CovBlog

2008-10-24T20:20:00.002+01:00

New Blog

10 days after writing that last post I shoved my camping gear into my rucsac and caught a bus into the Peak District. I got off at Blackwell in the Peak, threw my tent up in the campsite there, and rushed off up the nearest hill. I spent the week reminding myself what it was like to not have to go and work in a square box for eight hours a day. I revisited places I'd known as a teenager, and discovered new ones. I got lost and changed my plans, I got wet and dried off. I drank slow cups of tea and talked to people I bumped into. I watched the sun set and saw the stars. The feeling of freedom was overwhelming. At the end of the week I walked 8 miles with my 30lb pack and caught the bus back again.

I checked the jobs websites and my emails and started planning the next trip. Lincolnshire seemed a good option for my first cycle-touring trip in years. Nice and flat, isn't it? Well, yes, some of it, but the Lincolnshire Wolds are more than undulating, and where the land is flat, it makes up for lack of contours with headwinds. I had another great week discovering a whole county which was largely unknown to me, despite my Lincoln heritage (my father grew up in the city). Lincolnshire has pleasant and in places unique landscapes, traditional market towns, quiet roads, and a fine tradition of food that is enthusiastically promoted by Lincolnshire Tourism. It was good to discover so much cycling potential so close to where I live, and I was soon planning further trips.

All well and good, but I was supposed to be finding a job? Well, I'm not going to bore people with details, but my new blog is called On Me Bike. I hope to see you there.

2008-06-21T22:15:00.002+01:00

Friday evenings: reasons to be cheerful

No more school for more than two days - in this case potentially no more school EVER.
Pop! Glug glug glug glug. Shluurrp. Crunch crunch.
Cooking dinner listening to the News Quiz.
After-dinner stroll around the neighbourhood, criticising other people's front gardens and trying to talk to cats.
Doing the ironing listening to the Astronomer Royal talking about the history of star-gazing.

Blimey I know how to have a good time.

2007-07-22T18:55:00.000+01:00

The road home

Yesterday was my last proper day at Ryton Gardens, and it's almost exactly a year since I started this blog with photos of sunny fields, flowers and butterflies. It's not like that this summer...

This is the River Avon between Wolston and Brandon, my route home. Fortunately there is a pedestrian bridge, or I would have got very wet going home after a pretty wearing day.

This is the River Sowe. It was higher than I've ever seen it before, though I couldn't get photos which directly compared with my previous blogs here and here without taking a detour of a mile then back again. My short-cut was well under water!

This is Stoke Floods, a lake formed by mining subsidence which the Sowe fills. I guess the name says it all... The interpretation board is usually on dry land, as one would expect. There were several lads out keenly fishing for disoriented carp.

Although everybody was enjoying themselves here (it was almost a party atmosphere in Wolston), it's been a pretty crummy couple of days for many people elsewhere in the county. All that water in the River Avon and River Sowe is now inundating Tewkesbury or Gloucester. I truly hope that this is not a harbinger of what is to come with climate change. I truly hope I'm wrong about what I think is happening to the weather. Even if it means that I needn't have stopped flying to all those places I would love to go to, and should have applied for all those jobs which I turned my nose up at because you had to drive around three counties (in your own car).

On Tuesday all my worldly goods will be travelling back up to Nottingham, where I lived till I was 18 and which I may well be making my long-term home. So this looks like the end for CovBlog. I'm sitting surrounded by cardboard boxes, and tomorrow the computer will be getting boxed up like all the rest. There will be no NottmBlog in the foreseeable future, and certainly not a TeacherTrainingBlog. I may do a 'best of' post of unpublished photos, if I get round to it.

Although it's been a pretty mixed year, and though things haven't turned out as I'd hoped professionally, Coventry has not been a bad place to live. Thank you for reading CovBlog during the last year - I suspect that I have had a small but very select readership!

2007-06-15T21:48:00.000+01:00

Summer flooding happened so fast...

It's been a bit wet the last couple of days, wouldn't you know, and guess what? Lots of us have been out taking photos. Is this a particularly wet year or do I live in a very wet place? Being slightly fluvially-obsessed (never lived near a river before) I took more pictures of the Sowe. Could be the deepest yet - but difficult to say. Compare it with with my January post on the same theme.

The bit of chestnut paling is identifiable in both. A couple of days ago it was hanging a couple of metres above the water level. More photos of wet Warwickshire here. This link contains inappropriate use of apostrophes, so beware if you are sensitive to grammatical malpractice.

Global warming or what? (The near-tropical rain, not the apostrophes). Despite now having two pairs of wet trainers and two sets of wet waterproofs drying out, I'm still happy to not have a car.

2007-06-14T23:05:00.000+01:00

Music to defrag discs to

Fopp, I think, will be my new favourite shop. Not sure yet if there is one in Cov, but spent a very happy hour or so in the branch in Bath the other day. The opportunity to listen to my booty came last night when I decided to defrag the hard disc on the old 'puter. This meant that I couldn't do any maths homework (yippee!) so I lounged about on the sofa listening to 'Chavez Ravine' - Ry Cooder, 'Before the Flood' - Bob Dylan/The Band, and 'The Man in Black' - Johnny Cash. Wonderful! I think I may have to wait to listen to 'PUNK F**k Art Let's Danse' (various artists) till I am sure that my neighbours are out...

The defrag took nearly 12 hours and has resulted in some improvement to computer speed - I'm sure you are all interested to know... By the way, does anyone know any tips on unit conversions?

2007-06-12T22:19:00.000+01:00

Weekend Bath

Spent a jolly weekend visiting Tabflower and Hubby and Bean. A city with hills and views is rather a novelty to me at the moment, even more so a kitchen with a view of hills - so I gladly volunteered to do the washing-up!

Off down the Kennet and Avon canal on a borrowed bike (made me realise that my brakes are not exactly state of the art...) to dodge all the other Sunday cyclists, strollers, joggers, etc. It's rather different from the canal towpaths which I normally frequent.

This surreal sculpture may be connected with the nearby narrow-boat - a narrow-boat you can imagine Tolkien describing (if you can imagine Tolkien imagining narrowboats) - with round windows, doors, and a roof made of coppice poles. Just one of many lovingly-adapted boats, stretching along much of the ten miles to Bradford-on-Avon. Lots of arty recycled windows, gardens in containers on roofs, even a 'green' roofed boat. I liked the slogan in one window: "We're all here 'cos we're not all here". I wonder if this is where some of the people who were called New Age Travellers by the media 15-odd years ago have ended up. It seems an idyllic lifestyle, living on a narrowboat, but it could just as easily be pretty tough. It was obvious that some boat dwellers were not able to spend much money on upkeep. I didn't take any photos, as I feel it is rather cheeky.

2007-05-18T21:50:00.000+01:00

Until this week I thought cube roots were diced vegetables

It's been a bit quiet at CovBlog recently, I know. The weather turned normal again, so I've not been out cycling much and taking nice photos. What I have been doing is maths. Never thought I'd say that - and I've been enjoying it too. When I did my 'O' Levels (yes... that long ago) my big success wasn't the A in English, Biology and Geography, nor even the B in Chemistry - it was the CSE Grade 1 in Maths. Without going into boring details, the combination of shortsightedness (didn't realise you were meant to SEE the blackboard till I was 10) and disenchanted or misguided teachers, meant that maths was just not my thing. Thank goodness for Mr Baggaley (it's only the really good and really bad teachers whose names you can remember after 28 years) who pulled the whole class through the CSE syllabus in one year. A third of the class got Grade 1, the golden grade which was equivalent to an 'O' level C, and meant you'd didn't have to retake.

