Wormery working in the heat

Below is a photo of my womery taken on Saturday. The brown sludge was still kitchen veg and weeds, etc, a week earlier, but a few days of heat had turned it to sludge. No signs of worms in the top layer though. Last year I sowed carrots between my leeks and I didn't see a single one come up. Two must have done though, as when I went to clear the bed for the beans (planted out this evening) I found two carrots with long frothy fronds. So in they went into the worm compost. Hopefully on the Tuesday Jubilee holiday I will have time to get the compost from the lower trays.

Wanted: wholemeal, organic sourdough bread

As there wasn't my usual Thursday lunchtime yoga class I was able to go to the farmers' market in Torrington Square near Euston station yesterday lunchtime. For a vegan there's not much, but there is a bread stall and I was able to get a wholemeal sourdough loaf. Very expensive, but I love bread and decided a few years ago that, as I could afford it, I would pay for good bread when I could get it. Usually I have to choose between, organic, wholemeal and sourdough, so good to get two out of three!

Geraniums get the Chelsea Chop

A few years ago I heard about the Chelsea-Chop: at the time of the Chelsea flower show you chop down to about a third or a quarter certain plants so they don't get too tall and floppy. I have done this with the autumn seddums for the last 2 years and it seems to work. This year, despite all the rain making most things in the garden tall and lush, the seddums are quite short and stocky so I have left them. Instead I have cut down 2 of the 3 outdoor geraniums. The one left uncut is 18 inches to 2 feet high (45-60 cm) and I cut the other two down to about 6 inches high - it looks a bit drastic:

I will compare them and see which does best. On a lovely, warm evening I also sowed corriander, carrots, poppies and flower sprouts.

French marigolds to see off conservatory green fly

Several years ago I got greenfly in the conservatory and couldn't get rid of them until I tried french marigolds which worked like a charm. Now every year I buy a strip of 6 french marigolds and put 2 or 3 in the conservatory and the rest in the garden where the slugs eat them. This year in B&Q and Homebase they only had sets of 12 marigolds for sale, and giving up 9 or 10 marigolds for slug food seemed a bit much. I didn't buy any, hoping that not having had any greenfly in the conservatory for years would mean for a year at least I would be OK. Then last weekend I had taken some puppetry books I no longer wanted for the Puppet and Toy Theatre Guild stall at the May Fayre at the Actors Church in Covent Garden (every year lots of Punch & Judy Professrs come to this "fayre" to celebrate the first recorded sighting of Punch in England - in Pepys' diary). On a residents association plant stall were some french marigolds, so I brough 2 at £2 each. This was about the price of 12 at the DIY store, but it was money for a good cause and no waste so I didn't mind. I put them in a small planter today. I also put the mint into a slightly bigger plot. Was pleased to see 2 bumblebees feeding from my wysteria.

Tomatoes suffering from cold nights

I had Tuesday off and, in between the showers, was able to spend some time in the garden. My tomato plants, which I had put out at the weekend, were looking good. Tuesday night was cold (colleagues at work living outside London had had ice on their car windscreens), I checked the tomatoes before leaving for work. They had been badly hit but had survived. Waiting for the bus home from the the local Radical History Group talk last night at ten o'clock it felt a bit nippy, but I forgot to check the tomatoes this morning. If they have no more cold nights they can recover; repeated hits of frosty weather and I won't be having homegrown tomatoes this year!

Ash trees doing it differently

Here is a photo of 3 ash trees, the right hand two are in my neighbours' garden and the left hand one is in the garden next door to them. (There is also another one behind the third tree).

I hope it is clear that the middle tree is nearly fully in leaf and the side two are only just starting to come into leaf. One year my neighbour and I noticed that the tree near the fence between us looked as if it was struggling to keep going. I didn't say anything, but I was rather hoping it would die as I am worried about shade, especially as the trees are still relatively young - and small. But next year it was looking all healthy, and another tree was slow to leaf and was much less leafy when it was in leaf. Also each year one tree doesn't have many ash keys. Beech trees have their "mast" years where all the beeches in an area have loads of seeds (nuts?) and other years hardly any. Other trees are supposed to have a similar pattern, just so extreme. But it seems these ash trees don't read the right books! My neighbours who have liked the trees for the privacy they give them are beginning to be worried by the shade, but it is the tree in their neighbour's garden which gives the most shade to their garden. However, I live in hope that they will get the chop as I don't get any evening sun in garden.

