Allotment 2024-05-02

Last year, we began renting an allotment in Ramsden Heath.  It came with a pear tree (or two?) and plenty of blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes.  There also seem to be a few strawberry plants, and an ailing rhubarb.

In August 2023 we did a bit of clearing, but decided we would like to see how the bushes do.  So if they crop well, we will keep them.

9 August 2023

The rhubarb look almost dead.  

We collected a few pears, they were small, but tasty. There were a few visits, not that frequent, but just enough to keep things tidy.  With no real plan, we waited out the winter.

In April 2024 we began the process of tidying up after the winter.  The rhubarb is growing, not that vigorously, but we've had a few stems.  The grass grew, though.
 

12 April 2024

After some discussion, we have planed potatoes, which I dug up from our garden on part of this strip.  We have to get used to having a bigger patch — there were not enough!

2 May 2024

We have potatoes, carrots, and runner beans in the garden, with beetroot and tomatoes in trays.  The excess can go to the allotment instead of being disposed of.

Greenhouse

Every two or three years, the tiny greenhouse needs a new cover. This is partly the result of the type of cover used, but also the type of weather that the cover has to survive.  Some years it needs a new frame - this is not one of those years.  This frame has lasted well, it is now on it's third or fourth cover. The previous cover was installed in 2020, just before lockdown. This does not seem to be a good use of plastic, but as the prevailing winds have flattened larger sturdier greenhouses in the past, I am at a loss to find a better solution. I took the opportunity, this morning, while there was some bright sunshine and almost no wind, to unload all the pots, remove the old cover, and put this one on.  Then re-fill the greenhouse with pots. Soon the seed trays and post will have seedlings in them, as another year in the garden gets underway.

Trees Down

The tree surgeons arrived with six guys shortly after 8am this morning.  By 9:30am the trees were down, three of them had left to go to another job and the remaining three were struggling to get their grinder working.  The videos show the trees coming down.

They made light work of our precariously angled holly, and the silver birch didn't take much longer.  This second video is taken from the community garden. 

 

We would rather not take the trees down, but both of them are responsible for damaging the fence and we have to keep the fence in good repair - mainly to keep Brody from exploring places he shouldn't.  At least the wood will get used.  The trunk and larger logs have been left for the community garden people to make into benches.

Make every drop count / Fence Progress

A while ago now the representative from the Essex and Suffolk Water campaign "Make Every Drop Count" visited us.  As a result various freebies were dispensed.  However our savings are minimal.  Our taps are not suitable for inserts, our cisterns are already dual flush, our shower head is already as efficient as it can be, and our water pressure is s low at times that showers are impossible.  Its the 'freebies' I really wanted to address.
A little bag of granules that absorb water was added to each cistern. One of these immediately disabled the short flush capability and had to be removed.  The other is still in place.  The short flush in that cistern had never been enabled, and did not work when tried.  A replacement rose for the end of the hose was provided.  It was poorly made and frequently detaches from the hose, it is also partly broken - a real waste of money by the campaign. However the plumber did tighten up the tape so that it no longer leaks.
Eventually a water butt was provided, and was soon installed.  It filled up in the first heavy rain the next night, and today I completed putting the down pipe bracket back.

That took a long time for two related reasons.  My power drill is battery operated, I listened to a number of people before I bought it about 4 years ago, who all said that battery drills are not under powered - it is.  It also has a keyless chuck, or to put it another way, it is impossible to keep the bit locked in the drill when it is used in hammer mode.  So drilling in brick means constantly stopping to re-lock the chuck and then stopping for the day to recharge the battery.  Only one of the two batteries now charges.  I use it very rarely, so to have a battery fail so quickly was disappointing.

The first of the fence panels is now replaced. On Saturday I used a saw that I inherited from my father to cut the fence panel from the standard 6 feet to around 4' 6", and Jo helped me slot it between the posts.  The panel is the right way round, according to my dad who insisted that the outside was the side that looked best.  This makes sense, because if the panel has to be moved I need to be able to hold the rails.

Tree Damage

We have been in our house about a quarter of a century.  For most of that time, we have encouraged the trees near the boundaries to grow. We like trees around the edge of the garden.  However, it is not a huge garden, reasonable by Billericay standards but not really large enough to support mature trees.

A couple of years back we had to remove a silver birch - a tree that Andrew had planted, that was leaning at a precarious angle.

There is also a silver birch at the back of the garden, with an oak tree close by.  I'm hoping the oak can stay.

My foot gives a sense of scale and helps to show just how far the concrete gravel boards have been 'bent' by the birch.  The piece of fence was originally bought to confine Brody, but was never used.  It is a good temporary barrier to keep him from exploring a new garden.