But... I've decided to train to be a teacher, and though my prized CSE is adequate to get into teacher training, I suspected that my maths wasn't up to teaching modern sciences. And how right I was! I've enrolled on an Open University Short Science Course called 'Maths for Science', and I'm slowly negotiating the first chapter. The one which you are supposed to know pretty well anyway. So it's been onto the GCSE Bitesize Revision website (the wonderful BBC!) to revisit hazily remembered and sketchily learnt subjects like fractions, directed numbers, powers, square roots and cube roots. I think I might have been staring out of the window the day we did cube roots. And there seem to be things now called surds which I've never heard of. Actually it's all very interesting, and I do seem to be picking things up, the only trouble is I keep dropping them again. Tonight I had to look at Key Stage 3 Bitesize Revision to remind myself about some things. Fortunately you can take two months to do the course - or five!

Even if I don't get into teaching, I'm hoping that it'll have been worth doing this course. It's a great feeling to work things out for myself, and to realise that it wasn't because I was thick that I found maths so difficult. But I've to negotiate trigonometry, logarithms and statistics yet!

Though I've not been out at weekends much, I've had a few evening expeditions when I got too stir crazy. I've discovered a route out of town which gets into sort-of countryside in about 10 minutes. It goes past the new hideous hosptital (PFI, wards being closed to save money...) across the A46 and up Walsgrave Hill, which even has a trig point on the top. From there you can see the whole of Coventry. Then you can turn away and cycle across a field into Coombe Abbey Country Park and cycle around the woods in the encroaching darkness. Saw a badger the other evening - the first live one I've seen for about 20 years.

Now, I've procrastinated for long enough...back to 'Multiplying and dividing with powers'. I understood it last night, now lets see if I remember it...

2007-04-15T18:51:00.000+01:00

Warwickshire Wubbleyous

Another lovely day, and compulsory cycling! The intended trip to South Warwickshire having been foiled by Virgin Trains' lack of cycle-friendliness, I made the best of it and headed off nearer to home. This is such a glorious time of year that almost anywhere looks good. North-East Warwickshire lacks the black-and-white cottages of the South of the county, but it is fine cycling country, and has many good, and some very good, churches. It also has many villages beginning with 'W'.

St. Mary Magdalen, Wyken, is an unusual dedication, and - appropriately - next to it is the Church of the Risen Christ. Wyken was a remote village till Coventry expanded in the second half of the 20th century, so this simple medieval church remained largely unaltered. When the estates grew around it, the new church was built next door.

St. Andrew's, Shilton. One of many Warwickshire churches with elaborate and poetic gravestones.

St. Botolph, Burton Hastings, where I had lunch!

St. John Baptist, Wolvey. Wolvey is at the edge of a rather open, unpopulated area with evocative placenames such as Wolvey Wolds, Cloudesley Bush and Hobley Furze. It is bisected by the Fosse Way and Watling Street, and there are frequent deserted villages: the area was cleared for sheep grazing in the 15th century. The church has several old Norman heads incorporated into the stonework.

The priory church of St. Edith, Monks Kirby, is one of the largest in the county, and was the only one open this day. There was a Benedictine priory here in 1077, but at the same time as the Carthusians took over in 1399, the dedication of the church changed too - hostilities with France meant that St. Denis became unacceptable. The church has an elegant pillared nave, and some fine carved tombs. It was lovely and cool on what had become a hot day.

All Saints' Withybrook, though rather dumpy, has a pretty streamside setting and some interesting triple-headed gravestones. It sounds as if it is interesting inside too; a pity it was closed.

Fittingly, it was another Mary, St. Mary the Virgin, Walsgrave, which was the final church of the day. Another (largely) medieval church subsumed by Coventry, it is unfortunately located very close to the busy Walsgrave Road. It is evidently well-used and cared for though: there are modern red sandstone carvings on an ancient doorway, and a new church hall.

2007-04-09T19:59:00.000+01:00

Revivification

The Easter hols always seem to catch me unawares. It's partly that the year doesn't feel like it's really got underway till after my birthday, with January, February and March seemingly long, cold, grim months. After the clocks spring forwards things suddenly get much better. So I don't usually get round to planning to visit anyone - which is just as well as there were no trains out of Coventry this weekend - engineering works. Why? How many passengers do they lose permanently by pushing them onto 'replacement buses'? How much do they pay the guys doing the works? As most other weekends are already affected I think they should give us a weekend off.

Anyway, trains were running on Friday, so I went to Wolverhampton. Here is a rather lovely semi-demolished building which I photographed with glee. (Then noticed that yet another bit had fallen off my bike, which took about 45 minutes to not sort out very well).

The main reason for going to Wolverhampton (which I find depressing - yes, Cov compares well to Wolv) was to visit the very un-derelict Wightwick Manor (pronounced Whittick) which is a lovely Victorian house with lots of Pre-Raphaelite drawings and paintings. En route I came across Bantock House, another Arts and Crafts house. I also took the opportunity to go for a spin along the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, a new canal to me.

Saturday, off to Birmingham on the long slow, exasperating bus, but some jolly photography in the Botanical Gardens. The photos below have a watery theme: the first the result of my lens getting misted up in the tropical house.

Sunday was day at home, doing some sorting out. Partly as I wanted to listen to Gardener's Question Time featuring moi (blimey - I don't have an East Midlands accent any more!) Partly as I'm having a bit of an outage - I'm expecting to move house again later on this summer and it was so awful last time I'm determined to have less stuff this time round. But what does one do with the stuff which can't even go to Oxfam? The tapes recorded off the radio in the 80's? The photos of university parties? I hate throwing stuff away, I guess I'll have to make sure it all goes to landfill rather than incinerator, then it'll at least have a small chance of being dug up by archaeologists of the future.

What of course has happened is that I'm havinga nostalgia-fest instead - currently listening to James 'Laid'. Wonderful stuff! Have made the belated discovery that tapes are much more accessible in a cardboard box than a plastic thing with little tape-sized drawers. So not getting rid of them all just yet. Just wish I could REALLY turn the volume up, but I have nice neighbours who like me. Also made hot cross buns. I felt a bit hypocritical putting the crosses on, but it didn't feel right to not have them! Anyway, the nice neighbours appreciated them.

So, today, a bike ride up Coventry Canal though Bedworth and Nuneaton, which is far better than it sounds, largely because one doesn't get to see either place at all. Loads of cheerful people in canal boats, lots of blackthorn at its foamy best, lots of thorns on the towpath. After I'd fixed the puncture I stuck to the roads, wending my way round North Warwickshire. It's a mixture of somewhat grott ex-mining villages, pleasant rolling countryside, and red sandstone churches. Astley, Ansley and Arley are all lovely though dissolving like brown sugar, and sadly not one was open - but who can blame them.

Back home to toasted hot cross bun after cycling nearly 40 miles. A great weekend. I feel revived and renewed. Wish I didn't have to go to work tomorrow!

2007-03-03T23:17:00.000+01:00

Sun and shadows

For a while this morning it seemed that that I wasn't going to get to Packwood House: it took three attempts to leave Balsall Common before I found a road which wasn't flooded. I had an unscheduled stop at Baddesley Clinton first - which will be worth more visits later in the spring - before getting to Packwood the long way round. It was well worth it. The house and garden - plus the general sodden-ness of the countryside - reminded me strongly of the 'Green Knowe' books by Lucy M. Boston, which I read and re-read as a child.

