Jarvis

I'm not here today.

But you were expecting me, and I disappointed you -

That turns... me... on.

The Time Is... Now

*chokes on cornflakes*

Have you seen the weather? The jet stream that has been stubbornly funnelling low after low at the UK since early May is finally curving off to the north, presumably to mete out diluvian justice on the Norweigians as normal. While this doesn't automatically mean warm and settled weather for us, it does mean a return to normal summer conditions over the next few days. Warm weather is round the meteorological corner.


But for retailers, this is too little, too late. In stores up and down the country there are thousands upon thousands of unsold summer items; BBQs, parasols, patio heaters, you name it. If you're looking for a bargain, now's the time; go out and get it*.

However, a plea; just because you can snap up a cheaply constructed item from a chain store for ten pounds doesn't mean that you should. These items are manufactured so cheaply that they will only last a season or two, which not only makes them a poor investment but an environmental disaster as well (this can be seen as a non-electrical manifestation of planned obsolescence). Instead, please consider paying as much money as you normally would do, and buy a price-reduced item of better quality. Think back a decade or two, and if you're old enough you'll remember that BBQs used to be made of cast iron rather than sheet metal. At the moment, I can't help feeling we're presently nearing the shoe event horizon for many types of goods...

*Except for the patio heater. You should know better.

Ahhh....

Grass...? Cut.
Carrots...? Thinned.
Fennel...? Transplanted.
Clover...? Weeded.
Onions...? Lifted.
Garlic...? Yes, that too.
Broad beans...? ...remembered. Even saved a few.
Peas...? Wept over.

Finally... a day in the garden.

First Meeting

Updated! Moved to avoid an event that wiped out a few people, the first meeting of the PFJ will now be at the Thomas Hardye pub (used to be the Trumpet Major) at Fordington on Tuesday 14th August from 7pm. We'll have a pint and a chinwag about how things are going to work - all is open discussion right now. I'm not sure if we'll actually place a first order, or decide to set up a Yahoo group for horsetrading, or whatever - but if nothing else I'll have the catalogues and a big pad of paper with me, so there'll be an opportunity to note down order suggestions. I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible.

Closing thoughts

Best last line in a novel, ever; "And there, at the edge of the sea, he died."

That's been rattling around in my head for twenty-five years, long after I've forgotten the sci-fi book it came from. Pff.

I'm so excited - the weather's giving fine for most of tomorrow so I can actually get out in the garden for a bit! Mind you, there's an inch and a half of rain forecast for the night. Big pink pants.

Times They Are a-Changing

I've been fed up with my wageslave career for a long time now, and just lately I've found it harder and harder to keep myself from bludgeoning the public to death with a bottle of Calpol*. Time was, when I felt like that I'd have a week or two of holiday and the urge to kill would recede enough for me to carry on - but just lately that's not been working. Partly it's me that's changed, but there's no doubt that the job's got less well paid since I started, and it gets more demanding every year. For instance, last week saw me eat the Apple of Doom.

The Apple of Doom was, it must be said, a perfectly normal apple; it's just that it took me ninety minutes to eat it. In pharmacy, y'see, you don't get any coffee breaks (and in many multiple outlets, no lunch breaks either). This isn't legal, but pharmacy falls outside all of the enforcement schedules so it's no-one's job to fix it. Anyway, you grab a bite when you can, and I did. But in between the first bite of my crisp, fresh and delicious apple and the last bite of my brown, soggy and sad apple, I had to deal with a hardware meltdown, a holidaying diabetic who had left his meds behind (without which he would quickly become comatose), and an accidental poisoning. Oh, and a shitload of prescriptions. I didn't enjoy the apple, and it got me to thinking
"I can't let this be the rest of my working life".

So.

Next Tuesday sees Hedgewizard doing the most risky thing since his Do-It-Yourself vasectomy. Yes friends, I'm giving up one half of my employed work in order to become a struggling writer. Go me!

That might sound like a pretty cool idea until you realise that there are a few important caveats.

1) Writing isn't glamorous.
In Hollywoodland, writers are always teh kewlest. Stuff happens to them, like hauntings and murders and treasure hunts and things. In Hollywoodland, writers always have perfect hair and makeup, and are often used as consultants by a grateful police force. And yet in Hollywoodland, beneath it all writers often have souls tortured enough to make even the most hardened gothgirl offer her cleavage for signing (something that happens to Robert Englund a lot, apparently). Sadly this is all wish-fulfillment bunk; writers project themselves into glam alter-egos which Hollywood perpetuates and polishes up until we all believe it. Real writers don't get out much, so they're pasty-faced and suffer from haemorrhoids from sitting for long periods.

2) Writing isn't easy.
Little Britain's skit on Barbara Cartland apart, writing is bloody hard mental work for the most part and not all that easy to break into. It isn't enough to be as fabulously talented and good looking as I am; no, you need to get breaks, and that means knowing people in publishing, mostly. Or already being famous. Lacking the latter route, it's probably going to mean years of hanging around book fairs for me. Thankfully I'm a social (although not gregarious) animal, and not afraid of a bit of limelight when I can get it... Oh, and then there's performance anxiety. A well-established belief is that "everybody has a book in them", but any literary agent will tell you "and in most cases that's exactly where it should stay".

3) Writing isn't fabulously well-paid.
Or at least, not as much as you much expect. Of course, there's always the possibility of a big break; Terry Pratchett once told me;
"The first Discworld book made enough for me to put a small conservatory on the side of the house. The second paid off what was left of the mortgage, which was nice. The all of a sudden with the third book, something clicked with the public and all of a sudden I had enough to put a small rainforest under glass."

4) I haven't made a lot of money from writing yet.
Understatement. To date I've made around fifty pounds, which just about covers what I've spent on postage and maybe a pint of beer too. This isn't a great record, but then I wasn't trying to sell my work before and was just happy to see my work in print. Now I want money. I wonder if I'll get some?

