Garden Diary #5

TO DO #1 – dismantle the old raised beds, rebuild as 2 x 2m instead of 3 x 1m squares. Use the old site near the lawn to prepare for the two trees. New beds will be for root veg and/or salad, not sure which to do first, must check planting plan.
TO DO #2 – order topsoil for next weekend.
TO DO #3 – make a list of what to sow/plant and when, by month.
Ordered a starter pack of Gripples, mainly for the raspberries.

Garden Diary #4

Ordered some fruit from Blackmoor Nurseries: A ‘Family’ apple tree, this is a dwarf tree with 3 varieties of apple grafted onto it, courtesy of Dr Frankenstein. It grows to 8-9’. Bountiful is a cooker as we don’t have space for a Bramley. Raspberries: 10 canes of Prosen & 10 canes of Polka for extended season and finally a Cherry Maynard - 2 Year old tree on a dwarf rootstock, about 6’ max. That’s the 'orchard' sorted.
Picked up a bunch of free pallets from the local garden centre, to stand the potato sacks on – keeps them a bit further away from the slugs ! Also, will help keep weed fabric in place over the wild patch at the southern end of the lawn.

Garden Diary #3

I planted the gooseberry bush and blueberry bush which were previously in pots, at the south end of the plot, next to the shed and next to one of the rhubarb crowns, all in an east-west row. They will get lots of sun there, from mid-late morning for the rest of the day. These are all straight into the soil, not in beds but with good soil and compost added to the stoney mess of the original ground.
Blueberry is not looking very happy – it needs ericaceous fertilizer asap.
Rhubarb already has shoots appearing ! Must resist urge for rhubarb crumble – they need to be left alone this year to help the new crown establish.

Garden Diary #2

Steve and I made up the 2 new linkabord raised beds, 2m x 1m each.
Steve dug pits 6-8” deep, so we can put sharp sand and compost into the bottom, before adding the raised bed sides and filling with topsoil. End result will be about 12” deep beds of which 6” will be raised. These run north-south along the western edge of the plot. Lots of sun but also lots of wind so we plan to put a windbreak screen up along the wire fence.
These beds are for the 3 varieties of asparagus crowns which arrive end March/April. Asparagus fern gets to about 5’ tall !

Garden Diary #1

Received a large rhubarb crown from Uncle Tommy, variety unknown. Divided it into 3 parts, rather unscientifically with a spade, but making sure each segment had some shoots. Planted one in each southern corner of plot, 3rd one is for mum. Put lots of home-made compost into the hole first and backfilled with growbag soil from last years tomatoes.
They need a FYM mulch when the leaves die back later in the year and poss some nitrogen before then.

Garden Diary

I am going to document our work to transform a patch of former agricultural land into a working fruit and vegetable garden, providing the majority of our produce, hopefully within about 12 months.

When we took ownership, the good thing was that it had been grazed by both cows and sheep so was well manured and not too out of control. The bad bit was the soil level varied by about 6 feet with a big 'basin' in the centre of it, and the only thing slowing down the couch grass was the rocks.

The basin has now been levelled but with fairly low grade filler - lots more rocks, just a bit of soil, not good enough to grow anything except more couch grass.

The fence is up, so we are now taking control and starting to lay out the raised bed areas. A little bit later than I would have liked for this season, but we should have time to get a good range of crops in, even if its not everything - like we probably wont have a greenhouse until next year.

Happy 5th Birthday Charlie

Our boy Charlie was 5 years old yesterday. It's his party today in the village hall with lots of friends.
What a smasher... here's a recent picture.

Red Nose Day

I'm a bit (ok, a lot) of a grumpy-old-man when it comes to charridy events like Red Nose Day. A mixture of political views (charity replacing social duty etc. - I won't rehearse the well worn arguments here) coupled with manufactured (and joyless?) organised-compulsory-mass-participation-fun!!! and all that it entails (TV, Radio etc.).
However, Charlie has been counting down the days as they are allowed to wear red noses and red T-shirts at school. Bless.

Bowie on working in a record shop in the 60's

These could be heroes . . . one day-Arts & Entertainment-Music-TimesOnline:
This is to promote DBs involvement as a "Nokia Music Recommender".
Some nice recollections about a time I don't really remember, yet can associate with.