The holly tree is at an alarming angle, but does not point in the direction of the shed.  If it fell, the worst victim would be next door's fence, which is already supported on a cut gravel board that allows its roots to pass under the fence.  I'm unsure whether the tree on the right is part of the one tree or separate.  If it is separate, the roots must be completely mingled.

These pictures record the before situation.  More when the trees are down.  In that time I will work out how to replace them too, I hope.

Fungi

After a wet week, except for our sailing day on Thursday, and today - when it has been warm and bright - I went to walk in the garden during a break from sermon preparation.

	I picked a few tomatoes that had just begun to turn red.  As you can see the tomato patch looks a bit sad.  We have suffered blight again this year, but not as badly as last year.
From 2009_1010 Fungi
		Then walking around the edge I spotted some fungi. Ideal conditions in the last couple of days, I suppose.

We have about a dozen of the large brown/red ones, which I think are Paxillus involutus. Thanks to http://www.fungiworld.co.uk for the pictures used to make a guess at the identity.  Their site says these are 'extremely poisonous'  As to the ones on the right, I have no idea - they may even be mushrooms, but I like my stomach as it is so I'm not going to try to find out.  There are three clumps of those and a couple of odd ones on their own.

The small ones (on the right) have appeared before, but the extremely poisonous ones I don't think I've seen before.  We have lived in the house for over twenty years.  It reminds me how little I know about my surroundings - there is always something new to fascinate me and distract me.  Sermon preparation can be like that too, God will often grow something unexpected in me (given the right conditions).  So I'd better get back to it!

The Cyclamen that we have just dumped in the garden seems to be loving the conditions.  I've lost count of how many of these we have killed by letting them get too hot, too dry, too cold, or too wet.

If there are no pictures in the post you are reading please go to http://3cephas.blogspot.com/2009/10/fungi.html.

Hyde Hall

For a short day out we went to Hyde Hall, the Royal Horticultural Society's garden in Essex. It is only 11 miles away. Today was a nice day too, overcast and not too warm, but comfortable. We were taken to Hyde Hall years ago because we won the bid for the visit in a promises auction. It has changed a lot. There is even a new entrance which my Sat Nav does not know about. The long road leads into the car park and the new shop / cafe / entrance hall (shown from inside the gardens). From there its a bit of a walk to the gardens themselves. The first thing of note (to me anyway) is the lawn in front of the entrance hall. Bright green grass with not a weed in sight. Not even if you look for one, really hard - yes, I did!

The gardens are expanding and there are plans for much more to be done. The existing gardens though are still immaculate, the lawns there are pure green and weed free too. I wasn't the only one who was impressed, I heard the same question to the grounds staff twice: 'How do you keep this grass so nice?' What I didn't hear was an answer. I didn't get one when I asked either.

We were there only for about 4 hours, and that included lunch in the old restaurant. The food was good but not cheap.

There were many impressive plants, which could not be grown in a small garden. There are many that can though. I've been to gardens like this before, and I would really like to be able to say "I really liked that, can I buy a cutting, or the seed?". It doesn't happen though, the plants in the shop are mostly the ones I am not interested in and may or may not have been in the garden.
One plant I am interested in is roses. The one that stood out today was Rosa Golden Celebration. The picture is blurred, my camera will not get that close, but the colour still comes across.

The vegetable patch was also interesting. As you enter it there is a shed and inside a blackboard with the heading "Write your gardening tips here". One of them mentioned Bordeaux Mixture as a cure for Tomato Blight - which I have for the second year running - that's something worth investigating. The strawberry and raspberry plants have yields 10 times what I get in my little garden. What am I missing? - Knowledge and a workforce are two things that come instantly to mind!

We bought a Dahlia that was one of the plants we had seen on our tour. I'm hoping it will look as good next year as it does now.

Church, Garden, Exercise

Church
This morning at Christ Church we had a visit from one of the teachers from Buttsbury Junior School - Juliet Chowdhury. Way back in February, one of our Readers went with Juliet to visit Ciamanda Primary School (pronounced Shiamanda) on an exchange visit. Ciamanda is in Kenya, north-west of Nairobi. The Children there learn three languages - their tribal language, the local Swahili and English (the official language). They are very poor by comparison to us, but they have freedom to be who they are, and to practice and teach Christianity that would never be allowed in Western Europe, and certainly not Britain. So in some ways they have a better life. Margaret had prepared a short video, which unfortunately was probably not visible to some of the people in the congregation - our projection is rubbish on a sunny day. Margaret and Juliet provided additional commentary for the video. Follow the link for more information.
It is the first time I can remember seeing this approach tried, and I thought it worked very well (within the limitations of the projection system). The projection system replacement is one of my projects, so I'd expect to be writing more about that later.