5) We haven't actually, as yet, worked out what will replace the missing 50% of our income. Not as such, anyway.
Oh, yes. Details, details. Starting out as a writer involves a lengthy period of pennilessness, and then when you get your first advance there's no more more until you've worked it off. For this reason I'm continuing to freelance (or "locum" in pharmacyspeak) for a bit, to make sure we can pay the bills until WP finds gainful employment. I guess that means I'm really only going to be 25% writer to start off with, so don't expect miracles...

But to begin with, a couple of weeks off to get to grips with all the things that have been running away with me, and remind my family who I am; hopefully by then I'll know if the pitch for my first book has been picked up by the publisher who's currently sniffing cautiously round it like a cat sizing up a tin of cheap cat food. Huzzah!




*Or generic paracetamol**, I'm not fussy.

**That's acetaminophen to you US folks, or Tylenol. Yes, if I lived in the US I'd use the brand name too!

Conversations with the Weather

Okay, background. This has been the worst summer in living memory in the UK, and that's official. With 208% of the average rainfall for the last three months, around half of the harvest of peas and potatoes has been destroyed, and unless a miracle happens in the next two weeks the wheat harvest is going to follow suit. You can imagine what's going to happen to prices, I'm sure.

Normally at this time of year I even spend my evenings in the garden, carrying on until it's dark (longer if there's a full moon). Not this year. This year I've mostly dashed from the car to the house, with a folder or something over my head, and locked the door behind me.

It has not been a good summer.

To avoid going mad, or perhaps just to do it in a structured way, I decided to hold an imaginary conversation with the weather this morning as I did a bit of crisis gardening*. It went something like this.

Hedgewizard: (struggling into waterproofs) Right. I'm dressed for it, and I'm going to garden today no matter what. There's only so many days I can sit it out.
Weather: Really? I'm impressed.
HWz: Bet your ass. Come on, do your worst.
Weather: Hmm. About that...
HWz: (warily) What?
Weather: When was the last time we had a good blow?
HWz: ...
Weather: You know, a hoolie. When was the last time we had a really good gale?
HWz: You wouldn't dare.
Weather: A really impressive bit of bluster, with the foliage still heavy with rain. You remember those brussels plants?
HWz: What?
Weather: The ones your haven't put a cloche over yet?
HWz: There's been no point. The butterflies have all drowned.
Weather: That's what you think. And anyway, you're forgetting the other functions of a cloche - like protection from autumn gales.
HWz: But it's only Jul... (words are blown away from his mouth as gale commences from nowhere)
HWz: Aargh! (dashes to shed for netting to cover hoops with)
Weather: Oh, we can't have that. (Stair-rods commence, as gale continues. Movement is impossible)


(some time later)
HWz: I knew you couldn't keep that rain up for long. Where's the netting gone?
Weather: (distracted) Hmm? Oh, sorry. You didn't close the shed door properly, so I borrowed it. It's two gardens up.
HWz: I'll just go and get it, then.
Weather: I shouldn't bother. I've snapped two of your brussels plants in the middle. And uprooted the rest.
HWz: Uprooted??
Weather: You'd better believe it. And you remember those broad beans you used to have?


*Pulling up drowned plants, cutting away fungus-infected foliage, and sobbing. It's the new self-sufficiency, I tell you.

Jerky Virgin

Never say drowned. This weekend saw the annual Gathering of the Clans bash near Swanage, where a few hundred damp and rather bedraggled druids, heathens, pagans, wiccans and assorted eclectics gathered at a private camping ground to eat, drink and be merry. There were enough marquees available to make sure that no-one got wet if they didn't want to, but it never ceases to amaze me how ready people are to take a soaking, even while camping, if there's something they want to do. The Family Hedge were able to watch a re-enactment troupe hammering hell out of each other with pointy things, walk with a man who finds and reports ancient marker stones, have a crack at archery, send fire lanterns sailing into the sky, listen to the music of the Dolmen and others, and catch up with some old friends. Oh, and bitch about the weather.


Number One Son is part of the official camera detail at the camp, and is convinced he's going to stay there for the full seven days come hell or, er, high water. To tell the truth though, I'm more worried about trench foot. N1S is septic enough after only a weekend's camping so I hate to think exactly how fungal he'll be after seven days of damp - euch. Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. One highlight of my weekend, however, was an encounter with Martin and Suzi of Martin's Jerked Meat, selling a selection of their fine, handmade wares at their little stand. This gave me the perfect excuse to say "I'm a jerky virgin".

At this point I have confess I told a lie - strictly speaking I wasn't a jerky virgin, but this all depends on definitions. You see, as a kid I used to read American comic-books (the Avengers were my favourites) alongside my staple intake of 2000AD and anything featuring Captain Britain*, and in the back of these things there were always adverts for things like Sea Monkeys***, X-ray spectacles**** and popular US brands of beef jerky.

The Sea Monkeys I went for, but the appealingly-advertised jerky (Satisfy Your Meat Tooth) was only available within the US and had to wait until a visit to New England in 2003 (by which time 2000AD's title had become quaint), when I stumbled on a pack in a truckstore. Seen in context I didn't really have a choice, so I bought a packet in Classic Flavour.

It was vile.

Unpleasantly pungent at the first bite, by the time the meat had softened enough to chew all the flavour had fled, and the texture was akin to chewing gritty cardboard. Two bites was all it took (the second bite was to confirm the awfulness of the first in case I'd just been having a brain aneurysm, which might have been preferable) before the jerky was ejected with force from the car. Maybe the bears ate it. I don't know how desperate they get at that time of year.

Fast forward to 2007 as I delivered my tongue-in-cheek claim of jerky virginity. I felt that a fumbling knee-trembler at a truckstop four years previously really didn't count, but fearing that Awkward Questions Might Be Asked, I 'fessed up. Aha, said Martin, that's because most commcerial jerky is prepared by mincing the meat and drying it, then spraying the flavour mix onto the outside. Two drops of saliva and the flavour's gone, mate. Not to mention the unremitting nastiness of the product to start with.



