...and briefly...

Well, haven't worked all week. Frozen ground and snow and ice and slush and stuff. The new (to us) water butt looks like this:

I like icicles, they sort of freeze and hang down and this one is quite hilarious in a Frankie Howerd type way - ooo-er missus look at the dribble on that. Love the way it's hit the ground and kind of spread and then frozen again.


Every cupboard in the house has been tidied, stuff either chucked out or moved to the shed and I have started my first ever batch of cider. Approximately 2 gallons and at the moment it looks like this:

Smells amazing already, just hope it's as
drinkable as the apple wine!

Saturday night I picked Sophie up from a party, the snow was at it's height and I walked through an absolutely pristine, crrrrr-isp snow covered road. It was lovely.

My footprints to and fro, in the dark on our road. No other footprint in sight!

Should work Friday so that means just tomorrow, Thursday 9th, at home. Probably slip and slide down to the shed to continue the tidy up in there. Might even start my Big Project, turning my vinyl albums into MP3s... Anyhoo, this was the scene outside our dining room window on Saturday night...

Brrrr.


Laters!


Happy freezing I say.


Love and Peace...


Simon

Hey Babes!

I really don't want to offend, but Jesus H Christ it was cold out there today. I was  chopping, pruning and a-cutting shrubs down on the tow path of the Grand Union canal in Berkhamsted. If you know that stretch it was by the very fine pub, The Rising Sun, right on a lovely lock, opposite the grounds of a block of flats I look after. In the remit is the tidying of - sorry, I have the YouToob mix of The Ramones and I am occasionally disappearing into bliss - a small stretch of tow path. 


Before I get on to the work on the tow path, I also do not want to offend with this first picture, but I felt it had to be shown as I would not have been able to work today without these lovelies:

Yes, thermals or, as our forefathers and mothers would say, Long Johns. Today I wore five tops, a scarf, me trusty woolly hat, two pairs of extra thick socks and steel toe caps, with extra thick gloves too. And yes I still froze me bollox off. 

The window of a car at the canal at Berkhamsted this morning

08.30 hours, Friday 03.02.12

10.05 hours

11.30-ish

The ice was permanent all day - damn cold! (Rockaway Beach, ain't The Ramones the best?).

Anyway, the reason for my visit was to clear an area of the tow path that is used by some weirdos to hide clandestine behaviour. As a sort of libertarian geezer I almost find this embarrassing, but as I am convinced the offending individuals are fishermen, fuck 'em! In a previous post I eluded to this area having obvious signs of drug abuse, roaches, etc, but I feel my loathing for fisherman can justify the cutting down of the shrubbery as follows:

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

Once again, this is the kind of work I truly enjoy, one can see the results almost immediately. Well, I started at 08.30 and finished at 3pm, so relatively quickly anyway. All done with secateurs and loppers (with extendable arms, wish I had extendable arms... like Twizzle.)

Twizzle was one of Gerry Anderson's weirdest characters. He was a "boy" who had all sorts of adventures with his "extendable arms".

Weird programme, but what the hell did we know back in the 60s anyway? It was akin to the Singing, Ringing Tree (how appropriate that Psycho Therapy is playing now!) and must have disturbed many a kid, perhaps even introducing several serial killers to the world...

As usual I transgress. Just so's I can get up to date with my pictures from the last 4 weeks, here are the rest of what I have been doing:

The old stable block at Quainton - with the trusty Belgrano just
on the right there. It's just behind the block that I am doing a
major re-planting job. Taking out loads of old tired shrubs and
ground cover and replacing with ferns, hellebores and other shade
loving shrubs. 

This will be an on-going exercise over the coming months and will hopefully look as much like a Gertrude Jekyll border as is possible in the shade!

(California Sun, this is when YouTube comes into it's own, there's tons of Ramones on this mix, it's damn fine)

The pond at Quainton. Nice reflection..

 The weather is a-closing in and I feel that I may not be doing too much in the coming week, but nevertheless life as a gardener is rather pleasing at present...

The chicks know how to look after each other
in this inclement weather!

And, I'm nearly there with the compost bins at Buckland!

Happy chilling!


Innit?


PS: I Wanna Be Sedated...

Happy New Year - if a tad late...

Feeling as though I have been very neglectful - feeling? - as this is the first post of 2012. And such a huge year what with the following events:


March 1 - Greek Drachma bank notes are exchangeable for Euro until this time. 


April 9 - Sophie, my daughter, is 13 - how's that possible!


June 6 - Second and last solar transit of the planet Venus of this century; the next pair is predicted to occur in 2117 and 2125


July 19 - Staging the World – British Museum exhibition on London and its theatres in the 1590s and 1600s.


August 11 - The world's biggest celebration of books commences for two weeks of events and performances from literary names established and new at the International Edinburgh Book Festival.


2012 is also Someverdana, claimed to be a year of spiritual transformation (or apocalypse) - something to really look forward to. End of the world? My money's on 12th Deccember.


