Yarn Along

Joining in with Ginny's Yarn Along.

Knitting and reading are so comforting aren't they. When the wind is howling, rain is lashing against windows or when things aren't quite going as they should there is a soothing rhythm in the needles and an escape to be found in the pages.

I'm pressing on with my purple basil scarf. You can see it's gone a bit stripey where I've started the new darker ball - two rows old ball, two rows new ball. You will remember that we are calling this a design feature.

I've just finished Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible". Absolutely phenomenal. From the back of the book:

"Told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959, The Poisonwood Bible is the story of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. They carry with them all they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to Scripture - is calamitously transformed on African soil."

Leaving America's Deep South, they are completely unprepared for life in a jungle village. Writing through the eyes of the girls and their mother, Barbara Kingsolver relates not only a tale of their daily life in rural Belgian Congo but also a story of the horror of colonialism, the post-colonial crisis and the arrogance of missionaries. It is a definitely a story that needed to be told, and it's a book I can't recommend highly enough. I'll leave you with the first paragraph, which has stayed with me.

"Leah Price

We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle. My sisters and I were all counting on having one birthday apiece during our twelve-month mission. 'And heaven knows,' our mother predicted, 'they won't have Betty Crocker in the Congo.' "

Seed swapping

The shoe box of seeds came down from the shelf today. I sorted through it ruthlessly and made a pile of things I didn't need any more. Then I rounded up the children and headed off to Avon Wildlife Trust's Feed Bristol project. It's a community vegetable growing garden and it's absolutely fab.

Today was their annual seed swap. Hand in your packets of excess seeds and pick out something a bit different. There were stalls and homemade cakes, lots with vegetables in them and a fire to poke sticks into and a lovely little house made of all natural materials.

The whole site is sustainably run, it was such a pleasure to be around people who "get" the whole sustainable thing. Where we live it's hardly ever even considered sadly. I have one or two like-minded friends, but really on the whole people locally are just not into it. At Feed Bristol so many little details were attended to, it was a whole different vibe. Natural shelters that will just decompose back into the earth when the time comes, dozens of people arriving by bike, natural fibre clothing, organic whole food. It was really inspiring to see so many people so committed. 

The site is such a wonderful spot, I imagine it looks absolutely glorious in the summer. Not quite so excellent was the view out the back though.

Sadly a load of local allotments have been ripped out to put a city bus route through. The allotment holders did their very best to protest and hold on to their precious plots, but in the end the council won out and they were evicted. Disappointing isn't it.

While I'm on the subject, Wellywoman has a fantastic post up today about the ancient grazing wetlands that are the Gwent levels, on the other side of the river. Do have a read if you have a spare moment, it's such very precious land, and such an interesting post.

Back to the seeds. We had a good rummage and I picked out a fancy looking white patty pan squash, some radishes - you can never have too many radishes, okra and some pink mallow flowers amongst other things. I hung about the bee lady picking up tips. Oh how I would love to have bees. I picked up a couple of leaflets telling me which bees like which flowers.

And something new to me, a nice man gave the biggest boy a handful of oca tubers. They're from the Andes where they're second only to potatoes in popularity. You can eat them raw, apparently they're a bit lemony, or you can cook them just like a potato. I do like to try something new.

We need to pop them straight into pots on the windowsill and keep them frost-free. I'll keep you posted on their progress.

If there's a seed swap near you I can highly recommend it. It's great to find one or two different things to try and pass on your own stuff to someone who'll appreciate it. And there's cake.

Goals, pugs and tomato seeds

Not much in the way of photos today. We had very long Sunday of watching football in the freezing cold. I lost count of how many goals sailed past into the back of the nets. Suffice to say both teams were soundly thrashed. We were all exhausted by the end of it.

Earlier this week some Famous Writers visited a local school and the biggest two got to go and see them. I angled very hard for an invite but alas none was forthcoming. I threatened to just turn up. That was frowned upon. I said I might just hang around in the car park and look out for them. Apparently that was not okay either. I said that if it was the Beatles everyone would be doing it. I then tried to make it relevant by translating it to Justin Bieber. If Justin Bieber was coming everyone would be hanging about in the car park. I lost my audience at this point.

