Sunday, July 29, 2007

Busy weekend...

... in a domestic kind of way. Friday morning we volunteered at Abberton and helped brush down one of the hides in anticipation of a fresh coat of paint. The afternoon was spent shuttling around Colchester on various errands, and mum and dad joined us for a fish and chips supper before we settled down to watch the Jericho season finale from last week. It's so pleasing to be able to describe it as the season finale rather than the series finale - CBS's decision to resurrect it after initially ditching it will hopefully see it either end gracefully after another seven episodes or (better still) make the most of its second life and become a fixture in American TV land in the years to come.

Saturday saw me finally put together a compost bin I bought at the beginning of the year - my motivation was my composting piece for BBC Countryfile magazine (a far cry from my usual line of work!). I had to write and photograph four steps on getting your compost bin up and running - I discovered some useful tips in the process (like putting coarse material - in my case, a load of twigs - at the bottom of the pile to aid circulation and drainage, which speeds up the composting process). That stretched over the whole day as I had to mow the lawn to get enough grass cuttings for the first layer, but it was a day well spent.

Today we've pottered about with intent again - housework mainly, but I found the time to drag some shelving out of the attic and put it up in the side hallway, so now the downstairs loo isn't blocked and my shoes have somewhere to call home.

A fair of amount of dreamtime has occurred during the quiet moments too - we're considering a greenhouse for next year (finances permitting - my work still hasn't really recovered from the closure of Australian XP), and I fancy trying the solar-powered heater project found here, which featured in the BBC's excellent It's Not Easy Being Green TV series. That would enable us to grow vegetables all year round, helping cut our food miles down.

We've made good progress again on that front this year, but there's a lot of slack to take up next year - so far, though, we've harvested potatoes, broad beans and spinach from the allotment, with tomatoes, rhubarb, strawberries and raspberries from the garden. We're thinking about building some beds here next year for fruit and veg that needs more attention than the once or twice weekly trips we make to the allotment.

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