But far more important is WorldPride, a "...world-wide phenomenon and in 2012 the party is coming to London for a 2 two-week long event, with the final parade set to take place on 7 July. WorldPride is a festival promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues on a global scale and is expected to attract over one million visitors from around the world." I'll be there...


Oh yeah, and it's a leap year too.


If you know of any other stuff happening this year, keep it to yourself 'cos quite frankly, I don't care...


Well, hasn't the weather been kind? Oh yes it has. When you're a gardener it really matters that you can just carry on regardless and I for one have done as much. I have loads of pictures to upload - 30 in all - so I think I'll do it in two hits.


Last Autumn I collected a serious amount of apples from gardens across Herts & Bucks and have so far managed to produce 20 bottles of apple wine.

Chateau de Murray 2011 - cheeky lil'number, quite citrussy, but
I think it hits the spot!

I am working on cider now, hopefully about 15 litres, but not sure as my maths is shit as I may have mentioned before. I have chopped the apples and now need to crush 'em and then press 'em - I think I will fashion a press out of a car jack and some wood, saw that on the tinterweb and it looks good enough to me!


Been working on Pat's paving for weeks now, but should finish the bulk next week. Here are some pictures, I'm quite proud of of the work actually...

It's been hard work, but work that had to be done because of the loose slabs. I have been concerned for a while about Brian falling over.

A couple of weeks back I was burning off some rubbish from the compost heaps at Julie's place in Buckland, Aston Clinton, just five minutes from home. It's my Wednesday garden, the 16th century farmhouse with pond, etc. Anyway, there I was, petrol in one hand and matches in other, could I get the bloody thing to light? No. So I bend over and strike the match next to the pile of bone dry debris - covered in petrol mind, the debris, not me - and this happens:

Doesn't look that bad does it? Burnt nose and foul
smell of burnt nostril hair. But it resulted in the below.

Ouch!

It was like a nuclear holocaust, like that scene in Terminator 2 when Linda Hamilton is screaming from the fence for the kids to leave the playground. I tell you, if I didn't wear glasses my eyelashes would have been burned off. Which would have matched my eyebrows. I have very little eyebrow hair due to the fact that I blew them off with my dad's lighter when I was 12 - I am 55 in two weeks. So that's 43 years and no change then. Ho hum... This is the offending fire...

I have become obsessed with snowdrops. They are fantastically early this year, I have been amazed at the numbers and here are some at Rebecca's in Quainton, Bucks:

I particularly like this picture, probably because I got quite wet laying on me tummy taking it. What one does for art eh?

And finally for today - I will finish part two of this post tomorrow - I will jump a couple of weeks to today. I usually listen to Radio 4, but this morning at the behest of one of, if not, my best friend in the whole wide world, I started to listen to Radio 2, George Harrison's "What Is My Life", followed by Dean Martin's "Amore" and Bruce Springsteen "Brilliant Disguise". If you had been passing you would have seen a 54 year old prat in woolly hat playing his fork atop a compost heap a bit like this...

Happy gardening campers!


Peace...

Have yourselves a Merry Little Christmas...

Here we have a few more pix from recent days, still leaf clearing but also digging over compost - as I have said several times before a task I love, compost is sooooooooooo good to play with - and spreading same over huge flower beds. Also dug up a few fruit bushes, gooseberry and blackcurrant and moved them to our allotment. I'll be digging up some raspberry canes tomorrow as well.


Got snowed off last Friday and it looks as though I may get rained off this coming Friday, so that'll be it for this year, except perhaps a couple of days next week. It's a bit stunning that I have built this incy wincy business from absolutely nothing last April to working over 50 hours a week at the height of the season. This time last year we had nothing in the bank, this year I can actually think about taking a few days off without it having a detrimental effect on the bank account. Makes me feel damn good about myself, especially as my main clients have bought me pressies this year too! Must be doing summink right eh?


Don't mean this to be a boasting post, just an update on where I am really, so I hope it doesn't come across as a boast-post. It's the reason I gave up on Twitter, which is a bourgeois excuse for slapping yourself on the back and mostly saying how good you are at whatever your business might be. Boring, boring, boring...


Anyway, cute picture of Daisy, Julie and Andrew's little Westie, taken today:

Last week I took these pictures of what I believe to be an old Mulberry tree, split by lightening some years ago, I really love the bark and the way they have held the trunk together. It's a thing of beauty among many in my working life.

Monday at Pat's place I finished off the re-grouting of the crazy paving outside the back door - I think you call it grouting, but it sounds wrong to me. I am rather pleased with it and thankfully so is Pat!

And finally today at Julie & Andrew's place in Buckland, near Aston Clinton in Bucks. The compost bin revamp is nearly there and I have shifted about 50 barrow loads of it amongst the various flower beds across the gardens. A job I have really enjoyed as it has broken up the leaf clearance - ahhhhhhhhh!

