Sunday 19th July 09

Another work day... shouldn't complain! Lucky to have it!

So, started with a shower as yesterdays hour-and-a-half cycle back from Barmby Moor against the wind had rendered me reasonably fragrant. Gill didn't mind of course, but my employers today would have done and I like to try to make a good impression.

So, got to the station for about 10.20 and bought a ticket to Hull and was on the 10.40, where I wrote out my invoice for the day's work. This was for a community event organised by Tesco Extra in the St Stephen's Centre. As it was raining, I decided not to attempt working outside where the rest of the stalls were, so after I got changed, I set up my stuff in the centre against the Tesco window, and immediately was engaged by some youngsters who wanted to see me ride the unicycle (people often assume that I can't!). About 10 minutes later a security man approached me and told me that cycling wasn't allowed in the centre, so I didn't do any more unicycling at all. So, from 11.55 til 3.50 I worked constantly, except for about 7 minutes to eat my sandwiches at about 2pm. I did mainly devilstick workshops and juggling, and had some lovely successes with this with people who said 'I can't do that' and then, with a few minutes coaching, could. At one point a chap came along who was good with the diabolo, so I let him use Derek and that was quite fun as I was able to talk to Derek with someone else making him do tricks... and misbehaving, as usual! It was an instant 'double act'. There were other entertainers around, including stilt walkers, costumed characters, another balloon modeller, facepainters and various others. So it was a fun day.

The Tesco people seemed to like what was going on and were happy to let me go shortly before my official 4pm finish, as my train was due to leave at 4.01, the next one not being til 5.25.

So I was back in York quite soon, and as I came up to my bike, there was an old chap looking intently at my bike in the station racks. He was obviously admiring it, not trying to steal it or damage it, so I explained about my asking Cycle Heaven to build the strongest bike they'd ever built, and we chatted for a while.

On the way home I picked up two sacks of stuff from Country Fresh... and when I got home and got changed, I put a load of this in the compostumbler with a sackful of the shredded material I prepared last week.

I didn't eat until after 7pm, a plate of rice and vegetables, followed by a raspberry, loganberry and gooseberry crumble. Berry tasty!

I was just finishing off my email/facebook session when there was a huge crash outside and Gill, sleeping on the couch next to me, lept up. I immediately knew it was a logpile falling over, but it was quite a spectacular noise. Gill went back to sleep and I spent 20 minutes partly re-doing it and clearing the way for our neighbours to use the shared passage between the houses. Glad it decided to collapse when I was around to sort it out. It may have not coped with several big rainstorms today... Gill says there was a violent hailstorm here today.

Logpile photos March 2009

This is where it starts... logs arrive here in the front garden and are cut mainly with electric chainsaw and cleaved with a maul or splitting axe.

Logpile in the front garden. This is mainly cherry from Woodlands MS Respite Centre.

Logpile in the back garen, with sacks of aluminium cans ready to be taken to the metal merchant.

This is a large pile of beech, on pallets, in the open air. Note my 'Can O Worms' wormery in the foreground.

Close-up of the centre of the beech pile, with a split round placed back in it's original shape.

Close-up of the split disc of beech trunk.

Logpile under pollarded willow.

Logpiles in the shared pathway between us and our neighbour.

Logpile in the back garden, under a roof.

This is a logpile in the process of being built... the wrong way! To make a stable pile, do not make 'unconnected walls' (here, there are three separate walls) otherwise there is a greater risk of collapse!

Disaster strikes! I was building up the pile in the previous picture and this happened.

Oh dear oh dear! I've a bit of work to do now!

The rebuilt logpile!

Close-up of new logpile.

After I finished rebuilding.

Logpile next to the side of the house with added 'arty detail', pile not yet finished.

Logpile with arty bits.

Sunday 8th March 09

Quite a good day, very productive in the garden, as Gill helped me tidy up a bit... well, a lot! I am very untidy, probably too many things going on at once, and the garden has lots of plastic sacks with compost, and 'contraries' which I've taken out of the compostables I've retrieved (aka rubbish and 'dry recyclables' such as aluminium cans and plastic bottles) and today we removed about 6 sacks of genuine waste from the garden.

I made a load of seed compost (growing medium), out of ordinary 'garden' compost, sand which was thrown away by the school, and I bagged up and brought home yonks ago, leafmould and some loam salvaged from turves from a skip. I put this lot through a big riddle, and it arrived on the sheet below in layers, so when I'd put the right amounts through (ie, not much rich compost, more sand and leafmould), I shovelled it into my rotasieve to mix it well, and then slid batches of this into, you've guessed it, plastic sacks!

I also did some more log stacking, outside the front door, of dry logs that are ready to go on the stove. However, my usual ability to make a stable pile was somewhat lacking today and the pile collapsed, and took 30 minutes to rebuild. The trick is to not make it in three separate vertical walls which I had been doing, but to do it in horizontal layers with lots of interlocking pieces which hold the thing together. Difficult to put into words, maybe pictures would be better.

Gill made a rice-based dish for tea, I added some salvaged butternut squash which I'd cooked on the stove earlier in the day. Lovely.