Sunday 11th December 11

A really good day... mainly because I got to spend quite a bit of it outside!

I cycled down to Country Fresh to do some shopping and pick up compostables... just one sack today!  But I did a couple of hours compost heap loading and tidying up in the garden, including rescuing the last of the small-but-tasty apples from the £6 Radio Times tree, which has become a really good cropper.  The birds like them too!

I got ready for tomorrow's tree work, finding a rope to pull the tree the right way away from David's pergola, and checked my other tools, sharpened my chainsaw blade.  My only worry is that the ladder David has won't be nearly long enough.  I'm considering taking mine.... on my bike!  Could be fun!

During the evening I washed out 4 little tiny glass jars to fill with red pepper paprika for the Stables teachers' Christmas present, and 4 jars of dried pears, all containing exactly the same number of pear halves.  We are donating these as we can't afford to give money for a seasonal present.

Gill did lots of cooking... including 4 lemon cakes... which meant that I had loads of washing up to do.  Watched a moving documentary about the Japanese tsunami.

Wednesday 7th December 11

So, got up soon after 8 and got stuff together for Scoop... I finished washing out several more 340g jars and put them to dry on the stove top, and then filled them tightly with a mixture of dried pears off the top of the stove (moist and chewy) and some out of bigger jars which are slightly drier and even more chewy.  I got a tray full of ripe pears from the store I have in the garden and carefully loaded it up onto my trailer.  Gill wrote out some labels for the jars.

I gingerly and slowly cycled up to the University and delivered the pears.  I've a feeling some of the fresh ones will be rejected as over-ripe.

I came home and immediately cycled up to Blacker Steel in Osbaldwick, where I knew I'd be able to get my trailer welded up again.  They did it before... a 5 minute arc-weld, and this time, again, one chap said 'no problem' and within 5 minutes had sorted it, and sprayed the weld with some protective 'galv-spray' to stop it rusting.  Excellent service, no nonsense, friendly.

It was chucking it down, sleeting, when I cycled home so I came in and didn't do any work in the garden.  I do have more log stacking to do, but not in this weather!

I retrieved a load of pears from the studio, and sorted these out, loading up two racks, and getting some pears ready to make some pear leather.  At about 5.30 I cycled in to the University again to pick up the unsold pears, and yes, there were some as I'd expected, as this batch contained some which were rather soft.

I went on to David's, where I was due to do a 6-8 shift.  I took him to City Screen, as requested, where we had a coffee, he read the paper and we chatted with a student nurse called Rachel.

I finished at 7.30, after doing his food, and bombed home, not worrying about the integrity of the pears which had already bounced around and released some juice.

I finished the pear leather job in the evening, halved, cored and skinned, washed and all the soft 'sleepy' bits removed, then whizzed a saucepan full of these with the hand-held liquidiser, put the slop through a sieve, to remove the stony bits which abound in Winter pears.  I filled two trays with slop, as I've run out of space in the freezer, and balanced them on the stoves.

I also really enjoyed David Attenborough's Frozen Planet, about the climatic changes at the polar regions. 

Saturday 10th September 11

A funny old day as I was planning to go over to Manchester to the regular cafe meet-up I go to, and see friends including Laura, who told me she'd got something for me...  And then I was going to go to Sheffield to the Green Party Conference.

But in the end, I stayed at home... Gill needed me around.

I did a bit of cleaning (not much, I rarely do a lot!) and washing up (I always keep on top of that) and some composting and weeding... I even had an hour of chainsawing and stacking.

But what I did mostly today was pears.  I washed and halved them, cored and peeled, and filled a big saucepan with them, ready to bottle them, and filled all my racks with the rest.  Finished at 2.30 am.

Monday 5th September 11

I woke fairly early and came downstairs for breakfast and emails... but after an hour, felt so headachy and tired that I went back to bed.  I got up for a late lunch, but didn't feel like having much.  I got a phone call from someone who'd been to a Fiddlesticks appearance in a library recently, and she booked me for her 6 year old's birthday party in October. 

A bit later I got out into the garden to put the two sacks of paper plates and waste food into my Compostumbler, which was steaming with lots of wonderful aerobic activity.  I found that one of my small pear trees had gently dropped most of it's pears, so I came up the garden with a very heavy box of them, most of which I'll hope to dry. This spell outdoors helped blow away my hangover (I admit it) and I felt a bit better during the late afternoon.

I'd rescued about 10 vegan hot dog sausages at the end of the Peace Festival, so Gill and I had them for tea, in bread rolls, with pink fir apple potato salad, which is just wonderful!

At 7.15 I cycled down to The Seahorse to the LETS meeting. Melody, Geoff and Kay were there, but it was a short meeting, although I chatted with Geoff afterwards, until Gill rang me and asked if I'd come home to take bathwater upstairs.  So by 9pm I was home, dealing with one son's bathwater, the washing up, and a mountain of pears.

Thursday 18th August 11

A bit of a nothingy day to be honest.

I took the tent down as it was dry and our eldest has decided not to use it for his birthday next week.

I did a couple of hours composting and a bit of wooding.

Did more pears.

Monday 23rd August 10

Gill and I both woke fairly late, 9ish, as our eldest son had requested that he see in his birthday, and stay up til midnight. This meant that his little brother was also up... and they didn't get to sleep for quite a bit after that. Excitement!

So, a birthday, and we now have a teenager! He hadn't wanted to go anywhere or do anything in particular, so it was a low-key day.

I did a variety of jobs... went to get bread from Thomas the Baker, and was lucky with a good selection of Yesterbake, unsold bread from Saturday, available at half price and two for the price of one, essentially quarter price. Better for the company than having to pay to throw it away, though!

On my way back from the baker, I noticed a big branch in Hull Road Park, so a bit later, I cycled round to the 'Fast Pack' shop on Lilac Avenue which sells all sorts of nuts, bolts, tools and much more, as one of my unicycle saddles had lost some nuts fixing it to the metal shaft. I got the right size nuts and then went on to the park to chop up the branch with my bowsaw. This was a trailer-full of nice Ash logs.

Later, I used a climbing rope I found a few months ago on a road near Durham to pull the walnut tree more vertical; Gill asked me to do it as it is leaning over, and there are so many walnuts on it that it is weighed down somewhat. Oh, the squirrel trap has had it's first victim. So, more nuts, fewer predators!

I spent a bit of time pruning the tomatoes in the conservatory... taking out unwanted side shoots and the tops of the plants, so they put more of the energy into fruit. I picked about 20 tomatoes too.

I got a Fiddlesticks booking for late September at a Housing Association do, and got a reminder from Book of Green about a bill for the iPhone application.

After tea, which was a lovely nutloaf, tagliatelle, green beans and tomato sauce creation, I cycled round to Nick, a Freecycler, who had put a large television up for grabs, and we'd asked for it as our small TV in the front room is not that good for doing the Wii with... and this reason was enough for him to choose us as the lucky recipients. I took an old duvet with me and this meant I could balance the huge TV on my trailer.

Later in the evening I chopped up more pears for drying. They are SO tasty!