The main compost area and I have cleared all but one of them - at the back there, I feel a nice bonfire coming on, it's pretty dry so should go up nicely. What is it about men and bonfires eh? Love the prospect!

And absolutely finally, here's a picture of the setting sun just as I left, bottle of vintage Port under my arm (my Xmas pressie from Julie), beautiful and it makes the hard work nothing really, I love it!

A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, may you get all you desire!


Peace innit?


xxx

Must do this more often...

So, here we are again- STOP! There we go, it's got to me at last. It's this utterly pathetic pre-occupation with starting the answer to a question with the word, "So..." As I have said before, this is anathema to me, I hate it as much as Blair-types starting the answer to questions with, "Look..." all aggressive and that - Nick Clegg is good at it and ABC too (that's Anyone But Cameron, the first time Ed Cummerbund has coined a phrase worthy of the name).


I listened to The Life Scientific on dear ol' Radio 4 this morning - quite honestly I don't know what I'd do without my radio, the only thing I miss about corporate life is human contact... Hang on, did I say HUMAN? Forget that... - and the scientist was a Tim Hunt, who "...is an experimental wizard, a flamboyant thinker and a stickler for scientific procedure." Doesn't fucking stop him starting virtually every answer to a question with the word, "So...", though! Irritating or what?


This time, I am going to show you some pictures of wonder and excitement from the last 3 weeks. This has included leaf clearance and, leaf clearance, plus a little bit of leaf clearance.

This is at Brudenel House in Quainton, near Aylesbury. So far it's taken me 2 weeks to clear and there's still about 4 hours worth of work to do.

Ryobi leaf vac & blower, my new best friend, noisy, but
essential, lovely stuff

This was meant to show leaves blowing in the blast from Ryobi... Didn't quite work, but I will attempt to take some more pictures with the new camera we treated ourselves to fro Christmas

Anyway, Tim Hunt, to quote the BBC website: "Back in the early eighties, it just wasn't obvious that all life worked in the same way. But what Tim Hunt showed was that the process by which cells divide (and therefore live and grow) is the same in all living things and that this process is controlled by a protein that appears and disappears in the most startling fashion.

"It was a most unexpected result that many believed was rather insignificant but Hunt pursued it. Accused by some of "wild speculation based on faulty logic": that same logic led to him winning the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 2001."

He discovered all this by looking at sea urchin eggs and then frogs. I struggle with science, I really do. It's the fact that they experiment on living beings and expect us all to bow down to their justification that eventually a medicine is produced that helps humans. I'm all for understanding what makes us tick and how things work, even how the universe works Dr Higgs, but killing a creature for the advancement of the human race, because "we can reason and they can't", is difficult for me to appreciate. 

Yes, one can argue that all the medicines we take came from such experiments. That my asthma drugs and the drugs that keep my blood pressure normal were all made from such things and I'm probably a hypocrite for feeling the way I do about vivisectionists. Can't help it, my vegetarianism is based on cruelty to animals so it follows that I don't like animal experimentation.


Oooo, that was a bit serious. Here's some more pictures from recent days:

                     

                              Pat's place again and the tidied up log shed - strange
                              how I love to do this sort of thing...

The week before Helen Reeley asked for my help digging over a strip of garden in Hughenden Valley, near the Missendens in Bucks. It was one of those jobs that seemed to be never ending and then, all of a sudden, it ended. Digging is good, but it really affects my poor old back. For those who don't know I was knocked down when I was eight and have seriously damaged vertebrae at the base of my spine. Funny story actually as the bloke who ran me over was one of my classmate's dads. When my dad got to the hospital he said to him, "If you didn't want Simon to come round any more, all you had to do was to tell us!" Good jewish humour. 

Anyway, here are the pix:

Doesn't look like much but it took four hours for both of us to do, lots of roots and a few shrubs too, so it was a niggly job really

And on Tuesday of this week, 13th December 2011, it rained, hailed and snowed and guess what? Yep, the weather forecast didn't mention it. Good old BBC, that was my crazy paving relaying job fucked up!

Here are some pix that show some lovely little hail stones:

Found this ol' boy behind the log shed - see above - at Pats.
I think it's, Amanita Muscaria. Although it is generally
considered poisonous, deaths are extremely rare - damnI was gonna send it to Nick Clegg as a Xmas pressie 

Saw this in Quainton. It had a strange effect on me, felt like I wanted to be saved too, but then I thought of Cliff Richard and the thought of being saved disappeared as quickly as his last single. If Cliff ever dies, do you think they'll cancel Christmas like forever?*

And finally, ducks! Loadsa ducks...

These are on the farm in Tring that houses Tring Brewery, a place of true beauteousness. I actually have grown to love this place and one day aim to have this many ducks in my home...

God bless us everyone!

*I stole the Cliff line from a tweet by Peter Serafinowicz, a very fine comedian