Not so Martin's jerky, which starts life as a thin slab of locally-sourced meat which is hand-rubbed with marinade and left for long enough to develop a really full, lasting flavour. Martin was happy enough to let me sample slivers to illustrate the point as well, and I'm happy to report that his wares were delicious. They take a good long time to eat so you don't need much, and I was surprised at how complex and layered some of the flavours are. In the end I plumped for a pack each of Goat and Perrins(tangy on the bite, giving way to the throaty, warm flavour of goat) and Red Wine and Black Pepper (wonderfully rich and full-flavoured). Martin has an online shop as well, so if you're looking for a surprise gift for an omnivore that won't break the bank then look no further. My only sorrow was that the jerky constituted the last of my petty cash for the day so I couldn't indulge in their other wares, like the veggie jerky and the fruit leathers.

I should mention at this point that I'm not in Martin's pay (although he did give me a rude MJM fridge magnet) - he's just a nice man with a really good product. He and Suzi are up for the UKTV Food Local Hero 2007 awards, and I wish them well.



*Captain Britain was the coolest thing ever. I mean, a Union Jack uniform and a telescopic quarterstaff? Teh kewlest. These days of course he'd be condemned as Nationalist because now that's a Bad Thing; we can still enjoy our stereotypes** but we mustn't involve flags of any sort.

**Information correct at the time of writing - oh, about a quarter to two. It may have changed by the time I post this evening. I have to post from home because my present employer does not feel I can be trusted with the net, e-mail or anything sharper than crayons.

***Artemia salina, a small brine shrimp with eggs that survive dehydration and so can be sold heavily disguised in coloured powders emblazoned with claims like "Chemical Life!" None of this surprises me (not even the assertion that they will "dance" to music), but I am intruiged by the sort of brain that thought that they even remotely resembled tree-dwelling simians. You could even buy "banana treats" for them (yellow powder) and surprisingly enough they're still out there. At age 11 I was pulled into the hype in a major way, but the worst thing? I loved it. The nasty smelly things kept me busy for weeks.


****See through walls and doors! Render clothing invisible! (Actually they just had a manky red filter that distorted light a bit so that everything was outlined with a translucent haze.) I know this was the seventies, but how could these claims have been legal? I'd add another; Shoot DNA-destroying hard x-rays out of your eyes! Punish your playground enemies by sterilising them! Wow. That would sell more pairs AND be harder to challenge in court.

Blighted

It might come as a bit of a surprise to some of you who deal with this problem regularly, but until this summer the Hedgewizard was a blight virgin. I've dealt with a fair old number of problems with my spuds (the worst of which was the elusive Mr Brock), but never blight. Sadly, my mouldy cherry has now been well and truly popped by the extraordinarily damp summer we've been having.


The photo above is a reminder of blight. It's a memorial at the IFSC in Dublin, but you can find similar memorials in a dozen countries - anywhere with a decent Irish enclave, really. Anyone who didn't have to study Irish history at school probably doesn't know that blight (Phytopthora infestans) was the trigger for the Great Irish Famine of 1845-1849. I say "trigger" rather than "cause" because it was more complicated than that - political and economic factors meant that the Irish had been forced to adopt an effective potato monoculture, so when blight arrived it was devastating. At the time, there were no resistant varieties and potatoes were the only storage staple. They didn't even know they could have saved some of the crop. It hardly bears thinking about.

Back to the pampered Hedgewizard's plot. Last Friday there were a few brown patches on a couple of the potato plants. It was coming on to rain, so I nipped the leaves off and thought no more about it. On Saturday there were a few more patches, so I looked it up on th'internet and sadly got some bad advice; early blight, they said, affects only foliage and can be safely ignored if it doesn't get too bad. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

When I went down to fetch some more spuds on Monday, I was shocked. The brownish spots had turned into a corrosive black goo that had spread onto the stems which were collapsing with the weight of the foliage; not one single plant was unaffected. This was no minor infection; this was a rout. I consulted the RHS website, which told me to cut the infected halms off, gather up every last fallen leaf, and burn them* as the spores survive quite happily in compost. The tubers won't develop any more now obviously, but at least I can reduce the number of them that get infected and rot in storage.

I have to wait at least three weeks before harvesting any storage potatoes now, as it takes about that long for the spores to die in the soil; once out, the spuds will need to be examined closely every now and again as the infected ones will mank in the sacks and infect the rest. It won't, in all honesty, be a trustworthy crop. Further, I can't use any of it to grow from next year (and will have to be likewise ruthless with any "volunteers" (missed tubers that pop up unexpectedly); any such growth will be infected, and the spores are - wait for it - wind born. The only consolation is that there are no special precautions for that piece of ground next year.

So how can the organic gardener prevent blight from occurring? Well, for smallholders at least you probably can't since the spores can drift for quite a distance from other growers. There are a few things you can do though.

• Buy in fresh seed potatoes each year - they should be blight free
• Choose blight-resistant varieties (although resistance isn't absolute)
• In damp weather during July-August, spray fortnightly with Bordeaux mixture**
• Grow earlies, which are usually out of the ground by the time blight gets going
• Be ruthless with volunteers
• Be vigilant, and remove foliage promptly if blight appears

In short, blight is just One Of Those Things. Be glad you're growing more than potatoes...



*But how? The foliage is soggy and there's NO chance if it drying out at all. Barring the miraculous return of the British Summer, I'm going to have to start a fire of waste wood in my little brazier on Wednesday, and burn the Mountain of Black Sog on that. It's going to smell lo-o-ovely!

**Bordeaux is currently allowed for organic use, but as it accumulates in the soil over time this may change. I use it as a last resort, but in a truly awful summer like this one it probably gets washed off too quickly to be much use. Boo hiss.

Entertaining

I've been entertaining. I don't mean that I've been whistling Dambusters while juggling naked*, and I definitely haven't been "having a function" in the style of the Posh Neighbours**. Nope. I've just been feeding a few friends.

I say "just", but as it turned out there was no "just" about it. Feeling rather good about breaking my recent run of reclusive behaviour (come summer, things always run away with me until WP complains heartily of being a "garden widow"), I selected a few victims and made a couple of phone calls. Job done, I thought - until WP asked me pointedly "Did you check if anyone has any dietary intolerances?"

