This afternoon on my way to the shops, just round the corner from the end of my road, I saw several lengths of clean wood, 50/60 cms long with screws sticking out of them. A short time with a screwdriver and then sawn* in half they would be perfect for my wood-burning stove.
On the way home they were still there. I took my neighbour's shopping into her house, put it all away, sorted out the cheque to pay for it. Went and put my shopping away and then walked up the road to find all the wood gone!
Is there another person with a wood-burning stove, or perhaps an open fire, locally? If so we will now be in competition with each other!
With 2 lots of shopping and one shopping trolley I already propping 3 canvas bags of shopping on the top of the trolley so couldn't have collected the wood on the way home.
* The spell-check didn't like this, but I've just checked my dictionary and it's in there!
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
New energy saving light bulb brightens the sitting room
Wow, I've been in this house a long time! The energy-saving light bulb which I put in the sitting room overhead light a few years after I moved here has blown. So I popped a new one in and it brightens up more quickly - and seems brighter overall (but I expect that's my imagination).
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Should I be picking sloes in the Forest?
I was hoping this year to pick my sloes in a thicket alongside the path near the Middlesex Filter beds which I pass if am taking my cycle ride southwards along the Lea Navigation. However someone picked those in August.
Down in the south it is not a good idea to leave sloes until the first frost as is advised (it saves pricking them with a needle to get the juices to flow). By the time that happens here the sloes have either fallen off or shrivelled up. August seems a bit early though - I pick mine in September.
So on my day off today I went to Chingford Plain on the edge of Epping Forest. The first clump of sloes bushes I came to had plenty of sloes to fill my soya dessert tub with, and plenty left over for someone else.
Picking fungi in Epping Forest is forbidden, mainly because people doing it commercially were taking too many. I am a little worried about whether I should be picking sloes. I don't think I will be making any difference to wildlife. Presumably something eats them - would the stones passing through the digestive tract of an animal be how the plants are distributed? But I think the vast majority of sloes not picked go to waste.
I would quite happily pick blackberries in the Forest, so have decided - for now - that I can do it.
I will be pricking the sloes this evening as I catch up on iplayer.
Down in the south it is not a good idea to leave sloes until the first frost as is advised (it saves pricking them with a needle to get the juices to flow). By the time that happens here the sloes have either fallen off or shrivelled up. August seems a bit early though - I pick mine in September.
So on my day off today I went to Chingford Plain on the edge of Epping Forest. The first clump of sloes bushes I came to had plenty of sloes to fill my soya dessert tub with, and plenty left over for someone else.
Picking fungi in Epping Forest is forbidden, mainly because people doing it commercially were taking too many. I am a little worried about whether I should be picking sloes. I don't think I will be making any difference to wildlife. Presumably something eats them - would the stones passing through the digestive tract of an animal be how the plants are distributed? But I think the vast majority of sloes not picked go to waste.
I would quite happily pick blackberries in the Forest, so have decided - for now - that I can do it.
I will be pricking the sloes this evening as I catch up on iplayer.
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