Holiday Photos

I thought I'd start a thread to remind me to go through all our holiday photos and maybe post my favourite ones here - as I want to get some printed off to go in the 'blank' calendar Liz sent me, and some more to go in a special photo album for our holiday.

Hmmm, looking back through them I don't think they're really brilliant photos at all :( I think I'm on a bit of a downer today but I'll keep going through them to work out which are the 'better' ones.

Actual Gardening! - Shock Horror!

Yes, I dragged my sorry butt off the sofa today and went out and did some gardening - yay!

I think the thing to do is try and do a little bit at a time and try and do one specific job: I've an awful tendency to start on something and then get distracted by all the other things that need doing as well. And then everything gets partly done but nothing's completed. It's so satisfying to do a job through and finish it - I must remember this!




So today I weeded my raspberry (and gooseberry) bed and pulled up the half-dead pea plants that were still lingering there (thanks to the lovely Liz/Hedgehog for the seeds). I had put some beetroot seedlings in (with protective plastic bottle 'cloches' - thanks to the lovely Roobarb for that tip) ages ago but only three of them are looking any way healthy so I pulled up the others; they can benefit the compost heap instead. (more positive thinking, see!)

Loads of new little shoots are coming up from the raspberries, I'm wasn't sure what to do with them but am hoping I will be able to split them off in the Spring and make lots more plants - I do like my raspberries. (many thanks to Splodger for the canes earlier this year)


I'm concentrating on that one bed; it's the one I'm mulching with every spare molecule of compost I get from my heaps and the soil level and quality is improving slowly but surely. It will take me forever to do this throughout the other beds/whole garden but I will get there one day.


Is that a bit sad; to be taking close-up photos of my soil? I don't care :P It's so much better than it used to be - not to rocky/stony and full of lovely worms, creepy crawlies and vegetative matter.

I emptied all the big sacks which I'd supposedly been growing Chinese artichokes in, but have to admit that they were a big flop - I must have only had about 5-10 tubers out of three or four big sacks, and even then the little tubers were miniscule: smaller than one of my finger nails. Not sure what I did wrong, maybe it was all the rain we had through the Summer? I didn't even take a photo of the 'harvest' - it was just too pitiful. I'll pot them up and keep them through the winter and try again next year, but I think they will end up just fading away.

Never mind, maybe I'm not meant to grow them, right? AND I still get the compost out of the bags they were growing in, so that's something beneficial from the whole experience.

I've got four or five big sacks with Jerusalem artichokes still growing in - I'm going to wait til they die down before investigating how they've done. Not getting my hopes up for them either..but we'll see. Positive thinking! It'll be a while yet before they are ready, but I did open up some of other sacks earlier in the season - the ones that hadn't made much growth. It turned out that the tubers were riddled with slug holes - sigh...I'm hoping that as these remaining plants are really healthy looking I'll get some healthy tubers too, but we'll have to wait and see.

While I was over by the sacks I noticed this little fella in a bucket of rain water - luckily he was still alive so I hauled him out and set him out to dry on a plant. Hope he survives. It isn't a great photo but I didn't want to handle him too much; I love the dirt on my hands! :D

Can You Tell What it is Yet?

I took these just now - some close-ups of my pilot whale's skull in the back garden (still a little whiffy after a couple of years but nearly at the stage where it can actually be moved out into somewhere more public - yay!). At the moment it's loitering behind the raspberry bed, out of site, out of smell...


It must have been the light but the texture of the bone really caught my eye this afternoon, even though it's something I see every time I go down to that part of the garden. Some days I seem to look more closely at things than others, god knows why, but today was a bit of an 'up-close' day I guess.


You really need to right click on them to open them up in a new tab/window to see the detail; I know it's only a lump of bone but to me, today, it is beautiful. EDIT - Just looked at them in a seperate tab and they've come up MASSIVE! I need to check with Carrie (my wonder-blogger)to find out how to fix that...I didn't want them THAT huge..