So I stayed away, and they met the writers, including Gill Lewis who is a huge favourite of mine and Sarah McIntyre and Philip Reeve who signed a copy of Pugs from the Frozen North for the littlest boy who is so very in love with pugs. I'm not sure that he will pick the most suitable of dogs when the time comes. He's also obsessed with brabacons which are bizarre little creatures and nowhere near robust enough to live in our house. I digress. Sarah McIntyre even drew him his own special little pug in the front of the book. His big brother, who presented him with the book, is now in such good books, no pun intended. Long may it last.

It's not long until World Book Day now. For once I believe we may actually be organised, although we will be bending the rules a little. I'm trying to persuade the middle boy into his urchin costume, which has also doubled as an evacuee and a Victorian. He can then be Simon from Black Hearts in Battersea. And the littlest boy, who received camouflaged everything for Christmas, will be going as Ray Mears. Rule bending, see. If anyone is going to bend the rules he'll be the one to do it.

On the windowsill the tomato seeds are sitting quietly in some moist compost and thinking about growing. Before too long lots more seeds of every type will join them. March is a good month for gardeners. Out with the seed box and the potting compost, the new season starts here.

February at the allotment

I dragged the children down to the allotment today. It had been a while. There's not much to be done down there when the soil is wet, but today was perfect weather for weeding. It went surprisingly well. The littlest boy tidied all of the old brown foliage from the strawberries and then snipped things with the snippers. Some of the snipping was useful. The biggest boy took a very long time to do a small amount of weeding, but nonetheless weeding was done and I was grateful. The middle boy tidied up sticks and put away netting and hoops and generally helped out.

After a while they all disappeared into the woodland and stream bit with knives and saws and snippers and it was just me and a robin. I weeded and tidied and even found a couple of rogue potatoes. I pulled some of the biggest boy's leeks and when we got home I made leek and potato soup. At this time of year allotment/home grown vegetables are a rare and precious treat.

I talked to the littlest boy while we worked together in a moment of complete harmony about how it would all be worth it in a few months when we would be carrying home full trugs of fruit and vegetables. He particularly likes the fruit part of it all, most especially strawberries.

I'm feeling quite positive about the allotment today. It's a rollercoaster ride, sometimes it threatens to overwhelm me. But there was clear soil in places when we left, and some bits were even almost neat. I've mentioned before that I'm not aiming for show garden perfection, just a fair amount of produce. If I can just about keep (loose) control over it that's good enough.

It's the time of year for big dreams of bumper harvests and summer abundance. All the failures are forgotten, pests are a distant memory and the coming year is going to be amazing. I'm off to sort through the seed box.

Colour Collaborative: February: Metal

Jutting out 800' into the swirling Bristol Channel is Clevedon pier. One of only two Grade I listed piers in the country, it was called "The most beautiful pier in England" by the late poet laureate, Sir John Betjeman. It is made of 370 tons of wrought ironwork, and incredibly was moved into position by hand, before being raised by a crane. The pier is somewhere we pass by often, a landmark on this Victorian seafront, yet it came close to being demolished not so long ago.

It was opened in 1869 to facilitate the journey to Wales, just over the other side of the water and visible in the photos above. Ferries would stop at the end of the pier, at one of the docking points built to accommodate the 49' tidal range. As time went on the Severn railway tunnel opened, in 1891, incredibly taking passengers underneath the river, and meaning less custom for the ferries. Excursions in the Bristol Channel became popular though, and paddeships and steamers would pick people up for pleasure trips.

Then in 1970, disaster struck. Two of the immense spans collapsed under load testing and the pier was closed. The pier's future was uncertain for years, and moves were made to demolish it. A Preservation Trust was formed to save the pier, and Sir John Betjeman spoke in support of its restoration.

Supporters raised over £100,000 towards a feasibility study and the local authority and English Heritage also chipped in. When the decision was taken to save the pier, English Heritage and the National Heritage Memorial Fund each donated £637,000 towards the costs. Many smaller donations were also made.

The pier was dismantled and the ironwork taken to nearby docks for restoration before being painstakingly reassembled. In 1989 the pier re-opened, with the beautiful pagoda at the end being opened in 1998. It's somewhere I always love to walk. The water and the sky are always mesmerising, changing according to the weather and the season. Every shade of grey is there, and at low tide rich brown mud, beloved of wading birds who dabble about looking for worms and tiny crustaceans.

On wild days I tie my hair back and hold on to the rail while the wind whips waves into the water. While the currents underneath are deadly, waves are unusual this far up the channel. The mud is churned up into a milky cocoa colour. On days like this there are only browns and greys. It makes you forget your worries and reminds you how good it is to be alive.

