Wednesday 7th October 09

A slow start to the day... I was able to have an hour of reading the NewScientist which was great... although I'm still 3 weeks behind!

But got up at 10ish and did some more sorting in the conservatory... taking down more dead Yam vines and collecting it all in a huge saucepan, and then taking off the little balls from the leaf axils and collecting them together so I can give them to people and plant more next Spring... I have hundreds!

Had a delivery of new bolts and wing nuts to hold the Composphere together, as the ones it was supplied with were no good, and I contacted the company, who said yes, this was true, and they'd send some different ones. I spent 20 minutes making the sphere spherical again.

Then I put all the Yam vines and tomato haulms together with a large load of other compostables and went down the garden to load up the Composphere. I also picked two pumpkins and a squash, loads of beans and some nasturtium seeds.

I also did a small amount of log splitting whilst waiting for our eldest son to come home, and I visited Country Fresh which has a new groovy green paint-job. Lovely!

Later in the evening I heard the excellent news that the power company E.ON have decided to not build the dirty coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, supposedly because of the economic downturn meaning that electricity consumption is down. I'm sure that the widespread opposition and criticism also had something to do with it. See
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/07/eon-cancels-kingsnorth-power-station?commentpage=1 for the announcement and the reaction; loads of comments.

I got a call from a friend who wanted some help understanding some forms which had arrived so I popped round and looked through them, and talked her through what I thought she should do, and explained her options. A little bit of advocacy work... I may need to help her fill them in.

Late on I sorted through a load of thrown-out pears to salvage what I could to dry. A wet and messy job, interspersed with trips back to the laptop to have goes on Scrabble.