Grateful for London Transport

Yesterday I had a day off and went to Saffron Walden for a visit to the Fry Gallery to look at the Edward Bawden pictures.

This meant getting to Tottenham Hale to get the Cambridge train (two trains an hour), getting off at Audley End. At first sight the list of buses on the poster at the bus stop at the station looked very promising. However, looking more closely, most of the buses run very infrequenhtly eg only Tuesdays, or only during the school term. So I suppose it was lucky I had only a 25 minute wait. It was a large mini bus I caught with a cheerful, friendly driver, which was nice.

After visiting the gallery and 3 charity shops, not finding a vegetarian cafe (I'm vegan) or a pub that would do basic pub food (so I could have something like chips) I then waited for a bus back to the station. There was a bus that ran once a day during school term, but that didn't turn up. The once-an-hour bus turned up 10 minutes late so I waited 50 minutes for the bus and just missed a train.

It took me 2 1/2 hours to get there and 2 3/4 hours to get back.

I enjoyed my day off, but am glad that I can get round London so easily and don't need a car.

Chilly June Sunday

There were very cool mornings this week, but today there has been a almost chilly wind keeping the temperature down all day (it's now 4 pm). I went on a bike ride but, instead of going all the way to Limehouse as planned, kept it short.

Peddling back along the Leabridge Road I did see an egret wading in the overflow channel that runs underneath. I've seen one before, flying over me when I was kayaking down the old River Lea between Stonebridge and Tottenham, but it was still exciting. I am told you can often see them on the reservoirs.

I wanted to put out my climbing french beans (the 4 that have germinated!) and my courgettes but decided it would be too much of a shock for them.

I planned to put together my hammock stand, but as it wasn't nice enough to then test it out couldn't summon the energy.

Starting the woodpile for next winter

My carpenter neighbour has left 5 bags of offcuts on the doorstep this week. I will have to chuck out the bits with paint and varnish on (bad for the flue and bad for the plants I use the wood ash on). But I expect to get 3 bags out of it. Then where to store it until the log store is delivered and built.

water butts empty!

Both water butts are now empty. Very grateful for an outside tap.

By turning on the stop cock in the outside lavatory before using the washing machine (which is in the conservatory) and closing it afterwards through the winter has meant the pipe outside hasn't bust. Nuisance doing it but ultimately worth the effort.

3 June - May at last!

Yesterday I put out my runner beans and tomatoes into the garden - jobs I normally do in May.

Usually the love-in-the-mist grows like a weed in my garden, this year I had very few, and most of those were where the beans were to go, so up they came! Also very few swiss chard came up, and only one ruby chard which was on the edge of the runner bean bed. I tore off some leaves so they didn't provide a route for snails to reach the beans and hope, by keeping an eye on it, that I can keep it to goes to seed.

I haven't been able to use the metal and bean wigwams I bought as the ground was too dry. Next year I will have to try in late winter when hopefully the ground will be soft enough for me to press the centre stakes into the earth.

I used the green plastic slug collars round each of the beans. It is always a worry that I have trapped a snail, or more likely a slug inside the collar with the bean. This morning only two bean plants had nibbled leaves. One had the culprit - a snail - crawling on the slug collar!

I put some tomatillo seedlings into the seed pots the beans had come out of. And next weekend I will put out the climbing french beans.

This morning I had extra watering to do, but am looking forward to all the vegetables in a few months time!

Wildflower bonanza

Beautiful day today, and I cycled to Victoria Park. First time this year in short-sleeves (though I think the man sunbathing in Victoria Park in just a pair of skimpy trunks was showing off, it wasn't that warm!).

Natural stretches of wildflowers were mainly comfrey and sweet cicely. The long swathes of new wild flower meadow in Victoria Park were mainly red campion with some jack in the hedge.

There is a lot of giant hogweed about this year.

ash key carpet forecasts lots of weeding next year

The two ash trees at the bottom of my neighbours garden have lots of large bunches of ash keys.

I already have a carpet of them on the bottom half of the garden even though there are still masses still hanging from the trees.

I forecast next March and April I will be pulling up thousands and thousands of ash key seedlings!