"Well, no," I admitted. "I mean, Jane has coeliac disease and can't have anything with wheat in, but other than that it should be simple enough."

WP gave me the look. "Check," she said meaningfully.

Fifteen minutes and one side of A4 later, I had an impressive list of food faux pas to avoid. Mike can't eat garlic or he's up all night. Onions are chancy. Jane (the coeliac) is OK with most brands of cornflour, but can't tolerate anything very fizzy. Pauline explodes on contact with chilli, sweet pepper and tomatoes, and don't even get me started on what happens when Alex gets within a hundred miles of an egg. Oh, and all four of them are vegetarian.

So what did that leave me to work with? No bread, onions, garlic, meat, egg, chilli, tomato... potatoes. Everybody likes potatoes, huzzah. Chips it is, then.

In the end I really needn't have worried; we opened up with a couple of glasses of elderflower champagne (to which Jane's fizzy aversion seemed not to apply) and after that, frankly, I could have served them deep-fried toilet paper and they would have yummed it up. I didn't, of course; it was baked seasonal vegetables, minted peas and salad, with quick lemon soufflés afterwards; in other words, I fed them exactly what the garden was giving me (with the exception of the lemons and the oil) and they all loved it.

Now all we have to do is sit back smugly and wait for some return invites - but I'm going to feel a bit left out on the food intolerances front. I mean, not being very fond of marmite on toast doesn't have much cachet really, does it?



*Although I might if I thought there was a cheap laugh in it.

**Drinks, horses' doovers, more drinks, four course meal with wine, coffee, cognac, and above all laughing frantically until someone bursts a blood vessel.

a-HWAH-HWAH-hwah-HWAH!

Frantic

Right. The Powers say that I have three hours before the next batch of storm cells are due in, and in that time I have to cut all the foliage of my potatoes down and get as many weeds out as I can; if I have time I might try to cut some grass. The tunnel can be done while the rain is on, and then I can get back to infrastructure work between showers (probably putting wire up for the soft fruit, although it's a two person job). I bet I don't do half of it.

Funny how a good night's sleep puts a new complexion on things; yesterday I felt more tired than ever, but the black mood that had been threatening the day before had disappeared completely to be replaced by the trademark Hedgewizard gerbil-faced optimism. I even managed to listen to some Elliott Smith without wishing to drown myself in a well...

Shattered

I'm skirting the ragged edge of exhaustion at the moment. I can tell this because I'm feeling marginally depressed for no good reason. I mean, there are some stressors acting on me (going self-employed at end of month, not enough money coming in, boundary dispute with Posh Neighbours on the cards, tax return due, Numptius constructii still around etc), but there's nothing there that actually merits being down. I recognise this vague, unfocussed downage, though. I'm tired out. Nothing that a couple of early nights and a day to myself won't fix.

Ah, but wait. It's very hard to get any "me" time these days. I promised myself I wasn't going to blog about the weather this summer because I see so many other UK blogs absolutely full of it, but yesterday was the last straw I'm afraid. Chocolate spot has laid waste to about a quarter of the broad beans meaning that they've had to be lifted early, blight has laid waste to the maincrop potatoes so I'm going to have to cut the tops off a full month earlier than I'd like, and all manner of things just... aren't... growing much. For non-Euro readers, weather in Northern Europe is astoundingly complicated, but at this time of the year we normally rely on a 110mph+ river of stratospheric wind known as the jet stream to bring us dry, settled conditions. This year, though, it's taking that weather to the Azores, and we've been treated to conditions more usually associated with summer in parts of Norway; a string of low pressure systems bringing wall-to-wall dense cloud, rain, rain and more rain, squally conditions, and humidity. And did I mention the rain? Perfect weather for slugs and moulds, but not so good if you happen to be a sweetcorn plant.

Nads.

Eco Worrier

Bloggers for Positive Global Change? Blimey. How did that happen, then? I don't mean that I take issue with the notion, don't get me wrong, it's just... me?

Hang on, hang on, let's think about this then. Hedgewizard's Diary started off life as a little reminder on my now cobweb-shrouded Yahoo desktop, which said "Remember to do garden stuff" for about a year and a half. You see, as I started my first experiment into permaculture-y food growing (a raised bed cut into the side of the lawn that was here when we arrived), I discovered that there was very little organised information on garden-scale permaculture out there. The way to get such information was to talk to people on forums like self-sufficientish, and to read people's blogs and homepages; and that led to me deciding to do a blog of my own.

Initially, HWzD was literally going to be a diary space, for me to keep records of what I was planting and so forth. This is because I am *coughs* not the most organised of people; I lose pieces of paper (and if I don't I can't understand them anyway), and as for computer files... well. Anyway, if you want to keep something safe from me it's probably best to have it on a remote server, and preferably don't give me the access codes.

All that came to an end (practically as soon as it started) when I found myself temporarily camped out in my own house with only the Numpty Builders for company (the rest of the family Hedge had retreated to a safe distance). Left with no-one to vent my spleen on, I turned to the blog just as the first accidental travelers stumbled upon it. I got a reply (and look! It was Kitchenwitch) and so began my conversation with the world. Well, the blogging bit of it anyhow.

Since then I've kept up a more or less constant flow of irrelevant blarney about the Hollow, our attempts to grow our own food, and any other rubbish that pops into my head. More recently I sort of fell into blogging for the Ecologist, but I never really thought of myself as trying to effect Global Change. I mean, I worry about the environment, but isn't saving it the job of the government, Greenpeace or somebody?

Aha, but wait. As I mumbled a few days ago, environmentalists are beginning to realise that trying to force the hands of governments is a losing game; the only pressures that governments really understand are pressure from the electorate and pressure from industry (which responds to pressure from consumers = a subset of the electorate). So we also have to change the group mind of society - an infantile, fickle beast. People used to think that media coverage was the way to do that, but it's not enough. The media are themselves driven by public expectation, and unless you're very careful you're likely to be portrayed as a lovable eccentric, or worse. Far worse. I'm pagan (a group the media love to parody) so believe me I've seen it happen. So how do you influence the group mind of an entire society?

