, for those of you to who it means anything, and it’s a fantastic bit of kit.
Of course, today has (so far) utterly pissed it down, so I haven’t been able to go out for a proper play on the thing, but it should make the entire mowing effort one hell of a lot quicker and easier. I’ll know more once I’ve tried it out properly.
Clean
Posted: Sat 23 August, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden 3 Comments »Yay, we now have a clean water supply once more. It’s only taken four months…
And it’s also meant that we’ve been up on the veg patch all day, doing more weeding as well as harvesting all the potatoes and onions, as well as one bucket of blue potatoes, and another bucket-load of apples.
But it’s been a successful day. Of course, we’re both completely knackered now, but it’s all been worthwhile.
Weeding
Posted: Sun 17 August, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden 4 Comments »The weather over the last few weekends has been bloody horrible (well, unless you’re a duck) which has meant that we couldn’t get out into the garden to do any weeding etc. As a result, at least half the veg patch was looking more like we were cultivating nettles rather than vegetables.
Yesterday was – at last – a dry day, which meant I was out in the garden for about three hours all told, just clearing out one small section of the patch, clearing the earth around the courgettes and pumpkins. Just that one patch has filled up the brown ‘garden waste’ bin – and in a fit of piss-poor timing, that won’t be collected until next Wednesday (the 27th) which is a bit of a pain in the tits. There’s still a lot to do out there – not least bringing in all the potatoes and onions, which all need to be sorted before long – but at least having got one part cleared, it’s beginning to feel more manageable again.
Of course, today started with four hours of heavy rain again, which kind of nulls out the entire weeding and gardening thing for the moment. But at least I’ve made a start on it. And if we get any dry evenings this week, I think I know where I’m going to be…
Insulated Cavities
Posted: Tue 5 August, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green, House Work 2 Comments »Today we’ve been getting cavity-wall insulation sorted.
For whatever reason, the previous occupants never bothered with it, so it was something that needed to be done and as a result we got a quote from the HEAT project for doing the cavity-wall, and upgrading the loft insulation.
Theoretically, today was the day for getting both things done, but a small incident with Herself (of which more later) meant that we’ve put off the loft insulation upgrade for a while, but still got the cavity-wall stuff done.
It’s taken a couple of hours, and been bloody noisy, but at least the job’s done now. And once the loft’s upgraded as well, the house should be much warmer (or at least lose a lot less heat) than it did last winter. It’ll be interesting to see what difference it makes, anyway.
Herb Garden
Posted: Sun 27 July, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Green Garden 2 Comments »Another day, another job at the house completed.
Why is it that we always pick the hottest days to do the hardest work? Today it’s been about carrying railway sleepers round to the back of the house, and screwing them together to make a raised bed for a herb garden for Herself. Get me, Mr Domestic.
It’ll be worth it, though – it looks good, and now we just need to plant all the herbs.
We’ve got chives, lemon verbena, thyme, mint, rosemary, catmint (should keep the animals away from the rest of it) and oregano for starters, so we’ll just see how they get on. Should be fine in their new home, I’m sure, and it’ll be good to see them all growing.