Tuesday 11th May 10

A pretty quiet day in many ways. I did a lot of housework and some work on the computer, sliced up two pineapples and 8 kiwi fruit for drying, and did some compost heap management, a bit of chainsawing, some riddling, and bagging up of the clay soil from the wall excavations. Oh, and I installed this year's bean poles, some rescued long branches which I decided not to chop for firewood, as I thought ahead to their possible use.

I went to the Co-op in the afternoon, as Gill asked me to, and popped into a friend who is preparing to conquer her alcoholism, she hopes! I'm going to give her some support next week when she starts going through her detox. She will need a lot of strength and good luck. I went to the Co-op shop and then decided to go and visit Freshways... I didn't go yesterday which is when they do a big stock rotation and throw out an average of 40kg of fruit and veg. So I went there and picked it up (they'd put it round the back) and met a friendly student called Geeta, whom I know from the People and Planet Allotment. She'd gone to Freshways to buy candles... so I said, "I can give you some if you want.... as I've got bags of them in the loft, left over from assorted skip-diving."

So she came back and I found about 10 different candles for her and then took her on a tour down the garden to see the trees (all in bloom and at their prettiest) the Shiitake mushrooms, and the composting and recycling, etc. I think she enjoyed the visit. I enjoyed her visit, it feels good to give stuff unexpectedly!

An equally quiet evening. Tea was foraged sweet chestnuts (dried one Autumn, and then soaked and boiled), home grown Shiitake, rescued onion, and a bought tomato all cooked up together, with a toastie with blue cheese and black olive paste in it. Tasty stuff! Also had a nice Googletalk conversation with my Canadian friend/colleague Rory and made plans for a visit next month to Manchester, for the Spencer Tunick exhibition and the World Naked Bike Ride.

Monday 22nd June 09

A fairly relaxed day... spent most of the morning writing my last Community Care blog, and doing other computery stuff. I went to buy bread, visited several ripe skips, had lunch and spent some time in the garden. Raj rang and I went down to Freshways. I planted more squash plants, some in the remaining spaces in the raised beds and others in containers.

Gill went to pick up our youngest and I cooked tea. I harvested the Chicken of the Woods mushroom, cleaned it up (it incorporates bits of wood etc into it's surface) and cubed it quite small. Fried onion, rescued peppers and cubed a squash which again, was a freegan find. Added the cubed Chicken of the Woods. Then chopped up 3 tomatoes and put them into the frying veg, and added some of the new season basil out of the conservatory. Finally, added a tin of cannelini beans to this. Gill then fried some already cooked potatoes in extra virgin olive oil, and we all had this, with the last of yesterday's asparagus quiche. The mushroom/pepper/bean thing was the best meal I'd had for ages, and I always like Gill's quiche. Lovely meal, everybody loved it!

I made a phone call at 7 to my Sister who knows more about Runescape and billing than I do; we did make a payment for our son to be a paid-up member of this a month or two ago, but the other day this level of access stopped, so I turned to Anna for advice. With her help, I resubscribed to a small monthly payment.

At 8 zoomed round to Lynn's to help her celebrate her 45th Birthday. Glad to see so many friendly old faces, Will, Phil, Helen, Stephen and Alison, and new friends Tony and Sharon.

I got home soon after 10.30 and settled down to try to empty my perennially over-full inbox, write this, and get some water warmed up to do the washing up...

Wednesday 2nd July 08

Gill took our youngest to school and our year 6 10 year-old was due in his secondary school at 10ish for a fun day, so he walked up there with a friend.

Gilly and I had a relaxed morning which was refreshing, and then continued doing the mound of housework. I did some cropping in the garden, our walnut tree has fruited very well this year so I took off all but one nut per bunch, and will pickle the pruned-out immature walnuts. I've never had pickled walnuts but Gill likes them and Gill's mum loved them, they were a great treat. I'll have to make needle-pricks in them and put them in brine before letting them dry and putting them in vinegar.

Whilst picking these, I noticed one of my large logs (actually an innocculated cherry trunk) had fruited with my favourite mushroom, 'chicken of the woods' which is a really meaty and solid fungus which is almost indistinguishable from firm chicken flesh... except more ethical, lower carbon and less cruel! I cut the huge and heavy fruiting body off and washed it and pared off the woodlouse poo which was semi-incorporated in the top surface. Once prepared, I cut it into cubes and fried it in olive oil, and had this as a garnish on the rice and veg which Gill cooked for us for tea.

I went to Country Fresh and picked up another large load, including at least 20 cucumbers in plastic sheaths which I had to spend some time cutting off before composting the unwanted fruit. It seems weird that I am carefully nurturing my cucumber plants and watching the cucs grow bigger day-by-day, whilst the commercial system just throws away dozens of unsold ones...

Also did some weeding of regrowing nettle roots, invasive ground elder and brambles, and made another layer on the bay-window-radiator compost heap. There's no chance of them growing as it gets so hot! I had a magazine delivered this morning which I subscribe to, Kitchen Garden. Last month, there was an article about coping with mares tail, and the author, Sandra, whom I know as she's from York, had put 'on no account compost them', which I disagree with as I have composted lots, from two neighbours' gardens. So I had written in to the magazine to explain how to successfully compost mares tail, nettle and ground elder, and even Japanese Knotweed. My letter was published, but without my name as I said that I knew Sandra and I guess the editor didn't want me to embarrass her or something...

Anyway, the trick is to do it hot, dry or wet. Hot heaps are best... shred the offending material with lots of other stuff and turn it so it all heats up as it breaks down. Nothing survives the 60 to 70 degrees celcius temperatures generated. The dry method involves drying the roots etc off on a patio or path, and when completely crunchy, put them on the heap. This however, does not kill seeds, which can grow in the finished compost. The wet method is good, if a bit smelly. The materials are placed in a bucket of rainwater and left immersed to go gooey for several weeks. This slop can then be poured on your heap, or the liquid used for watering plants, as it's full of nutrients, and the stringy plant materials composted.