I'm going to vomit in a minute, I just know it. As if the acronym BPGC isn't bad enough (Really! could no-one think of a better title?) now I have to use the cliché* "grass roots movement". Here goes...

...no, I can't make myself say it. To change the group mind of a whole society, you need people to be bumping into examples of green thought as they live their everyday lives; not big ad campaigns, but little things. Next door swapping their second car for bikes; someone at work talking about putting in water butts; the person in front of you packing their shopping into cotton carrier bags. And so forth. Eventually people realise this is real, this is happening, this is now. Or you could have a tornado wrecking half of Ealing. Either works for me.

So we have bloggers have to play our part in starting the ball rolling, by thinking carefully about how to use the little influence that we have in our blogs - and in our lives. For my part, I try to keep my writing varied and entertaining so that people will visit - but I can sneak serious points in without hitting everyone over the head with a big green stick. Even if...

Library picture of a big green...

Oh! My! God! Tell me it's not true! Not content with inventing artificial snow, someone has really decided to give Gaia a poke in the eye by producing handpainted PVC bamboo! What is WRONG with people? Give them a material which is natural, versatile, strong, biodegradable, lightweight and above all cheap, and what do they do??? I ask you. I'm going down the garden to eat worms.


*Did you see that? alt-130. Sheer class.

Edit: Just to prove my point, please take the time to read the comment left by Steve. Steve, you've made my day! Go cantaloupes!

Where did all these cats come from? And didn't there used to be dodos on this beach?

Something in excess of ten thousand years ago, someone in a nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe (we'll call her Ceres, since in all probability it was a woman) noticed that if some of the seeds she and her sisters spent so long collecting got dropped on the ground, the next year there would be a dense stand of food plants growing in that very spot. Maybe something happened to spark off this recognition, like a carrying skin splitting down the seam; maybe Ceres was just an insomniac who thought too much. Either way, boom! Agriculture of a sort was born, and the nomadic hunter-gatherer existence was living on borrowed time; Ceres jumped up to tell her friends that maybe it was time to get into real estate, and by the time she got back to the fire there was a cat on her blanket, washing its bum.


Okay, so it didn't quite happen like that*. Our move into agriculture is now thought to have been quite gradual, but as soon as human beings started growing and storing food rats would have become a problem. Enter Felis domesticus, a recent** offshoot from the African wildcat; a smaller and more social cat that had bred to specialise in killing small rodents and snakes. The semi-nomadic descendants of Ceres soon noticed that wherever these new little cats appeared, the rodent plagues that had accompanied early agriculture stopped. They also noticed that if you gave them a bit of food now and again they were more inclined to stick around, improving rodent control even further. Since then they've gone wherever we have, and have changed hardly at all (apart from evolving a slightly larger attitude problem). When the pyramids were raised, there was always a cat sitting on the block you wanted to move; when the first covered wagons rolled west across the great American plains, you can bet there was a ginger tom keeping snug on top of the driver's only clean shirt.

It's just the same today if you grow any amount of your own food (especially if you keep chickens); from time to time you'll come to the attention of the local rodents. This is basic ecology; create a niche - such as a big corn patch - and something will exploit it. If rats move in, you have a problem that will be too big for your average moggy and it's time to look for a kindly man with a small and exciteable dog, but for run-of-the-mill meeces cats are usually more than happy to deal with them for you.

Enter the Bleedin' Cats. Number One Cat is a strange, ferrety creature weighing hardly anything, and all but invisible in poor light. In summer she is rarely seen at all, stopping by occasionally for a few bites of biscuit and perhaps a kind word or two from Witchypoo. Generally she lives out, and the reason for this is extremely obvious and weighs in at a little under five kilos. It's called Number Two Cat.

N2C is a large orange manx with marmalade eyes and a perpetually surprised expression. After he unfortunately dislocated his brain in a fall from the bannisters, he was briefly known as Womble because of his liking for making a use of the things that he found; biro inners, old fag packets, bits of cellophane, you name it. Unfortunately, the only use he ever identified was leaving them on the kitchen floor as evidence of his prowess as a hunter, but that was on the top of a barren hill on the Isle of Man where he and I first met. Now we live in the most biodiverse area of Britain, where there is enough ground cover to hide even N2C's impressive backside, and he dines in style.

The point of all this*** is that the vast majority of cats enjoy the occasional game of guess what's in the mousie on the bathmat. If you're the sort of cat landlord who gets upset about this, I'm guessing that you don't presently grow much of your own food; but please don't scold the cat. Remember it's doing nothing more or less than what it is designed to do; ecologically speaking, you are the niche that cats have evolved to exploit. No wonder they purr.

In the meantime, whether you realise it or not you're in the epicentre of a relatively mouse-free zone, so why not take the hint? Grub up some concrete, put out some window boxes, or dig over half of the lawn. Grow some food in whatever space you can, and transform your moggy into what it was born to be; a fearless protector of the larder.



*The bum-washing bit is true, though. Depend upon it.

**About 130,000 years. To a cat, that's recent. If you'd accidentally locked it in the bedroom 130,000 years ago it still wouldn't have forgiven you.

***See? And you thought there wasn't one.

The Case of the Solitary Cherry

D'oh, another orphan post. I find these now and again - things that get written but the final button never gets pushed. I am, as I've said before, such a noob.

Anyone who is truly eagle-eyed and bothers to scroll down to read the "Now eating (fresh)" list in the right hand column - and I doubt anyone does - may have spotted an odd item this week; cherry (singular). As in one. I know that technically this shouldn't be on the list at all because (surprise, surprise) it never made it to the kitchen, but it was such a tasty cherry that I decided to put it on the list for a week in honour of its memory.

My kitchen table, next year. Oh yes.

The existence of the cherry was discovered a couple of weeks ago by Witchypoo during one of her chicken stakeouts. I suppose I ought to explain the stakeouts for anyone that doesn't keep chickens; what you have to understand first, in any dealings with chickens, is that they have a brain slightly smaller than a peanut. Not a complicated animal, is your basic chicken. Got that? Right? Right. Then we'll proceed.