When the weather is more benevolent, the end of the pier is the best place to sit and watch the sunset. Sometimes the sky above the horizon will be the palest duck egg blue and the water will be shattered fiery sun. On a really good day there will be lavender grey clouds rimmed with gold. Over the years countless people have gazed out over the water from here, taking a moment to pause and sigh and think how beautiful it all is. I'm very grateful to the people who campaigned to save this lovely landmark. I think Sir John Betjeman would have approved.

To visit the other Colour Collaborative blogs for more of this month's posts, just click on the links below:

            Annie at Annie Cholewa                           Gillian at Tales from a Happy House

             Jennifer at Thistlebear                            Sarah at Mitenska

What is The Colour Collaborative?

All creative bloggers make stuff, gather stuff, shape stuff, and share stuff. Mostly they work on their own, but what happens when a group of them work together? Is a creative collaboration greater than the sum of its parts? We think so and we hope you will too. We'll each be offering our own monthly take on a colour related theme, and hoping that in combination our ideas will encourage us, and perhaps you, to think about colour in new ways.

The turning of the season

I can feel winter drawing to a close. The Bewick's swans are quite sleepy now, a sign that they will soon take to the skies and make that mammoth journey back to Arctic Siberia. Thirty left last night, and the conditions are good for more to leave tonight and tomorrow. It's such a privilege to see them so close, from the hide in the picture they are often just a few feet away. In their summer breeding grounds they will be quite remote, never seeing a person or a building. I'm hoping it's a good year for them and that lots return in October.

The weather was glorious today. After school it was just me and the littlest boy for a while so we headed outside. I mowed the grass, which turned out to be surprisingly long. The littlest boy did things to wood with a hacksaw. He and the middle boy live for the day when they're allowed a hatchet. Me not so much. Underneath all of the thick growth the grass was sparse and the moss was thick. I doubt I'll do anything about it, I'm not too bothered so long as there is some sort of green covering. A robin flew down after I'd finished and picked about finding something or other to eat. I can't imagine covering the grass with moss killer and then watching the wildlife walking about in it.

In the pond I could see definite movement, and when I looked out of an upstairs window earlier I'm sure I saw something jumping in. In the kitchen I opened the drawer and looked at the packets of seeds. Soon, soon.

Five on Friday

Joining in with Amy for the first anniversary of her Five on Friday link-up.

1.  Games are popular round here in the winter, especially with the littlest boy. If he can't find anyone to play with he'll play all by himself. The other day he played Monopoly on his own. Last night I played Connect 4 with him until it got a bit wild, then a few rounds of Postman Pat pairs. He doesn't mind that the cards are quite babyish, in fact he's rarely bothered about things like that. He beat me rather a lot. I'm guessing there's so much information in my brain that it's almost full, with no room for Postman Pat memory cards.

Other favourites are Whot, which I played when I was little, Labyrinth, Coppit (again one I used to play), Yahtzee and chess. The evenings are getting lighter though, yesterday he was still outside playing football with a friend at 6 o'clock. So before long it will be all about the ball games.

2.  There are one or two buds in the garden. The camellia, rosemary and also the peach blossom. I'm not sure if the peach is earlier than usual, I think it might be. A late cold snap won't do much for our chances of peaches. Nor will the perennial flying footballs, see 1. above.

3.  I am powering through the pain of giving up eating yummy things for Lent. After two or three weeks I'll be fine, it's just the first bit that hurts. My willpower fades as the day goes on. By teatime I'm hopeless.

4.  A little something from Nick Hornby that made me smile. Some homework excuses, borrowed from publishers' rejection letters. Here's one to give you a flavour of it. "I'm sorry I haven't done my homework, but my homework diary is currently full, and I'm not looking to take on anything else right now."  The boys have made notes.

5.  The beautiful Bewick's swans (photos by the biggest boy) will be heading off back to Arctic Siberia before too much longer. I shall look forward to their return in October when they'll have their youngsters with them. As time goes by I appreciate the rhythms of nature more and more. I love to see wildlife featured on other blogs.  I wonder, those of you who like the natural world and walking in the countryside, was it something you did when you were little? I'm wondering if this is an important part of creating a love of wildlife and the outdoors. If so, I really hope it's something I'm passing on.

Wishing all a good weekend. CJ xx