Friday 9th April 10

A busy morning... got up soon after 9am to be ready to take the spare seeds from the York in Transition seed swap along to the YUMI Community Garden.

So, after breakfast and a shower I cycled along to the Danesgate Skills Centre on Fulford Cross and arrived on the dot of 10.30. Sasiki and her colleague Helen Hays, a garden designer, were there waiting, and Nick Haines, the organiser of the seed swap, had just arrived. The idea was to hand over the seeds and get some photos of the handover. A handful of users of the garden arrived; a Mexican woman who's been in York for just one week, to learn English and do her MSc, and two Chinese women and a small boy.

The Press didn't turn up, so we took our own photos and will submit these with some extra copy and hope the Press will run a story next week about our two organisations working together.

I came back via Country Fresh, St Nicks and Freshways, getting home at about 12.30, to find a peaceful household.

I spent the afternoon in the garden, taking stuff down from the conservatory which Gill is tidying, and then I got stuck down there, digging out a compost heap. But halfway through the afternoon, our youngest came down and said we had a visitor... it was Alan Leach, who used to live next door to us in Emerald St, with his three children. I spoke to him on facebook yesterday... he asked if he could drop off a bag of kitchen biodegradables. So it was really good to see him, as haven't seen him for a while.

So they all had a wander down the garden, but didn't stay long. I got on with my rearranging my heaps... I dug out one pallet heap and turned it into a 1 cubic metre builders bag which fits into a wooden holder, and dug out both my Compostumbler bins. All the tumbled material needs to sit in a 'New Zealand Bin' (pallets lined with cardboard) for quite a while before it's ready to use as compost. The adverts saying 'makes compost in 14 days' are complete nonsense. Also, I'm going to have to retire the largest Compostumbler as the metal sheet sides have corroded and now flex so much that the door catches bulge out and prevent the cylinder revolving all the way round. I might be able to purchase new metal bits... the plastic end pieces are fine, it's the sheet metal which is rusting. This is a disappointment as it cost a lot and I'd have hoped it would last a decade or so, but it's only lasted about 6 years I think.

Gill had made a nutloaf mix for tea, and using a plastic tub, formed it into rounds and fried them, making home-made burgers, which we had in bread rolls, with baked beans and mushrooms.

Later in the evening I blanched some grapes to make raisins, and chopped up more pears to dry them.

I got a message from the journalist at The Press saying that the story about YiT and YUMI would probably be in the paper early next week.