An excellent day! I took our youngest into school and when I got back in, went back to bed... lovely. Lucky me!
The afternoon was more productive, did some tidying up in the kitchen and various other things around the house, and decided to record the building of a logpile... hence the photos above. That took just over an hour.
Tea was the home-made mushroom and leek soup, and then I went to The Stables to the York in Transition meeting, which was good humoured and fun. Arrived back by 10.30, collected a bit more of the fence from our neighbour and then came in to settle down and do my blog, watch a bit of telly and head for bed again.
Thursday, 12 March 2009
Wednesday 11th March 09
I took our youngest down to school and when I got back, Gill was nearly ready to go to her art class. I did a big pile of washing up and made some mushroom and leek soup, from fresh leeks and a bag of very out of date and unidentifiable Chinese or Japanese dried mushrooms, which I'd soaked overnight in cold water. I fried the chopped leek and cut up the 'shrooms into this and added some water and a stock cube, and a bit later, once I'd whizzed it to reasonable smoothness, some red lentils to add a bit of thickness. I've no idea what it'll taste like but the mushrooms needed using as they've been hanging around for ages, sealed in their packet, but taking up room. So, tomorrow night's tea will be that, for me... I doubt the boys will have any, but I'll offer it in case! I've been surprised by their ability to enjoy some mature tastes, on occasions.
I popped round to the bread shop and got a big pile of 'Yesterbake' loaves and rolls, and came back to have an avocado sandwich (one which was thrown away as it had a damaged side... this I cut off for composting, leaving t'other half for a mayo and granary deliciousness...) and at half 12 I jumped back on the bike and zoomed over to the home of an AVP facilitator who was hosting the biannual AVP NEEM meeting. AVP is an organisation I've been involved with since 1995, when I found myself having occasional difficult conflict situations which led to me not respecting myself, and at that time a new group had just been set up in York called Alternatives to Violence Project, and they ran workshops on how to resolve conflicts in a creative and non-violent way. The first weekend course I went on was a revelation... I'd never learned anything like it before and I went away feeling like I could deal better with provocation and things which made me angry, and had previously led to me being verbally and physically aggressive and violent.
Anyway, I joined the organisers and started helping to put on more workshops. I did a further three, all 'level twos' where the participants explore a particular subject in detail. I remember them well despite them being many years back. My first level 2 was 'Anger in the parent-child relationship', which was excellent as I was then still angry about the way my parents had treated me (I've more or less got over this now!) and the pivotal point was when I took part in a role play with me being me and someone else being my father. That was when I realised I could only change myself, not anyone else. The second level 2 was quite odd for me, as it was decided at the beginning of the session by the participants, by consensus. The group chose 'Blame and Forgiveness'. I wasn't very thrilled by this topic, as it didn't seem to relate to me much. However, the weekend showed me that many other people are very much affected by both blaming others and blaming themselves, also forgiving others and forgiving themselves. I realised that I didn't think like many other people and didn't use these concepts... I tended to use the idea of 'responsibility' which, for me, encapsulate all the blame/forgiveness areas. But it was a good workshop, and after a gap of a few years I went on another level 2, on 'self development' which by that time I was exploring in other ways too, not just through AVP.
So, 14 years on and I'm still committed to what AVP is doing. In York we hold 4 community workshops each year, in Doncaster we've a partnership with MIND and run 6 a year. We also run them in prisons and occasionally with other groups. AVP Britain reorganised a while ago and now AVP York is part of AVP North East and East Midlands, or NEEM. We had a good meeting, with representatives from Whitby, Sheffield, York and Manchester (a member of one of the AVPB bodies). I always enjoy these meetings and it was productive, with another interesting partnership on the near horizon (with a hostel for the homeless) and news of prisoners from an open prison attending a community workshop, which is good. This meeting ran from about 1pm til just before 5, and I was pleased to meet a new person, just recently trained up as a facilitator, and a facilitator who heard me enthusing about AVP a few years ago and got involved... I didn't know til today it was my talk to her group which caused her to become involved. That makes me happy!
Home via George Hudson St where I got rid of an invoice which I should have done weeks ago... but, better late than never!
Boys playing video games when I got in so I went in the front room where it was quieter.
Tea was nice... more mashed root mix, home made 'baked beans' and toasted cheese on a roll (thanks Richard... better to feed me than feed chickens!!!)