Chickens like to do what other chickens do. Take a bunch of chickens - no, wait, there's a collective noun for chickens - take a fricasée of chickens, and put them in a pen. Then take one chicken back out and pop it down on the ground by the fence outside the pen, and see what happens; unless something startles it, it'll stay as close to the run as it can for a good few minutes. As it gets braver it'll range a bit further away, but stress it* and it'll trot right back to be as close to the others as possible. Reverse the experiment by taking all of the chickens except one out of the pen, and you have an extremely free-ranging bunch of chickens with one anxious loner trying to follow the others along the length of the pen, wanting to get out, and probably making a horrible noise.

The sleep cycle of chickens, as with many other birds, is almost comically governed by light levels; if an unusually dense thundercloud rolls in they've been known to turn in at eleven in the morning by accident. Even as far south as Dorset, summer sunsets are long, leisurely affairs with an extended period where the chickens begin to think it might, just might, be time to make a cup of cocoa and finish that crossword in the Times before shuffling up the ladder to bed. But this leisureliness carries an additional burden of stress for the fricasée; there's more time to think about the pecking order.

The chickens retire in order of bossiness; first goes Butch, followed after a respectable interval by Magellan and then Babs. Then there is a long, long pause. In our fricasée of four the less desirable end of the pecking order is occupied by Scrawny, who sadly earns her name by having her bum feathers nipped on a regular basis (when it gets too bad, out come the beak rings). Scrawny hates sunset, because that means going up the chicken ladder. If she has counted the number of the chickens remaining in the run correctly (i.e. zero), all will be well. If she turns in first that's fine too, because it is not Official Bedtime until Butch has retired; but if she has miscounted and attempts to go in before Magellan or Babs, as she climbs up the rungs her poor abused arse is a perfect target for a retaliatory nip from anyone who cares to peck at it. And they do. So each night as the light bleeds away, Scrawny loiters outside in an agony of indecision. She tends to end up frozen on the bottom rung, trying to see behind her and climb up at the same time.

It's inevitably around this time that one of us is waiting to close the pop hole, rendering the chicken house inviolate to foxes for another night. If Scrawny sees us, though, she immediately assumes a snack is in the offing and hurls herself off the ladder with a cry of such enthusiasm that before you know it the whole fricasée is outside again and giving you the beady eye. And nothing can give you the beady eye like a fricasée of chickens. Hence the chicken stakeouts; as we approach in semi-darkness, if Scrawny is still outside (and making a horrible noise for reasons previously mentioned) we have to approach the house stealthily through the polytunnel and loiter, silent and invisible, until her backside finally goes through the pop hole. This tends to give you a few minutes to check on the devastation at the bottom of the garden, and thus it was that Witchypoo came to find the single cherry.

Given that the tree was planted eighteen months ago as a bare root maiden, even a single cherry is cause for celebration and so we watched it like hawks. We even considered netting the entire tree to protect it, so don't think we didn't. But on Sunday - catastrophe! - we discovered that the waterlogged conditions had gone to the tree's head. The cherry had split open, and had to be eaten immediately. Thankfully, it was also beautifully ripe.

Sensibly, Witchypoo summoned me and a hasty conversation was held about consumption rights regarding the cherry. And in the end, did we do the selfless parent thing and donate the cherry to our children? Did we buggery! Number 1 Son, being fourteen, would have sneered at being offered such a tiny morsel and then dropped it soundlessly into the gaping void we laughingly call his gullet without so much as tasting it. Number Two Son, being four, would have mangled the cherry beyond all recognition and then pronouned it icky, without ever putting it in his mouth. There was really only one thing to do.

I wonder if she'll forgive me?**



*A strange cat in the garden will do it (and boy, do we have a strange cat), but being stalked by a man in a bathrobe carrying a butterfly net seems to work just as well. The government's carbon footprint calculator worked admirably at stressing me, but strangely affected the chickens hardly at all.

**I'm joking! The cherry was, of course, shared. There was a tragic misunderstanding about to whom the final bite belonged, but that's compulsory for all married couples in England and Wales.***

***Married Persons (Consumption of Scarce Comestibles) Act 1813, Section Two, Paragraph 8.

****That's right, there is no ****. This is just down here because I felt like telling you all that I've finally worked out how to type an é. Hooré! You hold down the alt key and then using the numeric keypad, type in 130. Type different 3-digit codes and different things happen (although I have yet to discover the code for somebody to bring me a chocolate éclair). How cool is that?



Righto. I've been tagged by Kitchenwitch in petty revenge for my recent cob-building jibe, and now I'm passing it on. This is a new and expanding blog ring called Bloggers for Positive Global Change and before you shake your head sadly and sidle over to walk on the other side of the road looking intently in the shop windows, take a read of Paul Kingsnorth's article in the Ecologist Online. Very briefly, environmentalists are beginning to realise that shouting ever louder and more shrilly really isn't doing the job; to get environmental issues into the public consciousness we have to be more subtle and much more persistant. Meme propagation is one way to do that - and that means people like us.

Propagation, propagation. Hmmm. Let's have Irish Sally Garden, Breezy Break Blog, and Paul Kingsnorth. All three are well worth a visit, by the way, and although the notion that they may be changing the world might come as a shock to some of them, they've certainly all given me something to think about. However horrible the acronym might be, BPGC is about accepting that responsibility and thinking about how we can use whatever power we might have in the world. Cuh! Doesn't bear thinking about.

The participation rules are simple:

1. When you get tagged, write a post with links to up to 5 blogs that you think are trying to change the world in a positive way.
2. In your post, make sure you link back to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Leave a comment or message for the bloggers you’re tagging, so they know they’re now part of the meme.
4. Optional: Proudly display the “Bloggers For Positive Global Change” award badge with a link to the post that you write up.

Something There Is In Nature

"Is there a tradition of ethnic-looking brickwork in Dorset?"