2007-02-23T23:22:00.000+01:00

It's been a while...

Just in case anyone is still checking this blog, I haven't totally disappeared. I've been doing some serious jobhunting, and I'm still not sure whether this is going to be CovBlog for much longer. More like 'WhereonearthnextBlog?'

This flat has really inhibited my painting - I'd got into throwing paint around rather energetically in the old place. But recently I've started photo-manipulation with Paint Shop Pro. So I thought I'd see if Blogger can cope with the images too. Seems that it can. As you can see, I'm having fun with the solarisation tool. 'Coloured pencil' is interesting and unpredictable, and quite unlike a real coloured pencil, which is good. I've also worked out a way to split images into black and white and take out the black and mix it up with other bits of the image manipulated in different ways. This all reminds me of the processes I used when I used to do etching - but much, much, cleaner! My computer can just about manage this, but it's just as well I've got Belle and Sebastian playing, so I can really listen to the lyrics whilst computer processes something.

2007-01-31T21:27:00.000+01:00

Spring is coming

The weather has been very mixed over the last few weeks. We've had the winter gales, the rain, the mist, but hardly a day of frost - though last Thursday was pretty hairy on the bike. But it's mainly been a winter memorable for it's mildness - so far. And it's the winter when climate change seemed to hit the mainstream press. It seems that not a week goes by without press coverage. Well, I suppose when I say 'mainstream' I do mean The Guardian, the Independant, and Radio 4. The tabloids had more important things to discuss, such as the bickering of celebrities.

At Ryton, the first signs of spring are emerging: snowdrops, hellebores, and crocuses. Let's hope that they do not regret emerging an estimated two weeks earlier than usual: I could still find myself eating my words about the mildness of the winter, it is not done yet.

2007-01-10T22:05:00.000+01:00

Late for work...

...because I had to cycle through a river. The Sowe burst its banks and I got wet feet.

Compare the photo below with those in my post 'Sowe in spate'. The level of the river isn't that much higher...

...but this is the result. By the look of the Environment Agency website, the block of flats in the background is just out of the flood risk area. I still wouldn't fancy living in a ground floor flat there.

I was almost disappointed when the Avon was still - just - where it should be. But during the day we heard that it had burst its banks and the road was deeply flooded. At hometime, it being a dry evening, I went to see if I could get through anyway, and I could, as the separate pedestrian bridge and walkway was still a foot or so above the water. But it was quite exciting, with a wide swathe of roiling brown water pouring underneath. A group of teenagers were hanging out and watching the cars which tried to get through - irritatingly several SUVs made it through even though the water was at least half a metre deep.

I do rather like these natural phenomena which we have little control over, but I had to remind myself that someone, somewhere has probably had their house flooded out today, which isn't too good.

NB. The use of both metric and imperial measurements is intentional. Having learnt my maths in the '60s and '70s I was taught both, and it's very useful to have a wider repertoir to use.

2007-01-06T13:19:00.000+01:00

Christmas in Grassington

We like going to Yorkshire at Christmas for the views, fell-top walks, and crisp, snowy weather. But it doesn't always work out that way. This year it was misty all week - apart from the day when it rained. However, Grassington has an intriguing network of public footpaths radiating out in all directions, made more mysterious and secretive by the mist. All week we ventured out on short expeditions to explore iron age field patterns and deserted medieval villages, extinct lead mines, woodlands and river valleys. This part of the Yorkshire Dales is a classic karst limestone landscape, with potholes and sinkholes peppering the hills, as well as the abandoned mines, so we stuck to the footpaths, though much of the area is now open access.

Grassington itself is a lovely little big village, with some good shops. It's a bit touristy, but that's to be expected, and it's not too over-the-top. There's no lead mining left, and I'm sure mining tourist's pockets is a more healthy trade.

The River Wharf at Linton. We didn't use the stepping stones, as experience from a couple of years back has indicated that they can lead to wet feet, a bruised hip, and unseemly sniggering by one's walking companion. Well, I couldn't see the ice, it was transparent!

St. Michael's church, in the middle ground, is built on a bend in the river, probably a pagan site of worship. St. Michael is often a dedication to a church on a knoll or tor, also probably pagan sites. It's a lovely church. Nearby Burnsall Church has a display about the viking influence in the area, and a couple of very early hog's-back tombs.

Grassington Lead Mine. A huge area was mined, and as recently as the '60s the waste spoil was being re-worked for barytes and fluorspar. It has left a fascinating landscape of pits and derelict buildings which we explored as they loomed out of the mist.

Flue and chimney. The smoke from the lead smelting was routed in a flue up the hill for several miles, so that lead would condense out of the smoke onto the walls of the flue.

The flue is a narrow tunnel, now collapsed in places. Every so often the smelting mill would be shut down and boys sent up the flue to scrape off the lead. It was a dangerous process as shown by the comments under this far sunnier picture. More info on lead mining in Yorkshire here.

The day when it rained? We went to Skipton for the best scone and latte in Yorkshire! ('Wild Oats Cafe' if you're interested). And we happened to do a little bit of shopping too...

2006-12-16T20:53:00.000+01:00

Coventry Christmas

Urban mistletoe

Right next to Coventry Railway Station are these two healthy globes of mistletoe. I've heard it's been a very good year for mistletoe, as with all fruits, but I've never seen it in a city before.

Nativity

I don't want to get into the current debate about how we celebrate Christmas, but it's interesting that this was the only thing I saw in the city today which portrayed the event it is about. It's a three-quarters life-size nativity, carved from reclaimed wood by a Polish craftsman.

Sunset behind big wheel

As Coventry's city fathers of the 1980s built an ugly shopping centre over the only city centre open space, the essential fairground rides have to be shoe-horned into the pedestrian precincts. At ground levels this makes getting about more difficult than usual (bah humbug!) but creates some interesting skylines.

There we go: the pagan, the Christian and the commercial angles of Christmas, all encountered in one short afternoon's stroll. Have a lovely Christmas, and I'll see you in the New Year.

2006-12-04T23:00:00.000+01:00

Sowe in spate

I cross over this river every morning on my way to work. The level goes up quickly when it rains, possibly because it is an urban river and so much around is impermeable concrete and tarmac. But the highest yet was last week.

This is the same part of the river at more normal levels, in October. The shopping trolley is still there, but it is accumulating quantities of debris. It probably makes quite a nice sheltered habitat for little river-dwellers.

I cycle over the River Avon too, which seems to respond less quickly but still occasionally looks as if it could make me very late for work. It does apparently sometimes flood the road. Incidentally the Avon used to flow into the Sowe rather than the other way round. In the '60s river works swapped them so the Sowe flows into the Avon. Or so says my local paper. Stratford is Stratford-on-Avon not Stratford-on-Sowe, which does seem to imply that the general opinion has been Sowe > Avon for some not-inconsiderable time...

2006-11-23T22:50:00.000+01:00

Symmetry

Saw this strange juxtaposition on the way to work this morning. Furthest away are the two chimneys of the soon to be closed Ryton Plant. In between these is the 14th century tower of St. Leonards, Ryton-on-Dunsmore. Perfectly framed by trees.