Popped out at midnight once I'd done another batch of washing up to get the neighbours fence which she offered me, and today asked me to take away. I did it quietly.
I popped round to the bread shop and got a big pile of 'Yesterbake' loaves and rolls, and came back to have an avocado sandwich (one which was thrown away as it had a damaged side... this I cut off for composting, leaving t'other half for a mayo and granary deliciousness...) and at half 12 I jumped back on the bike and zoomed over to the home of an AVP facilitator who was hosting the biannual AVP NEEM meeting. AVP is an organisation I've been involved with since 1995, when I found myself having occasional difficult conflict situations which led to me not respecting myself, and at that time a new group had just been set up in York called Alternatives to Violence Project, and they ran workshops on how to resolve conflicts in a creative and non-violent way. The first weekend course I went on was a revelation... I'd never learned anything like it before and I went away feeling like I could deal better with provocation and things which made me angry, and had previously led to me being verbally and physically aggressive and violent.
Anyway, I joined the organisers and started helping to put on more workshops. I did a further three, all 'level twos' where the participants explore a particular subject in detail. I remember them well despite them being many years back. My first level 2 was 'Anger in the parent-child relationship', which was excellent as I was then still angry about the way my parents had treated me (I've more or less got over this now!) and the pivotal point was when I took part in a role play with me being me and someone else being my father. That was when I realised I could only change myself, not anyone else. The second level 2 was quite odd for me, as it was decided at the beginning of the session by the participants, by consensus. The group chose 'Blame and Forgiveness'. I wasn't very thrilled by this topic, as it didn't seem to relate to me much. However, the weekend showed me that many other people are very much affected by both blaming others and blaming themselves, also forgiving others and forgiving themselves. I realised that I didn't think like many other people and didn't use these concepts... I tended to use the idea of 'responsibility' which, for me, encapsulate all the blame/forgiveness areas. But it was a good workshop, and after a gap of a few years I went on another level 2, on 'self development' which by that time I was exploring in other ways too, not just through AVP.
So, 14 years on and I'm still committed to what AVP is doing. In York we hold 4 community workshops each year, in Doncaster we've a partnership with MIND and run 6 a year. We also run them in prisons and occasionally with other groups. AVP Britain reorganised a while ago and now AVP York is part of AVP North East and East Midlands, or NEEM. We had a good meeting, with representatives from Whitby, Sheffield, York and Manchester (a member of one of the AVPB bodies). I always enjoy these meetings and it was productive, with another interesting partnership on the near horizon (with a hostel for the homeless) and news of prisoners from an open prison attending a community workshop, which is good. This meeting ran from about 1pm til just before 5, and I was pleased to meet a new person, just recently trained up as a facilitator, and a facilitator who heard me enthusing about AVP a few years ago and got involved... I didn't know til today it was my talk to her group which caused her to become involved. That makes me happy!
Home via George Hudson St where I got rid of an invoice which I should have done weeks ago... but, better late than never!
Boys playing video games when I got in so I went in the front room where it was quieter.
Tea was nice... more mashed root mix, home made 'baked beans' and toasted cheese on a roll (thanks Richard... better to feed me than feed chickens!!!)
Popped out at midnight once I'd done another batch of washing up to get the neighbours fence which she offered me, and today asked me to take away. I did it quietly.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Tuesday 10th March 09
Another fairly nothingy day... late start, time with Gill cooking and chatting, time on the computer, some time in the garden, some washing up, paperwork, collecting my youngest son from school at 3. Actually, this was really nice as we walked back together and discussed daydreams and radio-controlled robots.
At 6.15 set off for the Hull Road Ward Planning Panel meeting despite there being no actual planning applications in, just some replies and the city-wide applications. I emailed round the other members telling them that it wasn't essential that they came, as there was little or nothing to do. Several then phoned me and said that they wouldn't attend. However, there were three of us there and we looked through the paperwork and chatted.
Home soon after 7 and Gill had made a pasta bake, using a load of cherry tomatoes I'd rescued and prepared, and she'd made into a sauce. She cooked some carrots and pasta together, then drained them and put them in a pyrex dish, tomato sauce on top and some grated bread and goats cheese on top, this going in the oven to crisp off... delicious!
A very peaceful evening... very nice!