That was the text I sent to WP to announce that my threatened wall-building had actually occurred. She had taken the Sons to meet up with her family at Longleat (number of cars vandalised by bored monkeys: one, but thankfully not ours), while I stayed at home to build the wall.

It is not a big wall, I'm glad to say. Although it is 32 bricks long (count'em), it is only two bricks high. Yes, two bricks high. This is just as well, since although I've done block walls before this is my first brick one and I was too idle to look up technique, preferring instead to judge everything by eye for the aforementioned "ethnic" look. Just as I was finishing off the second course my brain reminded me that I could have made the thing out of cob just to annoy Kitchen Witch, but by then it was too late. In any case, I had a bunch of bricks reclaimed from the old patio so it would have been environmentally reprehensible not to use them. Or something.

At any rate, you might reasonably ask why the Hedgewizard would bother to build a piddling little wall, when he might more reasonably spend the day doing more urgent things (up to and including trying to crack the Bastard Level on Dungeon Keeper 2). The answer is a little surprising; you see, once upon a time, there was a wall.


It was not a big wall, nor a pretty wall. In fact, it was annoying. It was double-skinned with compost in the middle, and once upon a time it had been planted up with all manner of nice things. But that was a long time ago, and now it was home only to manky leggy things that never flowered, and probably never would again.

I hated that wall.

I hated it so much, in fact, that when we came to digger day I happily pronounced the wall In The Way and had it JCBed to death. My only sorrow was that I couldn't drive the digger myself (although as it turned out I probably should have done). Oh, I was a happy man.


Time passed, and the lawn was re-seeded. It was a dry autumn, so the lawn had to be watered each evening for a week before the rains arrived; but it sprouted, and all was fine. Until the rain got going in earnest.


What we didn't know is that once the woods get full to overflowing, the runoff wanders down the hill until it hits the tarmac driveway running through it. It then follows the driveway downhill, through an exciting chicane where it is joined by everybody's overflowing guttering, and ends up at a completely inadequate soakaway. Next stop, powering down into the Hollow. Where, previously, it would have been deflected away from the lawn by that odd little wall, to spend its fury harmlessly carrying the gravel path off down the hill. But without the little wall...

Well, you get the picture. A couple of tons of topsoil/compost mix to rake back up the slope again, and seeding to do all over. And a merry little dance of rage, from me. Why in the hell had the previous incumbents not mentioned the importance of the manky little wall? Mentioned that it wasn't in fact a failed decorative feature, but a flood defence?

No matter. The wall is rebuilt (bar the pointing) by my own fair hand. Now, regular readers may be aware that I am not the handiest creature on the planet; the world would no doubt be a safer place if I didn't have an opposing thumb, but I need it to hit the space bar with now and again so toughski-doodles. However, at the moment we are brassic, due to certain lifestyle choices* and the continuing numptiness around the house. So me = Bodger Bob I'm afraid; an embarrassing picture at the end of the week.

Oh, and by the way - an hour in the garden yesterday and I was feeling just fine. Did the garden heal me? I don't know, but I paid it back with four hours of weeding any way. Weeding - four hours. Those phrases should never go together. 2008 = year of learning to love mulch, methinks. But what can I use?


*As in, having one. Ever since Maggie Thatcher was in office employers have become more and more powerful, and employees have largely swallowed it. British employers have heard of the "Work/Life Balance", but think that it's something used to actually measure their pound of flesh.

Cabbage Patch Thing

Strange post alert. I'm feeling decidedly weird this morning, and as a measure of how weird I'm feeling I had to correct every word in that first sentence. Woke up at 6am with a pounding head and nausea. Care to share? Now, several hours later I've had a painkiller and am merely feeling spaced, sluggish and dizzy.

I'm not one for blogging about my health - well, okay, not much - but I thought I'd mention this because I realised that my instinct when feeling unwell is to get out into the garden if I can. I find this a bit of a surprise. I mean, I've read a fair bit of recent research* pointing to the fact that time spent in a natural environment can cut healing time for leg ulcers, improve quality of life scores, shorten the common cold, alleviate depression... and so on, but I know all these things consciously. There are lots of things I know consciously that I don't seem to subconsciously believe, you understand. Yet here I am, clearly subconsciously believing that the garden can heal me.

And what am I intending to do when I'm out there? Build a wall. This is the sound of HWz slapping himself around. Ow. No, I shall not operate a cement mixer until WP comes back from taking N2S to his running-jumping-climbing-trees class, in case they later find my corpse sticking out of the mixer, gently rotating. Be sensible, HWz. You never know, the garden may infuse me with healing energies, transforming my body into an incredibly powerful human-vegetable hybrid, like Swamp Thing except more devilishly attractive.

Or perhaps not.




*But now I can't find it, because as soon as you put anything like "depression" or "natural" into a search engine you're immediately swamped by sites trying to sell you stuff, and I'm too spaced to scan through the medical sites. This is so annoying. Another time.

Hedgewizard's Fan Club

Hedgewizard has a fan club. Oh yes, he does. There are several hundred of them, and they're extremely persistent; I had thought about sending them a schedule of my movements but they don't seem to need it to turn up wherever I happen to be, so I can only presume that someone I know is on the take. This is quite upsetting, because wherever I go in the early evening they're waiting for me - they're all female and no matter how much I ask them to behave, within a few minutes they always start jostling and biting me.

The fan club, in case you hadn't guessed, is the Hollow's resident population of midges. Unfortunately I'm one of the poor individuals who gets zapped on a regular basis, and they drive me mad. Mad, I tell you! I simply can't be in the garden within about 90 minutes of sunset, because that's when they're out and about. The bastards.


Thankfully we don't have any Highland midges down here (I have memories of being so badly bitten on an evening near Inverness that I was actually feverish the next day), but the local no-see-ums give an extremely good account of themselves. I see from a little research that the initial victim identification is made by following the plume of your exhaled gases, so I wonder if a candle lit nearby might spare my skin?

