Tuesday 6th July 10

A good day, it is SO good to be able to get around more easily in the 'aircast walker' and today was more or less a normal day movement-wise for me.

So at about 10am I got a load more compost in sacks from down the garden and loaded up my trailer with six sacks of mature unriddled and at 10.30 took them down to the new raised beds at the Barbican Cycle Path, and left them there behind the raised beds.

When I got back I got a phone call from a tree surgeon, Glynn, whom I met at the Bishopthorpe Road Open For People street party, asking me whether I'd like to have a bit of Horse Chestnut delivered? Well, of course I was happy... and he said he'd be coming at 4pm.

Nick Haines rang and he wanted to come and see me at 6pm to collect some compost, so I knew I had a fairly busy day ahead.

I did a bit of chainsawing and stacking, to make some space for the unknown quantity of Chestnut, and did some layering of the current compost heap.

I also made some time to put my foot up without the aircast on, which was great!

So, the tree surgeon came and had about 8 slices of trunk about 40 to 50 centimtres diameter and quite a few branches, plus a cherry trunk. I showed Glynn the garden and then chopped up and split most of the long branches and the cherry. I didn't split the rounds... which I was later glad of.

Nick arrived and he filled 4 sacks with unriddled compost from a builders bag of very mature and dry compost whilst I dealt with some more fruit and veg 'resources', and then we riddled the four sacks so all he took was fine material with most of the contraries removed, and all the sticks and uncomposted bits put back in a working heap. So he was happy with the four sacks of riddled, and paid me for them... but on the way out into the front garden we started talking about edible mushrooms. Nick wants to grow some, and has discovered Gourmet Woodland Mushrooms, which is run by my friend Adrian (although I haven't seen him for over 3 years) and is where I got my mushroom plugs from... and the website has several photos of my mushrooms on it (top right photo and conservatory photos of Pearl Oyster on Poplar log) (both right-hand photos of Chicken of the Woods on Cherry trunk) So, Nick might be having the Chestnut logs... I look forward to hearing if he is going to be able to use them.

Then I had tea... a sweetcorn on the cob, pasta salad and a veggie roll thing in pastry.. and a quiet evening after this.