We had peas with our evening meal yesterday. I don't normally like peas, but had to eat these as I had grown them. They were very very fresh and delicious.

I'm not going to bother with the Sweet Green in future - the Delikett grew faster, produced more peas, and are edible both as peas and as mangetout, whereas the Sweet Green only seem to be good as mangetout, they get a weird bitter flavour once they start to pea up.

Discovered yesterday that Lucy Greyhound, who came to the Oldies Club as a stray,is Mollydog's younger half-sister: they have the same father [pedigree]. Admittedly there are 4672 other registered greyhounds that applies to, but still. Bit of a coincidence.

Lucy is almost 2 years younger than Mollydog, but I reckon she looks 1-2 years older.  She raced in Newcastle and that's where she was found straying, but where she's been for the intervening 4 years and how she ended up on the street is anyone's guess.  She was very underweight and her teeth were such a mess they all had to be removed, so pretty sure she hasn't wandered from a loving home.

Poll #1427789
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Is the Shroud of Turin

Is the Shroud Mystery

OMG, OMG, OMG, sooooo exciting! So dramatic!

Am hopping up and down wishing it was tomorrow already. Thank goodness they are showing it all in one week. Otherwise I would probably burst.

There are three different MX5 cars in the local paper today, different ages, mileage, body shape and contact details - but all 3 are California special editions. Weird coincidence.

That's the yellow one, by the way. I do love yellow cars. And Mx5s. Sadly, there is no way that 2 greyhound sized dogs are going to fit into a 2-seater convertible, no matter how yellow it is.

Wordpress: lovely. Just lovely. so well written, so useable. OK, it's basically a blogging engine, but you can get a whole lot done with it very quickly, even if there are some things it just can't do, it doesn't do them gracefully.

Drupal: will drive you mad, but SOOO powerful! Almost anything can be achieved in Drupal: it'll take ages and sometimes it would be quicker to simply write what you want from scratch - but still, its power and flexibility is pretty remarkable. Keep away from the civicrm implementation and all will be well - eventually.

Joomla : Don't. Just, don't. OK, there's a lot of documentation and it's very configurable but it's written for idiots so finding the info you want is really hard as it floats in a sea of fluff. The userbase are full of myth and misinformation, and the code's horrible. Not Drupal, stretch your brain kind of horrible, more 'why would they DO this' horrible.

I can see why it's popular with graphic designers because you can dump the whole template into Dreamweaver, but that's not necessarily a good thing.

My telephone has - well, not quite died, but it is very ill. It still makes calls, but the screen is stuck in 'lantern' mode and won't come out of it, so the address book, clock, etc are invisible.

Fortunately, philmophlegm went over to the Blackberry side recently, so I have his old phone. Amazed by the number of photos of his contacts that he had taken the trouble to store in his telephone. I took great delight in deleting them all. It made me feel like a Cyberman, only, well a happy one that enjoys his work. DELETE!

I am usually a bit sceptical about non-vet pet remedies, particularly ones that sound Victorian* and come in a little brown bottle with a homeprinted label - but this stuff is awesome!

It's loads more effective than any ear treatment we've ever had from the vet, and it has even sorted out Yama's ears - they tended to be perennially manky because of his sneezing problems, and the inside of them had actually got sort of distorted from being so waxy and horrible, but they are now almost clean and pink rather than ewwwww. It's also sorted out Az's minor ear irritation issue (? ear mites?) and Perl's itchy, dark-waxy ears. It is OK for cats and dogs. And it's easy to apply and if they shake their heads after you apply it, you don't get covered in Ear Goo.

Thornit ear powder

* well almost. Apparently it is "Mr W Watchman's proven formula from 1907" and now supplied by "Miss P Bett of Norfolk". Presumably it has survived all its contemporaries on sheer effectiveness, but I do wonder why vets sell you goops that are less effective instead?

1) when installing a new door, always, always, install *the handle* as well as the mortice latch, before closing the door, even if you are just checking the mortice is in the right place.  I knew this, but did it anyway.

2) When fitting a temporary handle before fitting the mortice, consider the position of the receiving doodad on the wall, before you drill.

3) when commissioning new windows, never ever buy, as the only opening window in a room, a window which is smaller than you can comfortably climb through.

4) before climbing through the uncomfortably-tiny window after making above mistake when fitting door, pause carefully and consider the location of all the tools and gadgets you will require to remedy the situation.  Otherwise, repeated journeys may be required.

5) all the above go double if you are the only human being in the house.

Oh well, we now have a new door and doorknob.

 The peas are storming away.  I think the Delikett are doing better and taste nicer than the Sweet Green.  Runner beans are in flower. 

However, putting strawbs along the edge of the bean bed has not worked well: they are North of the pea bed, so aren't getting enough sun and the berries are taking ages to ripen.  Next year, might move them to the south side of what is currently the pea bed, that way they'll get more light. 

Compost is rotting very quickly in this heat.  Sadly, my wormery worms perished this winter: I think the cold was too much, and possibly the drainage needed checking.  I've repopulated with a colony of worms from the compost heap, hoping they will do better. 

The peppers aren't growing as fast as I'd like.  I think they need more feeding.  I am liquid feeding with a seaweed based feed, but I think that the greenhouse beds could do with a good mulch with manure this autumn. 

Apparently it is the hottest day of the year today. For some reason this has caused all my clients to come rushing out of the woodwork wanting things done on their websites.  Sometimes my clients remind me of ants. 

I am one of the 'fluoride generation': or so my shiny new dentist tells me. Although this was my first dentist visit in 9 years, my teeth are reported to be in amazingly good condition and astonishingly clean.  Go teeth! 