I really should have take a couple of photos to show the size of the whole skull - it isn't massive but it would have been a good idea - silly me, but I can always do it tomorrow and edit it in :P

It's Been a Bad Day...

''It's been a bad day.
Please don't take a picture.
It's been a bad day.
Please.''

Oh I wanted to post a link to that REM song (on youtube) but it doesn't work - bloggdom isn't such a perfect place after all methinks...but this is where I'm staying, this is my home (to quote another song, and my growveg signature) so I just need to hurry up and get used to it.

Hopefully things will change for the better sometime and soon, but incase they don't...well, I'm trying not to think about that just yet. Positive thinking...positive thinking....

Last night was a BAD BAD BAD night but I got through it and am here to tell the tale. Today's been a funny day as a consequence, but tomorrow is another day :) Peter's come back from England now so that will help keep me going. I know it's pathetic but things just fall apart when I don't have him in my life. I make more of an effort when he's here, with everything - stuff like housework, eating, just living generally.



But here's a funny photo to help cheer me up - not taken today but I re-found it on the computer just now and it made me smile. No sign of Boris this evening (he's usually inside in the evenings, snoring on the bed) but hopefully he's ok; I just can't cope with thinking of the alternative right now. :(

Edit - forgot to say, my lovely, wonderful husband came home with a great big bag full of Lush stuff (incl the limited edition HallowE'en 'Ghost' shower gel, which I adore, and some 'ruby red slippers' bubble bar slices - which are my all time favourites), my favourite ever hot chocolate (Charbonnel et Walkter, from Waitrose) and some of my favourite rose and violet cream chocolates :D -- and he brought himself back, which is best of all :D

another edit (oh this is so handy!) - Boris, of course, came back and is sleeping on the bed :D

First Real Post

Not sure how this all works but I'm going to try posting a photo from our recent holiday to Barcelona...


This was one of my favourite photos - the market near La Rambla. The atmosphere there was unreal, so many people bustling about: some locals doing their normal shopping but also lots of tourists just wandering about. We did some shopping while we were there (we actually made two visits as we loved it so much and there was so much to see) but mostly it was just 'window' shopping.


Hey I can do more than one photo per post - I'm learning all the time. This one still cracks me up everytime I look at it. This little old Spanish man was pulling his box of lettuce leaves round all over the market with him as he did his other shopping. I'm really hoping it wasn't for his own personal use as it was only in a thin cardboard box and there were all sorts of things (mostly unmentionable) on the floor of the market...shudder!

We must have spent ages going round the stalls in the market - even the ones that were selling shellfish/meat etc were still interesting to me (a devout vegetarian) as it was all so exotic and new looking...though the skinned rabbits, and skinned sheeps' heads weren't so good to look at :( (I didn't take photos of them, funnily enough)

Best of all, there was a vegetarian cafe/stall (Organic is Orgasmic or something?) so we were able to get some good food from there. We got some fresh fruit from other stalls - so ripe and yummy and CHEAP! - and some dates and stuff to take home with us. I would love to have something like that round here; I guess the nearest comparable market would be the English market in Cork, but as far as I can remember that was mostly meat/fish sellers (which lead me to call it 'the meat market' while I was living in Cork)

Ok, I'm going to try 'publishing' this and see if it works (or not) - there may be a lot of pulled out hair over this....

Heh, it worked - AND I can go back and edit, so I can be as dippy as I want to be and still go back and fix it. I like this place. (if I say it often enough I will believe it, right?)

Forgot to say, I just noticed you can right click on the photos and get them to open up in a new tab (on firefox at least) - god I am so geeky!

Heh and I can edit this so I can add things to it afterwards.......because this 'holiday' post really should be about the whole holiday and not just the market - d'oh!

First Time

I feel like I'm starting out all over again in a brave new world (only not feeling so brave, my lip is quivering..) but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I'm thinking I'm going to need lots of help finding my way round here, everything is very new and unfamiliar, but hopefully that will change in time.

I have to keep telling myself that every journey begins with a single step; but it's hard when it's a step off your normal safe ground, and in to the dark on your own...