"A record shop was just about the coolest place one could hang out in back then — perhaps not quite as cool as a coffee bar or the burger-selling innovation known as the Wimpy Bar, but it ran a very close second. People who were “aware” were attracted to record shops."

does it suck or rock?

does it suck?
Just in case you can't decide if something in your life is good/bad (rocks/sucks) these nice people have provided a simple tool to help you :-)
High scores are good.
Here's a few things that are clearly important to me - it seems the Gruffalo rocks all our worlds and I am entirely average.
The West Ham result clearly shows this system doesn't work!!!

the gruffalo 10.0
bowie 9.8
sylvian 9.5
west ham united 9.4
northstar 9.4
marmite 6.9
linux 6.3
steve adams 5.0

ARTO LINDSAY Photos

Stumbled upon these great recent Arto Lindsay photos... (dig the beard!)
DARIO VILLA - ARTO LINDSAY
whilst I was attempting to see what he is up to since his last solo CD.
Not much it seems - though he did produce this interesting sounding CD on Matthew Herbert's label: MICAH - Everything.
The photography site has some other nice jazz musician sets too.

Ask tries U.K. guerrilla marketing campaign

This News.com article reports on an attempt at an edgy, guerrilla marketing campaign by Ask.
It seems fairly lame to me, both in the approach (trying toooooo hard to be cool and edgy) and in the arguments it makes about "information freedom". Yes, we need to be careful about handing any company a monopoly.... but what makes Ask such a great alternative?
Their site seems laden with more obtrusive advertising per results-page (than google), and less relevant results (than google or yahoo)

Ask tries U.K. guerrilla marketing campaign | News.blog | CNET News.com
More here: http://valleywag.com/tech/advertising/a-botched-revolt-against-google-244111.php

Blue Peter fakes phoneline winner

Blue Peter fakes phoneline winner | The Register:
This has been covered everywhere, of course... but I had to laff at the wonderful subheading from the Register on this:

"Here's one we made up earlier"

No rules, no boundaries for Frisell

No rules, no boundaries for Frisell:
Nice interview with humble-guitar-genius Bill Frisell.
"Music has always been the place for me where anything is possible,'' he says. 'You can just do whatever you want, and it doesn't hurt anybody. You can try anything -- you can jump off a cliff, or a tall building. You can be aggressive or not. It doesn't do anything but good."

One for my Dad - twirl a squirrel...

YouTube Video - twirl a squirrel

Arrgggh!!! - my Palm T3 just died

"My Palm T3 just died.
Symtoms:
Working fine in the morning, pulled it of my pocket in the afternoon - no life whatsoever."
I posted a message to this forum... let's see if anyone can help...

Petition to stop the BBC crippling it's new digital services.

I don't sign many petitions, but I signed this one.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to prevent the BBC from making its iPlayer on-demand television service available to Windows users only, and instruct the corporation to provide its service for other operating systems also.

Go here and sign up.

Don't let Granny Pam see this !

The Daily Puppy (Warning: Overly Cute).
Also goes with this: DogsBlog.com

Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes (Youtube Video)

The term Web 2.0 (Two dot oh) has been widely used over the past year or two to describe the "next generation" of web services and technologies which "emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users" (Wikipedia Web 2.0).
The video (link) is a very nice summary for techies and non-techies alike - it's worth the 5 minutes.

MS Vista

There was lots of press coverage of the new MS Vista OS recently.
Some of my friends and family ask me for advice about technology and I usually make it clear that I generally dislike MS and their products and think they do not provide good value for money.
Increasingly both of the main options (Windows or Mac) utilise restrictive technology (e.g. DRM) to stop your computer doing what you want and doing what it is told by the content companies (i.e. music and film).
I think that Linux (see: www.getgnulinux.org) is now ready for most "civilian" users these days - although if you have some specialist needs or devices you may well be tied to a MAC or Windows.

Here are a couple of links to mainstream (i.e. not the geeky ones) reviews:

Dim Vista - Forbes.com: "Windows Vista: more than five years in the making, more than 50 million lines of code. The result? A vista slightly more inspiring than the one over the town dump. The new slogan is: 'The 'Wow' Starts Now,' and Microsoft touts new features, many filched shamelessly from Apple's Macintosh. But as with every previous version, there's no wow here, not even in ironic quotes. Vista is at best mildly annoying and at worst makes you want to rush to Redmond, Wash. and rip somebody's liver out."

NYT's David Pogue on Windows Vista : The New York Times' Tech Editor with an amusing video review (Youtube) comparing the "new features" in Windows Vista with Apple OSX.

Schneier on Security: DRM in Windows Vista: This is a bit more techy but worth reading about the restrictive technology in Vista.

Bottom line from me: Don't "upgrade" to Vista unless you really are sure you know why you want it.