Dentist tried to sell me Colgate as apparently far more effective than other toothpastes.  Told him I didn't like the taste.  Dentist non-plussed by this but as he'd just been raving about my astonishingly clean teeth, I felt it was OK to go on using toothpaste that doesn't make me retch. 

I don't know why practically all toothpaste is minty -  and why it has to be such a powerful mint!  It's horrible!.    My currently preferred one is Kingfisher Fennel (sort of aniseedy) , though I reckon a really good flavour would be clove and cinnamon.  Mmmmm cinnamon. 

 "pseudocopulate" :  describes what excited male bees do to orchid flowers which instead of nectar,  offer the saucy delights of a flower shaped like a seductive lady bee to insect visitors.

... a dull post

( Read more... or don't, it's up to you.  )

You know how you get those little short stories that convey a moral? Well, this particular one, the Starfish Story, about how helping one person is always worth it, gets on my tits. Not sure why this one particularly, but it just does. Today I was inspired to rewrite it from the point of view of the starfish.

Actually, my rewrite is also exactly the sort of thing I often don't like because it has an unhappy ending, and I do like a happy ending. If you do too, you probably won't like my version. You have been warned!
( Read more... )

I have had my Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7 for three years now. It still works. It's still a pretty good, reliable camera. It takes decent action shots, excellent close-ups, has a good range of standard modes and if feeling industrious and perfectionist, I can improve results further by manually setting almost everything. I recently bought it a new set of batteries, some of which I haven't even used yet. OK, I am stuck with the one lens, but it's a pretty good one for the size. So, really, I don't need a new camera.  

Alas, I foolishly wandered near a camera review website today.  And I fell horribly in love with the new(ish) Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 - it seems to be the step forward in terms of a really small DSLR-quality camera that I've been looking for.  It's about the same size as my current camera, but with a bigger (and swappable) lens, and using an adaptor, can also take all these lenses.   The reviews say that it focuses as fast as any conventional SLR (important for all those running greyhound shots!). 

It's got no video, but then I shoot video once in a blue moon.   And as a final sign that it is made for me, it comes in red and blue as well as the standard boring camera colours!  I love blue or red gadgets! 

WANT!!!  WANT before we go to Iceland and have exciting new things to photograph!  Unfortunately it costs roughly 500quid that I do not have.   Woe is me!

Oh yes, and if I hadn't idiotically driven my car into a wall for no good reason I could probably just-about-not-quite afford to buy it.  Wail!  Curse!  

The Devil's Vegetable poll:


Poll #1416966 Sprouts
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

The Devil's vegetable is:

In other news, I saw a male green woodpecker this morning, in the middle of an open field. He was industrously examining the fence posts. I think he must have flown in from the woods across the Tamar.

Minor grumble: my new, super-permeable contact lenses seem to be on slow focus. I can see things in a lot of detail, but changing focus on my eyes seems to take ages!

edit: dear me, the rich text editor gets its pants severely twisted once it comes to polls. Back to HTML editor...

Yesterday we had lamb chops, and lacking anything interesting to dress them with, I made a lemon and mint jelly.

I took two lemons, zested and squeezed them, added some water and some sugar and boiled for a bit. Then I tasted and it seemed a bit tart so I put some more sugar in. Finally I added piles of chopped mint and boiled a bit more.  At that point it set if I dripped it onto a cold plate, so I strained out the mint and zest and stuck it in the fridge to congeal.  It was good.

Thing is though, I have no idea if I could have made a larger quantity of less acidic jelly if I'd put more water in, or if it would then just have been a syrup.  Or if I could have got away with one lemon.  I have a vague feeling that this has something to do with the pectin content of the lemons, but how one estimates that, I do not know.

Does anyone know about the theory behind jam and jelly recipes?   I'm OK with making stuff from a recipe, or even improvising based on a recipe -  but would like to know more about how the gelling bit works so I can be more freeform about my jellies in future!  Google is not being helpful today: it gives me recipes, not an understanding of the principles behind them.

Yesterday I planted out my young butternut squash and pumpkin plants. Not sure if they are still there, as it is mizzling and warm: perfect slug weather. 

Some of the aubergine plants in the greenhouse have been munched, but I think there are enough left.  Leaving a row of cabbages in there as bait seems to help. 

A lot of volunteer squashpumpkinthings are coming up in the compost that I brought into the beds from the wormery.  I may allow a few of them to grow to fruition, just to find out what they are since they seem so keen. 

A couple of days ago on my morning walk, I saw a family of foxes hunting rabbits. They were very young foxes, and were not hunting very expertly. There are so many rabbits about this year that they still had plenty to choose from. I did hear a shriek at one point; I didn't see the kill, but I'm thinking that was probably Mum Fox preparing breakfast.

Today I was walking down the hill near the same spot when I realised that there was a fox cub sitting on a wall in front of me. The wind was blowing from him to me, so he can't have scented me, though I'm a little surprised he didn't hear me. The dogs didn't spot him either, unless they thought he was a cat.

I got to about 10 feet of him, and then started to feel a little concerned that he still hadn't spotted me, so I said "Puppy, danger is approaching".

He turned and looked at me for a long moment with ever such a worried expression. Somehow it communicated all in a moment just how hard life is for a fox cub, and how very many things he has to worry about. I felt terribly guilty that I had come storming down the hill with my big feet and my dogs rather than quietly going round. Then he panicked and ran away.

http://www.pawprintsthemagazine.com/?p=4573

I knew it was something like that. oxytocin. yeah...