2006-11-16T23:10:00.000+01:00

Temporary interruption to service

Sorry it's been a bit quiet here here for a while. It's partly due to how busy I am at work, partly because there's less to photograph in the gardens, and partly because my old computer has slowed down to snail-like speeds, especially with Blogger and Hotmail. As well as its switching-on problem, it's now decided that switching off is too much bother too. Yes, I know it's two months since I said I'd get a new one, but these things take time! So here's a nice picture of Coventry to (temporarily) leave you with:

This is Greyfriars Green, a Green Flag park, and the gateway to Coventry, if you arrive by train and walk into town. Rising above it are Coventry's famous three spires. From the left: Holy Trinity, 237 feet; Old St Michael's at 295 feet the third highest in the country, and finally Greyfriars, 230 feet.
Here's a less pretty but probably more interesting shot of the spires:

It's taken from the bridge over the railway line. You can see how St. Michael's spire towers over the others. The railway is one of the best places to see the spires. As the train pulls into Coventry the spires seem to change places as your viewpoint moves. I like this.

I hope that normal service will be resumed in a couple of weeks or so.

2006-11-02T23:28:00.000+01:00

Strange Fruit

Dinosaur Gourd

Dinosaur Gourd seems to be a variety of Bottle Gourd, Lagenaria siceraria, so is related to cucumbers, squashes and pumpkins. It seems better known in the US, where it is also known as Caveman’s Club, and seed merchants say it was traditionally used to decorate sweat lodges. It needs a long season to mature, but did well this year outside at Ryton’s Vegetable Inspirations garden.

Loofa

Loofa (Luffa aegyptica) is also a Cucurbit. It will produce a bath-worthy fruit in this country, but needs a very long growing season undercover, such as in the rather nice Alitex greenhouse at Ryton. In optimum conditions a loofa can reach 4m long, approximately three times as long as the average bath. It can be eaten if picked young, unlike a bath sponge.

Hairy Balls

Hairy Balls, or Gomphocarpus physocarpus, is also known less chortle-worthily as Swan Plant and Balloon Cotton Bush. The US Thompson and Morgan Catalogue says it ‘adds fun to borders and cut flower arrangements’. So, “Come into the garden, Maud, and see my Hairy Balls”? It’s much less available in the UK.

It's native to South Africa, but has been introduced to the Pacific Islands and Australia, where its wind-dispersed seeds mean it is a problem weed. It is poisonous to animals (except goats) as well as humans, and is cultivated for medicine in China. (NB I googled the Latin name, not the colloquial…)

Credit to Lesley, a gardener at Ryton, who grew all these plants.

2006-10-27T19:23:00.000+01:00

Madrid

If you’re going to be in Spain in the rain, then Madrid is probably the best place to be. We (i.e., me and my Mum, Viv) landed at the award-winning and rather colourful Terminal 4 in rain, eventually discovered the remarkably cheap and efficient Metro, and very soon emerged above ground at Plaza de Cibeles, in rain, with a short walk to Hostal Gonzales, right in the middle of Madrid’s ‘Triangle of Art’. Several minutes later we re-emerged to mingle with the city’s evening crowds (of umbrellas) to discover what a bargain eating out in Madrid is, and that it generally seems a safe and friendly city.

Day one had to be the Prado, the whole Prado and nothing but the Prado. The experience of seeing such iconic works as ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ by Bosch, ‘Las Meninas’ by Velasquez, and ‘Third of May 1808’ by Goya was matched by discovering works like ‘The Descent’ by Roger van der Weyden, Breugel’s ‘Triumph of Death’, and Claude Lorraine’s ‘Embarkation of St Paula’. Velasquez and Goya both did astonishingly frank portraits of Spain’s royalty: big noses and chins, inbred prognathous jaws, piggy eyes, and secret clues to infidelity. El Greco came as a shock: impressionist paintwork, expressionist depth of feeling, mannerist composition.

Seeing this much art is hard work. Fortunately the café was surprisingly cheap, and free from people with carryingly posh voices, unlike some galleries I could mention…mind you, I wouldn’t have been able to understand them anyway.

The next day’s art, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, is an eclectic mixture ranging from medieval to almost the present day. As well as several intriguingly cryptic medieval paintings, the works I noticed most were American landscapes by people such as Thomas Cole, and Frederick E. Church. In a way, painting the landscape seems part of colonising it. John Frederick Peto’s ‘Tom’s River’, and later the big super-realist paintings of street scenes, by Richard Estes, also caught my eye.

The companion museum, the Carmen Thyssen Collection, was created by his wife, and is rather more of a ‘one-of-everything’ collection. It is strong on landscapes, and it was interesting seeing some Canalettos of places in Italy I’ve been to. There were some interesting 20th century works by Emil Nolde, Kandinsky, Dufy and Vlaminck.

We spent most of the day in the gallery, but had enough time in the late afternoon to visit the Botanic Gardens. It’s not the best time to visit gardens, but they had some splendid bonsai trees, great cacti, lots of beds of Spanish plants not in flower – and a fascinating temporary exhibition of new Spanish architecture.

The third of Madrid’s big three art galleries is the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, named after the current Queen. It has the most recent coverage of the three, from the early 20th century to the present day. The crowd-pulling painting here is Guernica, helpfully exhibited with enough space to study it at depth, and with a range of Picasso’s working drawings and preparatory paintings, so his working changes could be seen. Even a familiar painting such as this tells a huge amount more when you get the chance to see it in real life, as it were.

Other landmark paintings included cubist Picassos and Braques, demonstrating how they exchanged ideas in a way which might be seen to be unacceptable copying now. Juan Gris stayed with cubism longer than either though, and produced the most pleasing work. The surrealist works I find hard to take seriously, but seeing the development of Salvador Dalí was intriguing.

Again, most of the day was spent in the gallery, but we escaped for a tapas lunch at El Brilliante, and had a pleasant stroll around the Retiro, the huge park created by royalty and given to the city surprisingly early. There’s a statue supposedly the only one in the world of the devil.

In between Madrid’s art galleries we’d had a break by going to Toledo. Not an art-free day though – two museums, three churches, and first, the best cathedral in Spain. Soaring pillars are topped by intricate capitals carved with greenery and hiding monsters, inside the choir are the most incredible carved wood misericords and panelling, again frequently of beasts or trouble-makers, and outside are simple but eloquent depictions like a comic strip of the Old Testament. Genesis is the most fun bit: God (unusual to have him shown) is putting together the sky and the planets piece by piece. The cloisters are wonderful too: multitudes or green men and monsters. We met El Greco again too, in the Museo de El Greco, the Museo de Santa Cruz, and the Church of Saint Tomé, with the bizarre ‘Burial of the Lord of Orgaz’.

Getting to Toledo involved a quick train journey from Puerta Atocha Station, a giant green house of a station, full of palm trees, but the focus of the ghastly Madrid train bombs in 2003. A large black-swathed monument to the dead and injured stands outside, awaiting unveiling. The half-hour trip went through Spanish countryside which managed to look both dry and saturated. Apparently Spain had not had rain since May. It was raining in Toledo too – in fact it hurled it down, and as Toledo is basically a medieval city it is designed to get pedestrians wet. They need to learn about guttering. As we left Toledo, in the rain, we discovered the outdoor escalators we’d seen featured in the Spanish architecture exhibition. Fun. The day was topped off by discovering a great value and fun restaurant – Ristorante Sanabresa – about five minutes from our hotel. A not bad three-course meal and a bottle of wine between two: €8.50 each.

Sunday we did more or less what the Madrileños do: went to the Rastro – the biggest fleamarket I’ve ever seen, hung out in Principo Pio shopping mall, and slurped chocolat y churros at Chocolatier de San Ginés. Deep-fried sticks of batter are dunked in hot chocolate as thick as pea soup. If you want more deep-fry, you get porros. And the Madrileños didn’t seem at all fat…A busy night in the tapas bars too, as Madrid beat Barcelona 2:0. We ended up in a rather sedate veggie place, as our ‘usual’ restaurant was shut.

