In Pictures: Getting organised!

Beds and sheds

I built the shed yesterday.  It took two of us all bloody day; mega thanks to Tauren who I now owe a pint.

I'm gonna offer a review of the shed: it's not a well-made thing at all.  One of the windows didn't fit the frame, such that I had to carve the frame to size with a wrecking knife.  It has too many bits and they don't fit together very well.  You need to buy a silicon sealant separately lest it leak, yet it doesn't say that anywhere until after you've bought it.  The roof felt supplied is too small to adequately cover the roof, so I'll need to buy a bucket of pitch to cover the roof.

I bought this from a major DIY chain, one of the big three.  I'll go down there tomorrow and ask them for a bucket of pitch and a tube of sealant; if I don't get them then I'll publish the name.

Pics:

Glad I'm not claustrophobic...

Now that the shed's no longer an immense strew of timber, I have the opportunity to get stuck into building the beds.  I've spent this morning dividing the pallets and stacking the wood ready for reassembly, though it'll be a couple days yet as I've just ran out of nails.  

In cuter news: 

Bill has investigated the roof of the shed, the climbability of the new trellis, and found them both to his liking.  

George and I like to sit together and watch Gardeners World, me for the tips and George for Monty Don's old retriever.  "George, you wanna watch the dog show?"  So today our Sam says to me "this isn't about George liking the dog at all, is it?  You're watching this because you like gardening!"  Well no shit, Sherlock.  

Mike has celebrated the new Spring with some new growth: 

It's my day off from caring today, so I shall be spending the evening in Skyrim.

Until next time xx

In Pictures: SNOW!

The garden

Snowy buddleia is snowy

A blade of Grazing Rye, sown as a cover crop between the rows of V. faba, pokes up from beneath the snow.  

The ramp

This is the inside of one of the bins, taken about half an hour after the binmen took the refuse.  Prior to them taking it, the bin had had a lid on it.  In the half hour since the closed bin was opened it managed to fill with snow to an inch deep at the base of the meniscus; and mark you that's a bloody deep meniscus, on the shallowest side it's 4 inches from base to height, and on the deepest side it's a foot.

So I went down to Radnor Gardens to see it in the snow:

This snowman was pursuing these ducks at a very sedate pace:

And downriver, Twickenham was shrouded in fog and snow.  It was hard enough to see that far in these mild conditions; if the wind picks up to a blizzard I would not want to be on the river, or on a bike, or doing anything whatsoever where a lack of concentration might kill me or someone else.  

Winter is in full swing!

Cool Animal of the Month, 01/13: the Harlequin Toad

In Pictures: MugGate!

This is what happens when the same bunch of activists are cooped up together in the same place for too long. If they don't get new blood, new ideas, the occasional voice of reason, they start to get a bit... sidetracked. Next thing you know it's "OMG there are TOO MANY MUGS!"

  This is a real conversation that I was involved in.  I'm "Bill Door" below:

  It's funnier with rum.  

Update:  I've since been banned from Occupy London for "flaming".  Apparently it's now offensive to point out that we've got bigger things to worry about than mugs.  

20/11

A blog post's silence. 

In Pictures: My first strawberry!

These are of Pinky this morning.  

That yellow ball in the centre is the flower's female sex organ.  It's a massive soft shell.  The tiny yellow things just about visible on the outside of this shell are the flower's ovaries; dozens per flower.  Each ovary holds an oocyte.  Once the oocytes are fertilised to become seeds, that fleshy yellow shell swells with sugar and nutrients, in the process turning red. 

The ovaries harden to protect the seeds, which are kept on the outside of the berry so they can easily find the soil when some pigeon excretes them.  

In Pictures: Squirrel Stalking

No squirrels were harmed in the making of this blog, though Bill's ego might've took a knock.  

In Pictures: The lawn so far and my new Jasmine

In Pictures: The Dig-Over

In Pictures is something I'll do now and then; often with few or no words.  Generally when either A) I'm knackered, or B) the pictures say more than words might.  Tonight it's chiefly A with a good dollop of B.  

On the left here, you can see George's social hole.  I haven't the heart to repair that bit of fence.