Beating the Bounds bonanza!

I haven't been beating the bounds of the Lammas lands of the Leyton Marches for several years, but the weather was nice and I wasn't elsewhere so off I cycled. Arrived in plenty of time to find I'd missed the beginning as the election of the thanes had already taken place. Then discovered the 2.15 walk I had been aiming for was the Walthamstow Marches beating the bounds, this was the Leyton Marches one. As I was there and Leyton is after all where I live I decided to go on that one. Here we are being warned of the dangers of giant hogweed:

But then I found that part of the route would not be suitable for a bike (over a fence and along a right of way through the paddock of the riding stable) so I went back to join the Walthamstow beating of the bounds. Not as much fun as the Leyton one - no electing thanes, no bouncing of children upside down on suitable boundary markers - even though we had a small child to use!) but I enjoyed the walk in some lovely weather. Only two people I knew, Laurence and Adrian, both of whom I'd last seen at a 65th birthday party only last weekend. Here is me before we beat the waters of the Lea Navigation. We then strip the wands of the ribbons and toss them into the Navigation. In the background is the temporary (we hope) basketball practice court they've built on Leyton Marsh. Even if they keep their promises and return the land to us, it is a dangerous precedent.

As well as the two groups beating the bounds of the Lammas lands, there was a group from St Saviours Church beating their parish boundaries, so at one point there were 3 groups on the marshes!

Bicycle diaries -

In the staff room at work we have book shelves where people put books they have read, don't want to keep but think others might like to read. Had some photocopying to do and had left the book I was reading at home so went to have a look and chose "Bicycle Diaries" by David Byrne. As a musician and artist he travels a lot for his work and started riding a bicycle round the cities he was visiting. "This point of view - faster than a walk, slower than a train, often slightly higher than a person - became my window on the world over the last thirty years - and it still is. It's a big window and it looks out on a mainly urban landscape....Through this window I catch glimpses of the mind of my fellow man, as expressed in the cities he lives in. Cities, it occured to me, are physical manifestations of our deepest beliefs, and our often unconscious thoughts, not so much as individuals, but as the social animinals we are. A cognitive scientist need only look at what we have made - the hives we have created - to know what we think and what we believe to be important, as well as how we structure those thoughts and beliefs....you don't need CAT scans and cultural anthropologists to show you what's going on inside the human mind; its inner workings are manifested in three dimensions all around us. Our values and hopes are sometimes awfully embarrasingly easy to read. They're right there - in the store fronts, museums, temples, shops and office buildings and in how these strcutures interrelate, or sometimes don't. They say, in their unique visual language, "This is what we think matters, this is how we live and how we play."..... I am only half way through the book, and haven't got to the chapter on London yet, I am now thinking how British cities might change if green thinking/living really took off. Road layouts would be designed for cycles and pedestrians. More local shops. But I am a bit stuck as to what else. But I will try to think, as it is easier to get the future you want if you can visualise it first!

Chocolate fudge brownie good for the spirits

But not for the body! But if you don't eat too much at one time (try sharing it!)..... http://wwww.permaculture.co.uk/readers-solutions/raw-chocolate-fudge-brownies-recipe I've made it last night to take it with me to a friend's tomorrow. The recipe talks of a "small" jar of roasted almond butter - but a small jar is less than one cup, so I made up the difference with crunchy peanut butter. When looking for my small mixing bowl I found another bowl which I had got from the charity shop a few years ago and have never used. Couldn't think why I would particularly need it, and it is not particularly amazing to look at, so it's off the the charity shop next Saturday.

Wisty Wisteria

I've seen wisteria out in gardens elsewhere the past fortnight, but only now is my wisteria is out. I've a north facing garden, so that is probably the reason. I have the bush behind the shed:

For several years now I've trained it along the fence:

In the middle of last year I decided to let it continue up my neighbour's ash tree, as the wisteria flowers before the ash comes into leaf. It has reached half way up the tree, but no flowers this year. Next year I hope to have an ash tree full of bloom. Wisteria are supposed to be good for insects, but I've never seen any feeding from the flowers.