The last day we escaped the city again, to explore Segovia. From the grottiest bus station I’ve seen in a while, we had a long slow trip through the outskirts of Madrid, and through bare, barely-used countryside. Segovia, however, was lovely – even in the rain. By the time we left the sun was out and we could see what a delight it would be in good weather. A chunky Roman aqueduct stomps out of the old town through the new town, with armies of schoolchildren around its feet. There’s a fine cathedral, (but not up to Toledo's) with some of the most OTT baroque chapels I’ve ever seen (and I’ve visited a lot of Italian churches!)

There’s also a striking 12-sided Templar church just outside the city walls: but closed on Monday. Never mind, we had a great view of the castle, which was used as the model for the one in Disneyworld. Apparently some cadets based there a century or so back thought they’d get relocated to Madrid from boring Segovia if they burnt the castle down, and it was rebuilt with everything just that bit more exaggerated. But the main thing about Segovia is its Romanesque churches. I’m just a little bit fond of Romanesque, and these were fascinating. Whilst the carvings on capitals and corbels often resembled those in other countries, the plan of the churches was quite different, with arcades on two or three sides, giving shelter from fierce summer sun for business and meetings. As we headed for the slow bus back, we just managed to get a few minutes in San Millan, a dark, lofty, ancient space, before the restorers locked the door.

So, a great week culturally and gastronomically, if not meteorologically. It’s really got me interested in art history again, and as I anticipate more free time than of the last few months, out will come the art books again!

(And if you were wondering, no, I didn't take my digital camera! So I spent the whole of last evening sorting out web links to pictures and photos, and I spent the whole of this evening pasting in the links, only to find whole chunks of the post kept disappearing. After two hours of this I give up! Bah humbug. If you want to find out more you'll have to google. And Wikipeidia is quite useful on art. The Thyssen-Bornemisza has lots of its pictures on its website, as does the Reina-Sofia).

2006-10-10T22:26:00.000+01:00

Cucurbits

Cucurbits – cucumbers, marrows, courgettes, watermelon, squashes, pumpkins, gourds – and loofas.

(Below: a cosy family of 'Gold Bush' courgettes/marrows)

A confusing variety of shapes and sizes, but vegetables with personality. The Cucurbitacea family is a plant group which usually trails or climbs, and has alternate leaves which are usually heart or kidney-shaped, or fingered like a hand. They are all more-or-less tender annuals. So what’s the difference?

Most people realise that courgettes are really immature marrows, selected to be most tasty when young. But courgettes can also be yellow or even round! (See 'Rondo di Nizza', August 29 blog post). Marrows and courgettes are varieties of Cucurbita pepo, originally from North America, which also includes some pumpkins and summer squashes such as pattypan, which are also eaten immature. Courgettes and marrows tend to be bushy plants, not trailing too far. Courgettes can be ready in 8 weeks from planting in a good summer. Courgettes and summer squashes are usually eaten fresh, as their thin skins mean they don’t keep for long. Some can be used raw in salads.

(Below: acorn squash 'Zapallito de Tronco')

Marrows, acorn squash and spaghetti squash are sometimes described as autumn squashes and are picked when fully ripe. They can be kept for a short while, but have thin skins and should be eaten within weeks.

Cucurbita maxima, from South America, is the origin of many pumpkins, especially the really enormous ones such as ‘Atlantic Giant’.

(Below: 'Atlantic Giant' in early September and early October - it's even bigger now!)

C. maxima also accounts for winter squashes, which ripen during the autumn, such as Turks Turban.

(Below: a Turk's turban-type squash)

Pumpkins need a long, warm season to mature, up to 5 months, and can make enormously long plants. They have tough waxy skins, can be stored for months or even years, and usually need cooking before eating. They continue ripening when detached from the plant, in warm weather.

Still confused? See Kew Garden's great website for more info, and the Vegetable Expert will sort out any lingering confusion.

(Below: 'Uchiki Kuri', a winter squash)

It doesn’t stop there: the Butternut Squash, which is the only squash to be found frequently in British Supermarkets, is a variety of Cucurbita moschata. It was probably the first one to be cultivated, and there is archaeological evidence dating back to Mexico and Peru 7500 years ago. I really like the thought that it has been marketed in the same way but in different ways for such a long time.

That’s probably enough for now, and I’ve not even started on cucumbers! More about cucurbits another time…

2006-10-04T22:49:00.000+01:00

Three sisters

One is tall and willowy, with a tassel of blonde hair, one is round with green skin…hmm, this anthropomorphic conceit just won’t work…this Three Sisters is a traditional method of cultivation from South America. Tall sister maize holds up its climbing sister the bean and gives shade for trailing sister squash, which keeps down weeds. But there is more to it than that. Maize is an incredibly valuable food source, and is higher in fat but lower in protein than wheat or rice, and this protein can be supplied by beans – particularly two amino acids in which maize is deficient. Squashes are high in vitamins and further compliment this ready-made plateful. Maize is one of the oldest cultivated crops, being a staple crop of the Incas, Aztecs and Maya, and has been found in archaeological excavations about 3500 years old. The importance of these crops to peoples all over the Americas is reflected by the stories about them. The Black Environment Network is good on the cultural side of the Three Sisters, and Wikipedia has information on maize and its current role in food technology as well as its origins in 'the mists of time'.

It’s difficult to know what varieties of maize, squash and bean to grow together to replicate the ancient system. Even the oldest varieties are newcomers in the history of these crops. Practically speaking, the maize needs to be able to cope with the beans, but not to shade them and the squash too much. Together they put quite a strain on the soil, so it needs to be in good heart from the start. The variety of maize grown here is ‘Blue’, which the Heritage Seed Library are characterising at the moment. With it is the climbing French bean ‘Cherokee Trail of Tears’, which has black seeds in a purple pod. The squashes are ‘Olive’ a vigorous and productive variety the shape and colour, if several hundred times the size, of an olive.

It’s obvious even from the small experimental area in the Heritage Seed Library garden at Ryton Gardens, shown above, that the Three Sisters didn’t look very much like modern mass cultivation, or even our traditional allotment gardens. You can see the maize starting to ripen (this picture was taken a few weeks ago), and you may be able to make out the leaves of squashes and beans. There appears to be a tomato too – perhaps a cousin.

With the growing interest in new ways of growing, and the anticipated need to grow crops which can cope with summer drought, perhaps the Three Sisters will embark on a comeback tour...

2006-09-23T21:19:00.000+01:00

Computer Health Update

Well, it's been an interesting week. Friends and relatives have rallied round and offered advice on my ailing pc.

The first question was - what specifications has it got? Obviously with a third-hand computer one has no idea, except 'very puny presumably'. One way to find this out is to pause the display screen whilst booting up and simply write it all down. A little tricky if your computer goes into off mode before getting to that stage of booting up. However, I tried pressing F1 to go into setup, and this seemed to bypass the problem. Great!

More advice was waiting in my emails - a download called Belarc Advisor will find out all that sort of stuff for you. A few minutes later and I had a list of my computer's vital statistics. Hmmmm, even I could see that the absence of any sort of virus protection needed to be sorted urgently. Help was at hand in the form of AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition, SpyBot Search and Destroy, A2 Anti-Malware and finally Sygate Personal Firewall. All free, just make sure you find the free version. Luckily, apart from a posse of tracking cookies, there didn't seem to be anything suspicious in the machine. I have I hope avoided all the viruses, trojans, malware and assorted other beasties.