Garden
Once again it has been a nice day, so after the Spanish GP, it was into the garden to mix some soil and compost and move the tomato plants from the seed tray to pots. This proved to be harder for me than I had imagined. The movements in the shoulder to get a trowel full of soil into a pot must be quite complicated. I potted 55 tomato plants, they were the best of the bunch - not bad from a packet of 50 seeds.

Exercise
For me, this exercise is performed in a standing position. The left arm is used to help the right arm get as high as it can. This is the exercise that causes the most discomfort (rather than pain) as the shoulder clicks and jumps in its joint at each end of the range.

When I was first allowed to drive again after the accident, I opened the up and over garage door, and caught it with my right hand before it hits the frame, as I had always done. Except when the door stopped moving, I could not get my hand off. I had to lift it off carefully with the left hand.

Yesterday I managed to reach up to the open door with my right arm, and pull it down, change position and push down to the closed position all in one motion as I had used to - but SLOWER! That is a real mark of the progress I'm making.

Shoulder Class session 2

Same old exercises, just set together with some warm up and some ball games. One of which is shooting into a basket ball hoop. I scored one out of five. That made me equal top scorer for this week.
I have a walking stick at home for this exercise, doing it with a broom handle in the class was a lot harder. The walking stick has a carved head and is much easier to hold.
Physiotherapy seems to be basically: if the arm won't go where it should push it until it does. It does seem to be working, but I'm still unsure whether that's me pushing the day-to-day tasks, or whether the exercises really do help.
For example, yesterday I dug two holes in the hard dry ground full of tree roots to put roses in. I did this much more slowly than normal, and used pruners to get the roots out. I used my right arm because I can't dig left handed (I did try, it was hopeless). At one point a root gave way and the spade stopped resisting my weight. My arm descended to its fullest extent very quickly. The shock gave me pins and needles in my arm for 5 minutes or so. Later that evening doing the pulley exercise I found I could reach the bar again, which I haven't been able to do for two weeks. (Since the class started.)

Interesting.

Mainly though I'm very thankful that it is still improving, even if progress is very slow.

After the class I went straight to work on the bus, although straight does not really desrcibe the route. It takes one hour - near enough. In a car I could do it in 35 minutes easily.

Sunny Saturday So-Far

The forecast for today was rain. It has not arrived, so I have been able to do a little work in the garden. I managed about an hour - including some digging. I have finally planted one of the rose bushes we were given for our 25th. I stopped to watch the F1 qualifying - by then I needed a break. The tablets I am taking (I assume) mean that I have had an upset stomach all week, but I found that this morning after the garden work it was gone. As I sat still to watch qualifying the pain went as well. One hour feeling normal, if rather tired.

I have started to group the exercises to make them easier to remember.
Wall exercises: The wall ladder, and the Isometric resisted exercise (pushing your own weight away from a wall) are probably the easiest and generate the least pain.
Towel Exercises: (or scarf in my case) one is to raise the are behind the back the other is my version of the pulley exercise.
Stick Exercises: Using a stick to raise the arm above the head, forward and sideways, and to push the arm to rotate the shoulder - stand with your back against a wall, put your arms by your side, bend you elbows so that your hands are pointing forward, now rotate the arm outwards so that the fore arm is also against the wall. (A picture really does paint a thousand words, but I don't have one for this exercise, so I'll not go on about it any longer) For this I cannot get beyond about 10 degrees from the forward pointing position.
Weight exercises: The pendulum you have already seen, the other is to strengthen arm movements as above.

Forsythia, a sure sign of Spring

Car slapping

I am plastered. Just so that you realise that this has nothing whatever to do with alcohol I have included the picture. I also thought this picture might me more acceptable for facebook as there are some who don't sound happy about the unclothed torso. Yesterday I explained that the intent behind this is to allow me to sense the movement in my back. It works well for bending over, and very well for slapping cars, but not very well, if at all, for tiny movements of the shoulder blade when lying face down on the bed. Still I will keep trying, and keep exercising. "There is no gain without pain" they say and it is no doubt true, but after Friday's manipulations there is no time without pain either, so I may as well go for the gain.

Today Jo and I went to Pipps Hill to look at printers to see if any of the rear feeding ones would fit in the 15" high space and still allow access to the paper. It seems they will. I now thing I know what the new printer will be.

After that I took a short trip to the town centre to pay in some money that my son had given me (to pay off his loan). On the way across the notoriously badly designed Sun Street zebra crossing I stopped and waited for the driver of the car to acknowledge my presence. He didn't. He didn't even look my way, just drove off. As he passed I managed to slap the side of his car. Once round the roundabout and on the High Street he slowed down as he passed me and wound down his window. We exchange pleasantries and he left. Shall I say that he was not impressed with having his car slapped, and I'm quite sure he realises that I am not impressed that I was nearly run over. I also think he was properly awake by then.