At 6.15 set off for the Hull Road Ward Planning Panel meeting despite there being no actual planning applications in, just some replies and the city-wide applications. I emailed round the other members telling them that it wasn't essential that they came, as there was little or nothing to do. Several then phoned me and said that they wouldn't attend. However, there were three of us there and we looked through the paperwork and chatted.
Home soon after 7 and Gill had made a pasta bake, using a load of cherry tomatoes I'd rescued and prepared, and she'd made into a sauce. She cooked some carrots and pasta together, then drained them and put them in a pyrex dish, tomato sauce on top and some grated bread and goats cheese on top, this going in the oven to crisp off... delicious!
A very peaceful evening... very nice!
Monday, 9 March 2009
Monday 9th March 09
Gill took our youngest into school and I had a slow start, doing a bit of paperwork (rewriting an invoice which got ripped up by someone with a temper) and writing my Community Care Blog, which I'm very happy with, and thanks to reader James who suggested I do something on Earth Hour. Gill went out to the dentist as part of a filling had broken off, so I had a quiet lunchtime and then went to get our youngest, walking back through the woods along Windmill Lane chatting.
I washed and blanched a load of grapes when I got in, putting them for drying on the stove, and then took 4 sacks of rubbish from the composting operations down to Country Fresh to put in their bin... after all, it would have gone there much earlier if I hadn't have taken it home wrapping up all the biodegradables, sorted it out to recycle the compostable stuff and bagging up the waste, mainly plastic film and packaging.
Richard was visibly upset when I arrived... there'd been an incident in the street which had saddened him. A member of the public had gone into the Spar shop just up the road from his greengrocers, leaving their little daughter's pet Staffordshire bull terrier dog attached to the railings outside. When they came back out, the pet had been taken. Now this in itself is upsetting, but more so when the reason is inferred. Apparently, docile domestic pet Staffies are targeted by people who get a kick out of watching dog fighting, and they use the non-fighting dog as 'bait', for training purposes. Absolutely sickening. I'm not keen on dogs but I dislike animal abuse a lot more, and I think that anyone who gains pleasure from using animals as entertainment, or seeing animals getting hurt or killed is pretty low. I include fox and deer hunters, badger baiters, hare coursers, dog racers, horse racing enthusiasts, dog fighters, people who go to watch animals in circuses and more. I think we should completely rethink our relationship with animals. We can have ethical relationships with animals, there are plenty of well-kept pets and companion animals which have their needs met and do not suffer. Then there are 'working' animals such as draft horses, sniffer dogs and guide dogs/hearing dogs, truffle-hunting pigs, pigeon-scaring birds of prey... there are so many species of animal we use, and there is heated debate about the rights and wrongs of this. I haven't even mentioned laboratory animals, used to test drugs, vaccines and cosmetics, and many other procedures... it's an ethical minefield! I've been vegetarian for well over 20 years and have opinions about the millions of animals which are kept specifically for slaughter... another ethical dilemma.
Anyway, diatribe over... life goes on despite all the suffering, and I came home with a new garden fork and spade which were on sale in the greengrocers, a buy-one-get-one-free deal, for £8, plus a penny's worth of compostable resources. Called in on Freshways on the way back for more.
Gill and I had the last of the amazing tomato soup she made yesterday, plus a mix of mashed swede, potato and butternut squash, and a rice-loaf thingy with red pepper, done in the microwave, and mushroom sauce on top! Restaurant Cossham is a good place to get fed! And I didn't mention stewed pears with chocolate sauce and a slice of lemon cake... no wonder I'm a bit tubby round the middle....
Evening... a York Green Festival meeting at St John's College/University or whatever it is now, with just 10 of us there... quite a good turn out, I think we're a strong team! We have a team leader on Music, Kids area, Infrastructure and Council liaison, Publicity, Finances and Stalls. Excellent! This meeting lasted less than two hours and I got home, with logs in the trailer, at 10pm. To a peaceful house, hooray!
I washed and blanched a load of grapes when I got in, putting them for drying on the stove, and then took 4 sacks of rubbish from the composting operations down to Country Fresh to put in their bin... after all, it would have gone there much earlier if I hadn't have taken it home wrapping up all the biodegradables, sorted it out to recycle the compostable stuff and bagging up the waste, mainly plastic film and packaging.