But what was the actual problem? The suggestion was to run PC Medik, which says it 'repairs and boosts computer settings to fix hardware and software problems affecting it's performance' (their apostrophe). This didn't seem to make any difference. I found out a couple of things by googling 'my computer won't boot up', including removing all but the essential programmes which open up as the computer is starting up. Removing programmes is a little scary, but fortunately I had The Rough Guide to PCs and Windows to guide me. Still no difference, but emboldened by not actually breaking the thing, I ran Scandisc, which looks for problems on the hard disc. (Normally I do this by not switching off properly...) Fortunately it didn't find any. Next step - disc defragmentation. One assumes that the hard disc of a third-hand computer is in need of a little tidying up. This takes several hours of bleeping - except the poor thing got tired in the middle and crashed so thoroughly that I had to switch it off at the mains.

So back to the helpful emails, where the next suggestion was to try System Restore. This all seemed rather advanced computing to me, but really it's very easy. You just tell it to go back to a date before the problems started and restore the systems to what they were then. All the work you've done since that date is completely unaffected. Jolly clever, and it seems to have worked! So far, the computer has booted up normally several times. Whoopeedoo. (If only I could do something similar with my dodgy back - rewind time to the day before I decided I could angle-grind paving slabs like a navvy).

This has all been rather useful and empowering, and many thanks to my uncle Harry Hill and to Moseley Blogger for all the advice! I'm left with one nagging doubt though. AM I TURNING INTO A GEEK?

Normal service will be restored shortly.

2006-09-15T19:48:00.000+01:00

Cov HOD

In between work trips to Yorkshire and the South-West, I managed to fit in Coventry Heritage Open Day, last weekend. Coventry was one of the best medieval cities in England till the middle years of the last century. Ironically it was its industrial prosperity, rather than entirely the blitz, which started the removal of the narrowest streets to facilitate the growing number of cars, source of the city's wealth. Obviously the blitz did huge damage which the planners would never have done (would they?), and there is a lot which is good about the modernist precincts which replaced the old streets. But apparently the work could be done remarkably quickly because Donald Gibson had had the plans in his back pocket since being appointed municipal architect just before the war. (See this for one version of the controversy, and this, an excellent site but perhaps a little too thorough for those not particularly involved in the city).

Anyway, armed with a booklet I set off to discover what was still left of old Coventry. Surprisingly, there are many gems still surviving - just, in the case of some.

St Mary's Guildhall is over 650 years old and was one of the apparently innumerable places in which Mary, Queen of Scots was imprisoned. It has a glorious roof which would be not out of place in a Somerset or Norfolk church.

Inside are several intriguing carvings, like this fork-bearded character.

The Council Chambers are a surprise: one imagines this forward-looking city to have a thoroughly modern, state of the art, council chamber. Instead there is dark wood, writhing in snakes and twined in vines.

What a venue for the discussion of bin rounds!

St John's Church is a tall narrow building overlooking a roundabout and overlooked by the backs of modern shopping centres. However, inside it is an impressive Perpendicular style medieval church with a rather varied history, including the reason for one popular phrase about the city.

Inside the church this curious little person clings to the walls, with a Green Man for company. They look down on the congregation as they have done for several centuries. What was in the minds of the people who carved these, and who commissioned their creation? A mystery that we will probably never fully solve, and probably the better for that.

PLEASE NOTE: there may be an interruption in postings to this blog. My computer, rescued from the threat of being skipped, is probably not long for this world. It took seven goes to get it started this evening, and the rest of the evening will be spent copying as much as I can of my work and photos on a memory stick in case it never starts again! The easy answer would be to go out and buy a new computer - or even order one online tonight - but did I ever go for the easy solution? I'm fairly determined to get a second-hand one, so I'm hoping that Complete Wasters will be able to help. But they are in Leicestershire, so it may take me a while to get it sorted.

2006-09-08T21:02:00.000+01:00

God's own country...

Just got back from three days in Yorkshire, visiting organic gardening projects for work. I stayed in a campsite near the top of Baildon Moor overlooking much of West Yorkshire. A great spot on a fine evening.

It was an entertainingly odd campsite, populated by a vast menagerie of hens, bantams, ducks, geese and turkeys. We were treated to an accordion rendition every evening from a guy who lived in one of the static caravans, and in the morning what sounded like someone practising their scales, until I realised it was a cockerel.

But it was great to be reminded of the huge views you can get in Yorkshire. I drove up to Richmond one day, and on a clear day you can easily see the North York Moors on the right and the Dales on the left. Richmond particularly pleased me as I actually found somewhere which had some camping gaz in stock: it's the small but important things that count when you're camping, that's one of the things I like about it.

And I found a baker's in Bradford which makes excellent (let's make sure I get this right...) Curd Tarts.

2006-09-02T23:00:00.000+01:00

Home

Well, this is where I live now.

Somehow, it isn't the little gritstone house in Yorkshire with a back garden sloping steeply up to a dry-stone wall...but it's not bad. Compared with the houses I looked at, it is really spacious and light.

I even have a conservatory! OK, it's a bay window... soon to be filled with heritage chillis along with my cactus collection. The flat is something of an advertisement for Ikea, for which I am almost as guilty as the landlord.

The other end of the living room...more plants...more books...

My slightly idiosyncratic computer console, you can imagine me sitting here right now. And a rather unused art table. This place is too 'nice' to be throwing paint around, so I planned to just use watercolours, not acrylics, and got a nice little table. But I never really got started, and now I've got used to doing a lot more photography and computer stuff. I expect the art will re-emerge at some point though.

The kitchen mid baking session. Looks like scones to me.

And the basement. Well, garage. Even the bikes have their own place now, even if they do have to share it with lots of camping gear, art equipment, a compost bin and lots of gardening stuff biding its time...

2006-08-29T23:24:00.000+01:00

Rondo di Nizza

One of the perks of working at Ryton is The Staff Table. This is a table (yes...) where all sorts of interesting vegetables which are perhaps slightly too organic for sale, are left for staff to take, gratis. The other day I picked up this, isn't it the cutest courgette? Its name means 'round thing from Nice'. It's about the size as a large apple, and is grown just like other courgettes.

It's a good time of year for perks like this, so with the staff sale on Thursday lunchtimes, where we do pay a fair but reasonable price for our heritage vegetables, I've had some really interesting eats recently. Black peppers, pink striped aubergines, yellow tomatoes and lettuce in multitude. In fact the only things I've had to go to the supermarket for are milk, beer and slightly salted tortilla chips.

More squashes later...

2006-08-25T22:33:00.000+01:00

Echinacea purpurea

The jury's still out considering its use in preventing and ameliorating colds and flu, and it is almost ubiquitous in certain styles of planting design, but that doesn't stop Echinacea purpurea being a stunningly beautiful plant.

It's also known as 'purple coneflower', a name one cannot argue with. The cone consists of very sharp spines, hence its scientific name, which stems from the Greek word 'echinos', meaning hedgehog. There are nine other species of Echinacea, found in the prairies of central and south-western USA. The Native Americans reputedly used it medicinally to treat wounds, snake- and insect-bites. Wikipedia covers the curative aspects of Echinacea thoroughly.