So to cheer me up and remind me that spring is almost here - these are the dwarf daffodils poking their heads through the grass and winter debris to get some sun.

John 17:1-11 & Summer is coming

Yesterday, I preached on John 17:1-11. This is Jesus' 'high priestly' prayer, or at least a part of it. The lectionary is a strange thing indeed. You can read the text here, although there is no recording, because it was an evening service. Having lead at the 10:00am service, there was not much left of the day to do very much with. As usual, I came home from church with loads of papers, and haven't read them all yet.

Today is our public holiday in lieu of May Day (1st May). We had decided yesterday that we would have Monday prayers anyway. I'm not sure what the regular practice is, so decided to go ahead. The reading we had from Numbers 26 was about Baalam. He is a really odd guy. There he is beating his donkey because it won't go the way he wants, and it speaks to him. His reaction? He just replied. It could have been his best friend talking (perhaps it was?). If I was riding a donkey, and it spoke to me, I might just be VERY surprised.

At the start of May we are used to seeing the garden begin to grow vigorously. The May trees - Hawthorns are already loosing their blooms, so summer is advancing at a pace. Our Azalea is also in full bloom, which rarely happens before the middle of May. The bluebells are also in full flower, and if the weather is nice tomorrow we will go and look at them in the local nature reserve. These are a small clump from our back garden.

Autumn?

I'm expecting rain because its a public holiday, but the forecast is good. Today I was up early (for me, on a Saturday), as I had an appointment with the Bank at 9am. Why do I need an appointment to close an account? Well, as you have surely guessed, its a marketing opportunity. So up and out by 8:45. It was a foggy morning, but already the sun was strong and my spirits were raised. "It' going to be a nice day!" When I got back I walked into the garden. My feet were immediately wet from the dew, and the garden is covered in spiders webs:This is probably normal behaviour for spiders, but it struck me how much is going on in the world. What do they catch that low to the ground - they must catch something or they wouldn't spin webs. So there is a whole 'insect' world in my garden that I've hardly thought about, until the dew made a small part of it visible.

Later the kind lady who comes to help with our garden (I fix her computer in return) was round, and more clearing up was done. The garden looks better than its been for a good few years. When she comes, we are motivated to do some as well, so real progress is made.

My week - at a glance

Tutor Group – Monday

I got my Hermeneutics essay (on Revelation) back, as you already know, I had “Pass” on the end. There were of course one or two other comments, mostly OK, and one comment about a piece which I remember not finishing!! I'm really very pleased with this, because it means I have an idea of the level I have to work at for future essays, and other submissions. 2 down, and loads to go.

Cancelled – Thursday I received a phone call from the Argos activity line. Our racing event has been cancelled (not enough participants), after six months of trying to book it we're back to square one!.

Manager leaves – Friday Last Wednesday I heard a rumour that my manager might be moving on. On Thursday, I was told unofficially by a colleague that he was leaving the company. On Friday I received an e-mail, which, heavily paraphrased, said “I'm leaving the company. Thanks for your commitment and support in the past, you have some difficult challenges ahead this year – good luck!” Shock was not the word, as you can imagine. Anyway, the guy who has taken over is someone I've worked with before, and is UK based, rather than being based in America. So that's probably a good thing, but we don't yet know who will get his job. The speculation has started.

Hawthorn – Saturday I was asked to put up the new washing line. No problem, it's a nice day for it, but I'll have to give the tree a trim, so that I can get to the branch, to tie on the line on. Well, I started, and there always seemed a bit more to cut off. That tree has needed a trim for a good few years. Some 'tree surgeon' came round, and said £400 to trim it down to say 1/3^rd the size. After my “Hmm, that's rather a lot” he came down a couple of times to £250 – still too much in my opinion. Mike was a great help, and I think enjoyed himself, hanging off branches, doing lots of sawing, and a little running away as he was almost smothered by a falling branch. There are two branches cut through, but still firmly attached to the tree. That's going to be a challenge for later. As Andy said, “It's more a 'Number 1' than a trim.” Yes, if you've guessed, you're right, the washing line isn't up yet!

GRID – Sunday Not F1, that hasn't started yet, but the church rota for the next quarter. I find I'm preaching twice, after being told that I probably wouldn't get any slots. Also, they're both at 10am, which is better than expected. Let's just hope the training doesn't take off in a big way.

Carvery - Sunday Andy had a day off, and as promised we went to the Stockbrook Carvery. It's very nice, the food is excellent, and the service is good. The place to go for Sunday Lunch, if you don't want to travel far. Looking forward to doing it again sometime. I'm now very full, and very tired, and very satisfied. I've also just watched Corpse Bride, so I've had a very good weekend.