Richard was visibly upset when I arrived... there'd been an incident in the street which had saddened him. A member of the public had gone into the Spar shop just up the road from his greengrocers, leaving their little daughter's pet Staffordshire bull terrier dog attached to the railings outside. When they came back out, the pet had been taken. Now this in itself is upsetting, but more so when the reason is inferred. Apparently, docile domestic pet Staffies are targeted by people who get a kick out of watching dog fighting, and they use the non-fighting dog as 'bait', for training purposes. Absolutely sickening. I'm not keen on dogs but I dislike animal abuse a lot more, and I think that anyone who gains pleasure from using animals as entertainment, or seeing animals getting hurt or killed is pretty low. I include fox and deer hunters, badger baiters, hare coursers, dog racers, horse racing enthusiasts, dog fighters, people who go to watch animals in circuses and more. I think we should completely rethink our relationship with animals. We can have ethical relationships with animals, there are plenty of well-kept pets and companion animals which have their needs met and do not suffer. Then there are 'working' animals such as draft horses, sniffer dogs and guide dogs/hearing dogs, truffle-hunting pigs, pigeon-scaring birds of prey... there are so many species of animal we use, and there is heated debate about the rights and wrongs of this. I haven't even mentioned laboratory animals, used to test drugs, vaccines and cosmetics, and many other procedures... it's an ethical minefield! I've been vegetarian for well over 20 years and have opinions about the millions of animals which are kept specifically for slaughter... another ethical dilemma.
Anyway, diatribe over... life goes on despite all the suffering, and I came home with a new garden fork and spade which were on sale in the greengrocers, a buy-one-get-one-free deal, for £8, plus a penny's worth of compostable resources. Called in on Freshways on the way back for more.
Gill and I had the last of the amazing tomato soup she made yesterday, plus a mix of mashed swede, potato and butternut squash, and a rice-loaf thingy with red pepper, done in the microwave, and mushroom sauce on top! Restaurant Cossham is a good place to get fed! And I didn't mention stewed pears with chocolate sauce and a slice of lemon cake... no wonder I'm a bit tubby round the middle....
Evening... a York Green Festival meeting at St John's College/University or whatever it is now, with just 10 of us there... quite a good turn out, I think we're a strong team! We have a team leader on Music, Kids area, Infrastructure and Council liaison, Publicity, Finances and Stalls. Excellent! This meeting lasted less than two hours and I got home, with logs in the trailer, at 10pm. To a peaceful house, hooray!
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, 8 March 2009
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.
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.
Saturday 7th March 09
I woke as Gill was doing something in the bedroom, and she said she was going to the garage to get our eldest child's bike out, but I knew it was kinda tangled up with other bikes, or at least mine would have to come out first, so I said I'd do it. He'd been invited to go to the Yorkshire Museum by Simon and his son, as there was a 'Portable Antiquities Open Day' event there, and Simon's son has been doing some field walking near where the new sewer has been put in between the new University Campus ('Heslington East') and Elvington... and has found lots of pottery and one enormous iron nail.
So our lad set off with just one item.... a clear glass bottle with a marble stopper and the original rubber seal ring which I found near where the University had trashed a stretch of woodland.
I got a delivery of a HUGE poster from The Age Of Stupid. I'd like to find somewhere sensible to put it up...
So, a peaceful day ensued... I did some paperwork... an invoice (on reused paper, as usual) and a couple of other bits and bobs, including watching a 50 minute film about the making of The Age of Stupid. This was fascinating... the concept was born in 2002, as 'Crude' and used a novel approach to funding, called 'crowd funding' with 'shares' being sold (the first batch were £500 each), and then the subsequent evolution of the film, with Pete Postlethwaite being invited to be the crux of the film right at the last minute. Really worth watching... I am so looking forward to seeing the film on the 15th... next weekend.
I got a phone call from a chap round the corner who had got some waste wood outside his house I was interested in, and I'd left a note saying if they didn't want it, I would be happy to recycle it for them. He rang as he was clearing out a house in Tang Hall/Heworth area where a relative had died last year, and there was some wood in the garden he was wanting rid of. So I said I would come round within half an hour and see what there was. He admitted he'd already disposed of some stuff on a bonfire. Anyway, I easily found the house as the whole of Heworth was full of the smoke from his bonfire... There was quite a bit of wood left, and I sorted out the stuff I wanted from the non-burnable wood, and advised him to get the rest of it recycled at Hazel Court. There was also a couple of rolls of chicken wire which they wanted rid of, and I was glad to have this! As I was leaving, he offered me a pair of unused wellington boots with steel toe caps... my size too!