Echinacea is a mainstay of a particular style of gardening known as prairie or naturalistic planting. I'm a bit of a fan of this particular style, and I particularly like Echinacea because it reminds me of August 2002, spent travelling round Holland visiting some wonderful gardens. (Shame I didn't have a digital camera or write a blog then. Perhaps I should go off and do it all again...) Piet Oudolf has been very influential in popularising prairie planting, though his approach is by no means low-maintenance. In fact he gets slightly snirpy if you suggest such a thing. The Sheffield University Landscape Department have taken a very different direction, carrying out long-term research projects on the potential of naturalistic planting for parks and open spaces. I used the products of their research in trial naturalistic planting schemes in three parks in Birmingham.

Echinacea is also incredibly popular with butterflies. Here are a couple more of my favourites: Painted Ladies. There were large numbers of Peacocks too, but they did not deign to be photographed.

All photos taken at Ryton Gardens in August 2006.

2006-08-23T21:02:00.000+01:00

Plant-breeders do have a sense of humour

In response to a comment below, I'm posting this picture of a plant from work:

2006-08-18T21:06:00.000+01:00

Leaf

This gorgeous leaf is found in the rather wonderful ‘Vegetable Way’ greenhouse at Ryton Gardens. It’s a plant called ‘the lost food of the Incas’. The naranjilla or lulo (Solanum quitoensis) is related to tomatoes and potatoes and is used in South America for drinks and sorbets. Apparently it contains scopolamine, nicotine and atropine, so go steady with it. If that appeals, seeds and growing instructions are available from Ready to Grow

Papaya or paw paw (Carica papaya) is also native to South America. It needs to be grown in a greenhouse for any chance of fruit development in the UK, but can be grown in a container (as here at Ryton). and with a well-draining compost could reach head height in a season. How to grow papaya. The seeds are being studied for contraceptive properties.

Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) (both photos above) originated in tropical Africa but is also possible to grow it in British greenhouses. This will do, although like most information on the web, is aimed at a US audience. At Ryton there are two guinea-pig sized fruits hiding shyly under the leaves.

Googling ‘watermelon’ results in ‘Watermelon love. A torrid tale of interactive melon twisting. Our cheeky demure hostess takes us on a desire fuelled trip into the surreal underworld of ...’ Blimey! Also, the fact that watermelons can be grown square. (Does that make them easier to twist?) Wikipedia also says: ‘The term watermelon is sometimes applied to professed Greens who seem to put social goals above ecological ones, implying they are "green on the outside but red on the inside."’

2006-08-15T22:15:00.000+01:00

Loaf
I've been baking my own bread for about a year now. Success has been varied: always good enough to eat, rarely good enough to share! I like wholemeal bread, but it always comes out brick-like.

The other day I was thinking about kneading, and how it is all about getting the protein molecules to line up together, as it were. It occured to me that I was turning the dough every time it needed folding, and perhaps it was better to keep the dough aligned in the same direction. It seemed much more elastic as I was kneading it, and lo and behold, emerged as a still dense but definitely more bready loaf.

I would be happy to present this loaf with some nice cheese and home-made pickle, but I've eaten half of it already! (Mainly with Derbyshire honey).

2006-08-13T22:19:00.000+01:00

Back in Brum again...

After a five week gap (and the last visit was just an early morning trip to the library on the way to Bristol!) I was back in Brum, firstly to a Wildlife Trust leaving do, the day after to catch up with friends Helen and David and go to an exhibition. It was REALLY nice to see everybody again! But a rather strange experience, as Birmingham feels so much like home, but it isn't home any more...

Took some photos in the reflections in a big shiny
metal thing parked in Victoria Square. They perhaps express the strange wobbly feeling I had yesterday!

The exhibition, 'Remembering the Somme' was very interesting. Robert Perry is a local artist, and I've found his paintings of the Black Country really inspiring. These were too, and in a similar way making art out of seemingly uninspiring landscapes. In his website - www.robertperry-artist.co.uk/ - under Style and Methods, you can see some of the paintings in the show. He also does concentration camps and motorcycles!

Have been struggling rather with this blog over the last week. Had a lovely trip to Norfolk last weekend, staying with friend Clare and her daughter Sophia. It was such a surprise that swimming in the North Sea could be so pleasant!

Didn't take the digital camera (new cameras and beaches don't mix) but thought I'd enliven the subsequent blog with some proper links, about some exhibitions I went to in Norwich. Could I get them to work? Nope. Not even with the help of MoseleyBlogger! So I've abandoned that blog.

But there's an extra one I put on hold for a bit, as it is about Ryton Gardens and I had to OK it with work, so it's back down the list a bit. And an addition to 'Painted Lady'. And I've stayed with a boring old functional URL in this post!

2006-08-02T20:13:00.000+01:00

Eh?

Is this the shortest, stupidest cycle track ever? Or am I missing something here? Do let me know!

Mind you, it cheered me up during a soggy cycle ride home the long way, the walk at Ryton Pools being rained off...very different weather from two weeks ago!

2006-07-29T22:13:00.000+01:00

One Saturday in Coventry...

Wall painting on Hay Lane;

Window of the disused County Hall (although 'the city's most significant 18th century building');

The Devil under St. Michael's foot (Jacob Epstein);

The Whittle Arches;

Young man sleeping next to waterfall, Priory Gardens (despite a gaggles of goths splashing in the water about 12 feet away);

The People's Bench - watching street artists;

Up or down? Hales Street;

God's lawyers taking a passerby to Hell. Down then.

Taken on a Kodak EasyShare Z740 on 29/7/06.

2006-07-26T22:02:00.000+01:00

Painted lady

Just round the corner from me is a patch of waste ground with a clump of ragwort which is buzzing with life, including these:

The Painted Lady butterfly (Cynthia cardui) flies here from Europe and Africa. Possibly there are more this year because of the hot weather. Possibly I am noticing them more because I have a nice new butterfly book which was part of my leaving present from the Wildlife Trust.

This is also just down the road from me!

And this is growing in the Organic Allotment at work: runner bean 'Painted Lady'.

2006-07-24T22:16:00.000+01:00

Ryton Flowers #1: The Organic Allotment

I'm lucky enough to work in one of the best gardens in Britain (I'm biased already!) We have a civilised hour for lunch, which gives me plenty of time to eat (an organic!) lunch then go out with a camera or sketchbook and wait for the flowers to stop waving about in the wind. It would be out of place for me to aim to describe the whole gardens, as we've an excellent website (www.gardenorganic.org.uk/) already which does that job. But I'll post some of my photos from time to time, and perhaps they'll encourage you all to visit and see it for real!

The Organic Allotment is one of over 15 gardens, and has lots of ideas for people wanting to grow their own food. It has four plots which are rotated so that no crop is grown in the same place more than once in four years. This helps to keep pests and diseases down, and also is used to control the level of fertility in the soil for different requirements of different crops.

A big feature of the garden is the use of 'companion' planting using plants which some might consider merely ornamental. Here there is Painted Sage (Salvia viridis) in the foreground to attract pollinators for the beans. In the background are tomatoes and sweetcorn and aubergines, being grown as a 'catch crop' after potatoes, surrounded by marigolds (Calendula) to attract hoverflies to eat aphids.

In a different plot brassicas are being grown. Next year they will move into the plot where the beans are now. Beans and other leguminous plants can 'fix' nitrogen from the air into the soil, making it suitable for 'hungry' crops like cabbages and sprouts. The strong taste of these vegetables is partly the reason for their requirement for nitrogen: they turn it into chemicals which can repel pests. But not all, which is why there is a net to keep out Large White butterflies, and Echium vulgare (Viper's Bugloss) almost swamping the cabbages, to put off Cabbage Root Fly and attract hoverflies. (How this repells Cabbage Root Fly is really interesting but it'll take too long this time!)

