Friday 12th March 10

A good start to the day, despite Gill waking late and rushing to get the children ready. We worked as a team... I washed up necessary bits and made a sandwich for packed lunch, and Gill got the homework ready to finish.

And it all worked like a dream... amazing. What a turn around!

The rest of the day went very well too... didn't spend too long on the computer in the morning and after lunch, cycled to school to give in a letter, then to the post office to post a book which accidentally came back with me from Sheffield, than down to town to get a cheque out for a forthcoming conference... in Sheffield... and then to Alligator to see if I could find some wheat grains so Gill can re-make a wheat sack, as her old one had virtually caught fire.... But Alligator didn't have more than a single tiny packet... but Steve took the opportunity to ask if I'd be prepared to do their composting!

Graham used to work there and at St Nicks, so he took the compostable materials to the St Nicks sawdust-heavy piles, but as he's stopped working at St Nicks, the stuff now goes in the bin. And this is completely against their values. So, sucker here, unable to turn down a sack of compostables and equally unable to say no to helping people out with working towards sustainability, said yes and picked up my first sack from them. About 20kg of mainly tomatoes and red peppers.

I called in on Country Fresh on the way back and picked up easily another 80kg of lovely stuff. And then I called in on Freshways and only had space to put their sack on my handlebars. Ridiculously overloaded... but it all would have gone to landfill if I hadn't have picked it up. I really need to get rid of a load of finished compost. Maybe I should have a compost super roadside sale? One more thing to do. Maybe.

Also today I got two really good pieces of 'John the Composter' work confirmed... One at St Nicks to do a presentation of 'Extreme Composting' to a visiting group (I am SO looking forward to this!) and one postponed talk to a group connected with Bradford University, where they have a Rocket, one of my favourite composting machines. (see the pdf here and other info about the University of Bradford 'ecoversity' here).

I also had a message from someone I met recently who I invited to see York if they were ever to visit... and they have decided that it's tomorrow! So that's tomorrow sorted then!

I did get quite a bit of time in the garden too... mainly at the front, and I had a visit from Shirley the Freecycler who offered some seeds and asked for some climbing beans... I emailed and we agreed to swap. Brilliant.. she's got pea beans and yams, and I've got squash, pattie pan Summer squash, sunflowers, kohl rabi, spinach and kinghorn yellow wax beans... wow!

Pasta and broccoli for tea, cooked on the stove once it was too dark to continue outside.

Gardener's World was good. Tried to do the washing up before bed this time.