However, help is at hand if you live in Scotland, thanks to the inspired but improbable Midge Forecast. Although a thinly-disguised attempt to sell you things, at least now you can see when you're going to be running around slapping at your scalp and neck. Rejoice! Mind you, is anyone really bothered enough to buy the Midgeater Max? Never mind the bugs, at £650 I'd want it to
clear away after the BBQ, wash the dishes, and mow the lawn for me too!

A Chilean Love Song

Sshhh. I'm supposed to be asleep, but have snuck into the office to talk to you lot. There's something I have to share with you.

Witchypoo's sister and niece are staying with us for a few days - holy crap! I'm someone's uncle! - and last night I heard Ozzygirl snirkling hysterically over her e-mails. On investigating, it turns out that her super mountain-climbing Chilean boyfriend speaks superb English, but can't write it for toffee. So what, I thought, lots of people can't write English well. But, ah, they can't not write it well like this guy... so I thought I'd share it with you (with Ozzygirl's kind permission, although I'm pretty sure she thought I was joking). Not one single character has been changed.

mi buena chiquita linda como estas wel finally I found the pics not the file with chile edit pics but non the less the same pictures.they were in kodak hiden very snekly. so burned one but ran out of cd tomorrow Ill get some more and send them to you mi noty lover mmmm mi punami social club england is going twrou bombs again fucking alla the mather fuckers they should die in hell. aparently 2 of the ones they crashed the car in to the airport they did.they should shot them rwight in the spot. ok love of mi life love you miss you and watch for those nuterss.hola to the gromitom and familia.chaoooooo

Punami social... oh. I see. *coughs*

Very snekly yours, HWz

A Taste of Summer

Oh, the elderflower champagne is slurpsome. A little sweet to date, but extremely nice; this is fine, since it lasts for about three months and dries out as it ages. I've had a request from Anonymous - hello matey - to suggest a recipe for a higher alcohol version, since by my best guess the champagne starts off at somewhere between 3.5 and 5%, and probably rises by a percentage point as it gets older and more of the sugar gets guzzled.


If you want to make a stronger brew, you're getting more into the territory of sparkling wine. For this you need a standard elderflower wine recipe such as my own (below), champagne bottles, and exquisite timing.

To make five gallons;
5 pints of elderflower heads (lightly pressed down)
1kg chopped sultanas
2.5 oz citric acid
a cup and a half of strong tea (no milk, thanks)
yeast nutrient
champagne yeast
12.5 lb sugar

Put the elderflowers and sultanas in a sterilized brew bucket, and hit them with enough boiling water to cover them. Leave overnight, and next day add 2.5kg sugar dissolved in hot water. Yes, I know I've moved from imperial to metric. Annoying, isn't it? Top the bucket up to the 3 gallon mark (see what I did there?) and provided it isn't too hot add the nutrient, acid, tea and yeast. Stir like mad, cover, and abandon.

After four or five days strain the whole sorry mess through a muslin bag or old pillowcase - boiled, either way - and top it up to about the 4.5 gallon mark. Once the ferment has started to die down (a week or two) add another 2.5 kg sugar, and leave again. Once the ferment slows down again (a month or so), add a final 2lb of sugar and top up to the 5 gallon mark.

For a straight wine, you just finish off and bottle as normal. If you want it sparkling, though, you have to gauge when it's nearly finished and move a litre of it into an old lemonade bottle topped with a loose top; you watch this for a week to see how much of a yeast sediment it has thrown. This is where your training on the elderflower champagne comes in handy, young padawan. Too much sediment, and the bottles will explode; none at all, and it won't be fizzy (you can add a couple of ounces more sugar if that happens, if you dare). When you reckon it's time, get it all into champagne bottles with wired corks, or lemonade bottles, and screw the tops down hard. Unlike the champagne recipe it needs to mature for six months before drinking, and it's a good idea to store it away from those valuable tapestries. Otherwise, this might happen.

It's just occurred to me how stupid it is to post this at this time of year. Oh well, you asked - I'll reprint it again next May, if I remember!



*Look if it bothers you that much, 1lb = 450g. Go and get a calculator, all right?

Damp

Durr, I'm not going to go with that piece of shareware I found, but some of you might be interested in trying it. It's called Plotplan, and you can do lots with it in terms of pictures and notes and so forth - but there's no tutorial, and so far as I can see it can't cope with the complexity of my planting schedule, which involves two overlapping rotations. I shall just have to do the thing in Excel or similar, and make out a prettier (and unsoaked) bed plan on paper. Actually, there's another one I might try called The Seed Program, and I'll let you know how I get on.

I feel a bit better now having done a bit of weed clearing and planted out the last of my brassicas, but the corn bed is looking woeful since the sun just hasn't put in an appearance. Powdery mildew is making life difficult for the squash family, and the potatoes have a touch of early blight (but not so bad as to make me remove the foliage, thankfully). Growth generally is fairly poor... all in all, a difficult year so far. Perhaps I should try some cosmic ordering...

An Ode to Stupidity

The Cardex of Doom - formerly named the Cardex of Destiny - has now been renamed the Cardex of Sog. And it's my fault. Yesterday we were off at Trowbridge celebrating WP's parents' 50th wedding anniversary (oh, my aching wallet) which meant that on Friday night I was frantically trying to get as much weeding done as possible. At this time of year it doesn't take much for the weeds to get on top of me, and the wet weather all this week has been keeping me out of the garden in the evenings. Anyway, I was out there until it was too dark to see much, and came in feeling quite virtuous.

Except, when it's too dark to see it's also too dark to clear away properly... and so it came to be that the Cardex of Doom came to be left on its lonesome, right between the raised beds where I wouldn't see it. Until this morning. Apparently it's been windy. Windy enough to flip the lid open. Apparently it's been raining. Raining enough to completely fill up the cardex, and its lid. I'm now the proud owner of 750g of information-rich papier mâché. Go go gadget weather!


So. Now I have to choose between resurrecting the cardex - doable, I should think, although it'll never be the same again - and changing over to a spreadsheet-based reminder system. Or a custom-written task-planning applet. Wait a moment, don't I have a link for a free download somewhere? Hold that thought...