It seems fortuitous that the blues of the cabbages and that of the Bugloss go so well together!

The composite picture at the top includes (clockwise from top left) Verbena bonariensis with Achillea in the background; sputnik-like Nigella seed-heads; Calendula, and Statice, an 'everlasting' flower which is also very attractive to pollinators such as butterflies.

2006-07-20T21:54:00.000+01:00

Ryton Pools Country Park

Went on a very pleasant walk yesterday evening, organised by Warwickshire County Council countryside section. Enthusiastic and knowledgeable Assistant Ranger Pam took us on a figure-of-eight round Ryton Wood, which is owned by Warwickshire Wildlife Trust and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. (http://www.warwickshire-wildlife-trust.org.uk/reserves/ryton-wood-sssi.htm)

It’s a lovely place to be on a warm (understatement of the day) summer evening. Under the oak canopy it was rather cooler, but still very sultry. Perhaps that was why we didn’t see the White Admirals, nor the Purple Emperor (! but introduced and possibly a lonely batchelor as only one seen this year). However we saw several Marbled Whites (which according to my lovely new book about butterflies and insects which was one I bought with my leaving pressie from the Wildlife Trust is not a White but a Brown butterfly. Confusing.) And several Ghost Moths plus a pair of pink knickers which another participant mis-identified as a hat.

But Pam and I had a jolly good natter!

Marbled White on Teasel in butterfly meadow, Ryton Pools Country Park

More moths

A sultry evening as I said, which finished with thunderclouds looming. As the sun set with a fiery pollution-generated glow I pedalled back home as fast as possible without mowing any pedestrians down (no lights - doh!) and managed to get back before the storm started. Actually it didn't, which was a disappointment, but I didn’t switch on my computer just in case the house got struck by lightening.

Anyway, just settling down with a glass of cool lager and a good book when there was a bit of a commotion on the landing. Cries of ‘get it!’ ‘eek!’ ‘it’s got away’ and a pshhhhttt sound…so I popped my head out and found my two neighbours armed with rolled-up newspapers and a can of fly-spray trying to get a couple of not very big moths. I am now official moth-catcher of the block, having rescued both moths (didn’t stop to ID them) and got the cat in as the neighbour whose turn it was (they cat-share) was too phobic about the moths to go down the stairs. They are really nice neighbours, I hasten to add! Just a bit funny about moths…

2006-07-18T21:15:00.000+01:00

Not a naked lady in sight #2

Sunday evening – Swarb’s Lazarus

This time I brought my bicycle!

Dave Swarbrick was introduced to a packed and wildly enthusiastic audience as ‘a living legend – with the emphasis on the living!’ This refers to the publication of his obituary a few years ago by a well-known broadsheet of a conservative leaning. Actually he was very ill, and has since had a lung transplant. Just getting up on stage was an effort, a painful sight compared to the energy he had when I saw him play, somewhere or other, something or other years ago.

But once he started playing that fiddle…

Yes, this is theoretically a technically hopeless photo, but it does capture the energy of the man. I would say he plays the fiddle like a god, but as it is the devil who is the one who plays the fiddle, that might be a better comparison!

Lots of proper photos at http://www.swarbslazarus.com/. Look at the biographies too to get an idea of the influence Swarb, Kevin Dempsey and Maartin Allcock have had on folk music.

It was like a greenhouse in the tent, and this might be why only two people got up and danced. Oddly they were people I felt I’d seen before at festivals: the girl in the middle of the audience flailing her arms out of rhythm who doesn’t stop when the band does, and the intense and staring man who dances slowly at the front in a kind of tai chi fashion.

The gig finished with a standing ovation, spot-on at 7.30pm ('so the neighbours don't complain' as Swarb said gruffly 'you know what I think about the neighbours!'). Then I cycled home, uneventfully, thinking nostalgically of past festivals. Anybody fancy going to Cropredy?

2006-07-17T22:10:00.000+01:00

Not a naked lady in sight...

It was the Godiva Festival in Coventry this weekend, and though I was working at the Organic Food and Wine Festival at work (and meeting some lovely people) I did get down to Memorial Park both evenings and saw two of the headline acts. This is my first attempt at music reviewing, you may prefer that it is my last!

Saturday night - Mercury Rev

It's a while since I've been to a gig, even longer since I've been to a festival. The idea with the Godiva seems to be something for everybody, and it probably just about does that. Wandering in at about 8pm were punks with their hair in proper big spikes, guys in baggie trousers, goths of all ages, skater boys (or is that skata boyz?), various hippieish people... (Or is that hippyish people?) Going in the opposite direction were lots of very sunburnt people with rather grizzly children. By catering for so many people, the festival inevitably ends up lacking any real character. Perhaps that is its character. Actually, the really big distinguishing factor for me was the amount of litter. Drifts of perfectly good recyclable beer cans and bottles mixed up with chip wrappers and burger-boxes.

'Deserter's Songs' is one of my favourite cds, but I never saw Mercury Rev in their heyday, which I realised looking at the date on my cd was 1998, so I was curious to find out what else they did/had been doing. Well, not that much apparently, as the set included virtually all the songs on the cd. The lead singer has a rather irritatingly camp way of posturing, but this got less annoying as they got into the set and as the music got heavier, and better. There were a lot of apparently diehard fans (Revvers?) who whooped and sang along, and a small group of crusties who danced very enthusiastically like they used to at Leveller's gigs.

Although seeing Mercury Rev has taken a bit of a shine off them, actually I really quite enjoyed it, mainly trying to take arty photos with my newish digital camera, which all turned out to be totally hopeless once I got a proper look at them. I quite like this though, even though it's all blurry. Gigs are fairly blurry occasions anyway.

For some really good gig photos, and some proper reviews, look at http://peteashton.com/. In fact for a really good blog anyway.

Coventry folk are very friendly - at the gig a very happy-looking man tried to give me a hug, and another wanted me to take his photo as he posed like Popeye. Then I ended up walking three miles home (no change for the bus, how divvy is that?) and one very wobbly man wanted to tell me all about his 'missus' and how he loved her and how he was getting married in 7 weeks and he was shitting himself about it, and he'd 'see me right through all the underpasses, bab' until he bumped into some mates and I just carried on. A mile or so later a young guy shouted across the street what was I doing, and when I said 'going home like everybody else' he suggested cheerfully that I came home with him. But I didn't feel like taking him up on the offer!

2006-07-14T21:36:00.000+01:00

Bike ride to work - edited highlights

This is very different from my journey up and down the City Road which I did for over two years.

Footpath leading to Stoke Floods Local Nature Reserve www.warwickshire-wildlife-trust.org.uk/reserves/stoke-floods-lnr.htm

Bridlepath between wheatfields.

Wolston village. Spot the lollipop lady. I say hello to her every morning.

And this is where I work now! www.gardenorganic.org.uk. More about this another time.

If you're interested, you can see the whole lot on http://taraxacum.zoto.com/galleries/routetowork It was a very sunny morning even though these photos were taken between 7.45 and 8.30am! So a bit contrasty for ideal picture quality. But you'll get the general idea.

2006-07-13T22:10:00.000+01:00

Intent

Me, sitting in a tent, drinking tea. Two of my favourite activities.

This may be the only time a picture of me gets published on here - my intention with this blog is to stay the other side of the camera, to take some interesting photos (which may or may not be of Coventry) and to not burble too much.