I went to town in the afternoon to give in the planning panel paperwork and talk to a couple of Council officers about various issues, pay in my Sheffield Green Fair cheque and buy a replacement blender/liquidiser, which I'd seen in Barnitts. Got one for half price, a good one which ought to last longer than the two £20 jobbies we've gone through in the past few years. We do a lot of food preparation so a good liquidiser is important. The one I got has a juicer thing which fits in the goblet, so during the evening I peeled about 15 oranges (also thrown out, probably because of skin blemishes) and put them in the juicer, made just over a litre of juice. Lovely!

Wednesday 7th May 08

Very groggy this morning but came down to let the children wish me a happy birthday. Gill took them to school and I went back to bed and read NewScientist for an hour whilst thinking about various other things.

Came down to do some computery stuff and then at 11 our visitors came... two of the three facilitators of the parenting course. The course has officially finished but both of us missed a couple of sessions so to round things off they offered to come and spend a couple of hours with us to recap some of the techniques.

They had a tour of the garden and then we chatted together for a couple of hours, leaving at 1.30, having had a good in-depth conversation. They were pleased that we have obviously made some progress and our difficulties are reducing as our son learns to deal with his emotions better. So they went, I cut up some sticks from Anna's house and then at 3 went to school to bring back 3 boys, two of which were taken to Martial Arts by Gilly.

I continued in the garden until tea... Gill had made a quiche with a Shiitake mushroom grown on an oak log in our back garden, totally delicious! It was even better as we all ate together and we all got on well!!! The cake she burnt last night she made into a trifle with banana and chocolate goo... much better than a cake!

Did more in the garden til 9.30pm, came in tired but happy, kissed the boys goodnight and had a shower to get the anti-midge stuff off, as Gill cannot stand the smell...

A quiet evening with some telly and lots of chats on the computer, and lit the stove to do the washing up.

Tuesday 12th June 07

Up early, and as eating breakfast wrote my blog for yesterday, and then got ready for Catherine visiting, the new York Rotters project manager. But then got a phone call from her saying that the BBC were filming St Nicks this morning and John had to be out with them, so she had to stay in the office, so she'll come next week.

I did a bit of garden and then did a load of computer stuff until lunch when Gill came back from the Physio, with her legs in lots of pain.

A quiet post lunch time, washing up and some paperwork, phone calls, and then went to school and picked up the boys. Gill did tea for the boys and I then did ours, which was fried tofu cubes, carefully done on all 6 sides, then added chopped onion and some oyster mushrooms which have appeared on a new log, they're pearl oyster, really white, and home-made sweet pepper paprika, olives and cherry toms. This on some boiled rice and green beans. was delicious.

After tea I gathered together my remaining sweetcorn plants, about 20 of them, and went to the lottie where I have got a space for them, and a lot of finished, mature compost to put into the planting holes to help them on their way. I planted them and did some weeding and compost management, and got home just before 10pm, Gill making scones.

Sunday 1st April 07

A rather late morning, as was up very late last night. I watched the third 'qatsi' film, whilst having a Googlemail conversation with a friend. This was a first as I've not used this service before. It was great, a sort of instant email chat. I hope we'll do it again sometime...

So slept til about 9.30 andwas woken by my wife coming back to bed... at about 10 got up as the boys were making a lot of noise and wanting some grown-up attention. What they're really into is 'bundles' which is basically play-fighting, wrestling, attempting to overpower me, which they can't do yet. They are capable of hurting me but I always 'win', so far anyway. A time will come when they are too strong, and perhaps they'll grow out of it, one or the other! So I watched 'Countryfile' whilst being bundled. After this we had lunch, and as Gill wanted some tomatoes in order to create a pizza, I volunteered to cycle down to Martins Country Fresh. With a small amount of persuasion the boys came too and as I'd picked up some compostables they suggested we go to the allotment. They weren't interested in the allotment at all really, they wanted to utilise the slope of Lamel Hill to cycle fast down whilst I attended to the four 'New Zealand bins' I have there, and chatted to a friendly older lady called Josephine who was a gardener in her younger days and now lives in Dower Court, the block of accommodation near the lottie site.

Got back and Gill had been busy in the kitchen making pizza dough and an apple and loganberry pie. Our Bramley apples from the garden, stored since picking last autumn, are getting to the end of their stored life, but still some usable apples amongst them. The loganberries are very prolific and we 'open freeze' them on a tray, and when frozen, pour them into a polybag and put them back into the freezer. We've still got some left, even though we use them all through the winter as a taste-memory of summer.

I spent a while in the garden, doing some riddling of mature compost ready for the coming season's planting. The boys played in their play-house which Gill made from a shed that a friend was going to dump and on the trampoline, lots of laughter there.

The pizza and salad was lovely. I am so lucky to have a great cook as a wife, and she enjoys creating lovely food. On my pizza I had a large, home-grown shiitake mushroom, in thin slices. The large oak log it grew on was innoculated with mycelium a couple of years ago, by inserting dowels with the mycelium growing in them. I placed the log in a north-facing shady area and waited. The fruiting bodies come in flushes all year round, with up to 12 weeks gaps between the fruiting. They taste great and they are my second-favourite edible mushroom, my favourite is 'chicken of the woods' and I have a tree trunk innoculated with that too. It's fruited twice in two years.

In the evening I popped out on my bike to the lottie with the rhubarb and was busy til dark.

A very nice day, didn't feel too shattered from last night's late finish. Earlier to bed tonight...