Cold week

12°C, rain (at last)

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Manflu: on the tail end, it’s been a whole week.
Runner beans are amusing: I feel like a little kid with this, but I planted runner beans and they shot up after 2 days. The bean drives a spear like root downwards lifting itself out of the ground. Next it splits and the first leaves grow out of the gap. Remember growing cress seeds on blotting paper when you wre at junoir school? It feels like that. Simple pleasures!

Presumably, I wait ’till the bean part has used its food up and withered before I plant it out.
Please advise.
Film: A Beautiful Mind- I’ve got mixed feelings about this one, but basically, a mathematical genius (John Forbes Nash) suffering with schizophrenic delusions struggles with his meds, brutal 1950s mental health treatment and a marriage. He lives with the imagined characters to the end, but his wife (real) also does not age with her model-like looks. According to Wiki, there is some considerable deviation from the guy’s real life.
There are plenty of other references to J Nash on the web, co-incidentally, on the BBC‘s site today in
"Creative minds ‘mimic schizophrenia’"

You must realise what a feat of concentration this page has been with the sound of my dog’s gurgling belly in here.

compost

23°C, cloudless & still

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Getting better, had the energy to load up the compost with the neighbour’s compost binful. Grass cuttings are amazing, they come out all warm.
The Arborist is coming soon to cut that Eucalyptus tree down. that means some swift fence building at just the right time. I hope it rains, the fence posts will be so much easier to drive in. I may have the energy to replace the gutters & arrange the feed to the butt in a day or two.
Hildur Guðnadóttir:

Doesn’t that look like Clevedon Pier? It does, doesn’t it?

Return to the slow country

26°C, hot & sunny

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It’s not ironic that I have a cold on the hottest weekend of the summer so far. It’s merely a coincidence. there are always advantages to this kind of thing- maybe my Achilles tendon can recover fully with a few days off the bike. Dosed up with cold remedy I have been able to dig out another slab, plant some wild-flowers (don’t worry, I bought them, they’re legit). Comfrey and a few others.
I thought I had got all of those slabs, but there are a few left. I will route them all out in the end.
Those recycled compost bags are so cheap that it’s no problem to use them until my own compost heap is ready.

This is the Pyracanthus, the slabs were to stop Rosie digging, but she’s not interested in digging any more.So they’re gone.

Here is my newest Artemesian.

Big But

15°C, it’s warming up. Light frost to begin.

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Bought a water butt; haven’t exactly figured how I’m going to plumb it in but at least I got the new guttering to feed it.
Perhaps a photo when I am not so bone tired.

That really is a fabulous Angelica plant, don’t you think?

Tendinitis

13°C, showers soon

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Mild Achilles-tendinitis has been niggling for the past few weeks. It’s very mild but stubbornly persistent, no treatment yet, but I may use ibuprofen before I ride today.

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Rode: only did 35 miles and feel rather tired. Something’s not right. The rain didn’t come, had to hose the garden instead.

A Janus outlook

11°C, clear.

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Looking into the future and the past. The Future, holds a day resting, I shall paint window ledges and bake a rhubarb crumble. This one will have apples and I quite fancy some grated ginger.
The past contains a week of tiring workload, late nights and an unforgettable concert in Manchester. My tutor group did their last day at school yesterday. I made them a leaving card with a portrait on the front. They went down well enough , I suspect that they were better drawings than last time.
The recent past is recorded in some quite nice photos in the woods: May at its best.:

That crappy little Fuji camera can redeem itself under favourable conditions.

...now for a catnap

Groovy!

3-12°C, cold but bright.

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Deaf Institute concert: The Books in a very groovy venue. Maybe tell you later if you are good, I now have some serious drawing to do.

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We had travelled back in time to the 1970s. That decade looked better then I remembered; all earthy colours, apart from the purple nylon-flock wallpaper. Most of the blokes wore beards; the girls were under thinner layers of make-up than most of the impasto-caricatures that walk these streets. The Deaf Institute had a cafe on the first floor with the dance-hall upstairs. The only problem was the impressive looking domed roof with skylights- that meant the band couldn’t start until 21.45 when the light had faded enough for us to see their light-show.
I enjoyed the show thoroughly, despite the sound which was poorer than at Warwick a few years ago- it sounded a bit muffled and some speech was hard to follow. We struggled to think of a venue as stylish as this in the Midlands- maybe the Glee Club. I don’t know.