So I cycled into town with a trailer full of wood and wire netting and the wellies too, and went in search of a beard trimmer. My research had not found a wind-up model although there are a couple of wind-up shavers available, just not beard trimmers. So I went to Boots and got a model by Remington with rechargeable batteries, costing £25.
Came home via Country Fresh, and once I got home and unloaded, I popped back down to Freshways to pick up their 'resources'. After a coffee I did an hour's worth of filling the Compostubler with a mix of fruit and veg, shredded Christmas tree, sawdust stuff which was too big to go through the riddle and unwanted bokashi bran which St Nicks didn't want, as it had got damp and partly gone mouldy.
Spent quite a bit of time preparing pears... I have absolutely loads from the collections over the past few days. I wash each one and let it drip dry on the plate drying rack, then cut it in half from the stalk to the flower remnant, take out the core, flower, strings up to the stalk and the stalk, then peel it, taking out any bruises or damage. Then I cut each half into three, lengthways, resulting in 6 slices per pair, put on the cake racks for drying. Dried pears are one of my favourites!
Our eldest son came in having had a good time cycling and playing. We had tea... home made tomato soup and a Thomas' Vegetable Pastie. Not too bad an evening, although there was noisy resistance from the children to being asked to go to bed at 10.20.
I stayed up late whilst Gill slept on the sofa next to me as usual, until the early hours when I go to bed and she comes up too.
So our lad set off with just one item.... a clear glass bottle with a marble stopper and the original rubber seal ring which I found near where the University had trashed a stretch of woodland.
I got a delivery of a HUGE poster from The Age Of Stupid. I'd like to find somewhere sensible to put it up...
So, a peaceful day ensued... I did some paperwork... an invoice (on reused paper, as usual) and a couple of other bits and bobs, including watching a 50 minute film about the making of The Age of Stupid. This was fascinating... the concept was born in 2002, as 'Crude' and used a novel approach to funding, called 'crowd funding' with 'shares' being sold (the first batch were £500 each), and then the subsequent evolution of the film, with Pete Postlethwaite being invited to be the crux of the film right at the last minute. Really worth watching... I am so looking forward to seeing the film on the 15th... next weekend.
I got a phone call from a chap round the corner who had got some waste wood outside his house I was interested in, and I'd left a note saying if they didn't want it, I would be happy to recycle it for them. He rang as he was clearing out a house in Tang Hall/Heworth area where a relative had died last year, and there was some wood in the garden he was wanting rid of. So I said I would come round within half an hour and see what there was. He admitted he'd already disposed of some stuff on a bonfire. Anyway, I easily found the house as the whole of Heworth was full of the smoke from his bonfire... There was quite a bit of wood left, and I sorted out the stuff I wanted from the non-burnable wood, and advised him to get the rest of it recycled at Hazel Court. There was also a couple of rolls of chicken wire which they wanted rid of, and I was glad to have this! As I was leaving, he offered me a pair of unused wellington boots with steel toe caps... my size too!
So I cycled into town with a trailer full of wood and wire netting and the wellies too, and went in search of a beard trimmer. My research had not found a wind-up model although there are a couple of wind-up shavers available, just not beard trimmers. So I went to Boots and got a model by Remington with rechargeable batteries, costing £25.
Came home via Country Fresh, and once I got home and unloaded, I popped back down to Freshways to pick up their 'resources'. After a coffee I did an hour's worth of filling the Compostubler with a mix of fruit and veg, shredded Christmas tree, sawdust stuff which was too big to go through the riddle and unwanted bokashi bran which St Nicks didn't want, as it had got damp and partly gone mouldy.
Spent quite a bit of time preparing pears... I have absolutely loads from the collections over the past few days. I wash each one and let it drip dry on the plate drying rack, then cut it in half from the stalk to the flower remnant, take out the core, flower, strings up to the stalk and the stalk, then peel it, taking out any bruises or damage. Then I cut each half into three, lengthways, resulting in 6 slices per pair, put on the cake racks for drying. Dried pears are one of my favourites!
Our eldest son came in having had a good time cycling and playing. We had tea... home made tomato soup and a Thomas' Vegetable Pastie. Not too bad an evening, although there was noisy resistance from the children to being asked to go to bed at 10.20.
I stayed up late whilst Gill slept on the sofa next to me as usual, until the early hours when I go to bed and she comes up too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
