... because you seem to need a smile, and because they remind of that day you and I took a lilac walk at St. Ben's. I'm so thankful for that memory and happy to share it with you.
When they came for my library
6 days ago
Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Friday, 1 May 2009
For Andrea
Some lilacs for you...
... because you seem to need a smile, and because they remind of that day you and I took a lilac walk at St. Ben's. I'm so thankful for that memory and happy to share it with you.
... because you seem to need a smile, and because they remind of that day you and I took a lilac walk at St. Ben's. I'm so thankful for that memory and happy to share it with you.
Monday, 1 September 2008
September: outlook optimistic
So today felt really great. Nothing amazing happened, and it was hard to get my bum out of bed - but it was a good day. I think it's because as a kid I was used to September being the 'start of the year' because of school. And perhaps because I still work in academia I feel like it's the start of the year (although our students don't come back for a few more weeks). The start of the year is always good - I always feel like anything (good) can happen.
Today I was also sort of surprised (I knew it was coming, I just hadn't remembered it could be today) by starting my training for a new part of my job. It's a little surreal to be in the same job for 6.5 years but beginning training for something totally new. I joined the ILL (Inter-library loans) team today and spent two hours learning the basics and sending new loan requests to the British Library. I had a bad caffeine withdrawal headache and a case of persistent yawning... but I still totally enjoyed it. I've known that this was coming since June, but I didn't think it would be so organized as to begin precisely on the first day of September.
I also came home to discover that my research problems were fixed and I could get on with an assignment I'm determined to finish by the 20th of September. Determined!
My camera came with me to work today so that I could finally take part in the photo blog that I read regularly. The word prompt was gate though, and caused two problems: 1. I wasn't inspired by any of the many gates I pass on my way home (it's about 37 minutes / 2 miles from work to home). And 2. I was struck by a fear of looking silly if the owner of the gate noticed me or by the traffic. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get over that and be able to take part. I did take a picture of my 'decorative corn' plants... for some reason I'm quite happy with them.
Today I was also sort of surprised (I knew it was coming, I just hadn't remembered it could be today) by starting my training for a new part of my job. It's a little surreal to be in the same job for 6.5 years but beginning training for something totally new. I joined the ILL (Inter-library loans) team today and spent two hours learning the basics and sending new loan requests to the British Library. I had a bad caffeine withdrawal headache and a case of persistent yawning... but I still totally enjoyed it. I've known that this was coming since June, but I didn't think it would be so organized as to begin precisely on the first day of September.
I also came home to discover that my research problems were fixed and I could get on with an assignment I'm determined to finish by the 20th of September. Determined!
My camera came with me to work today so that I could finally take part in the photo blog that I read regularly. The word prompt was gate though, and caused two problems: 1. I wasn't inspired by any of the many gates I pass on my way home (it's about 37 minutes / 2 miles from work to home). And 2. I was struck by a fear of looking silly if the owner of the gate noticed me or by the traffic. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get over that and be able to take part. I did take a picture of my 'decorative corn' plants... for some reason I'm quite happy with them.
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
Good weekend
Neil and I had another lovely weekend. Nothing specifically wonderful happened but this morning I have the feeling of just finishing a good weekend. I've designed a few new cards and become a little ahead of the September birthday game (and finally caught up on a very delayed graduation card). Neil has been working on a new project which he's excited about, I like it when he's excited. Unfortunately, I feel kinda guilty because I'm finding this project difficult to get behind. I'm being as supportive as I can and I'm sure it will look wonderful when he's finished. I just get nervous about building a large water container from scratch and projects that mean Neil's testosterone levels sky rocket. He's not very relaxed when it comes to the frustrations of diy (do-it-yourself). So far so good though.
It was a good weekend despite watching some bad films. We watched Ju-On: The Grudge 2... please don't bother. I'm easily scared by horror films but even I wasn't convinced by this one. I don't remember seeing the first one, but Neil says this sequel seemed like they were just cashing in and lacked the story to do a decent job. We did watch the whole thing though, which is more than I can say for Hellboy. It was recently on telly so we thought we'd see if it was worth going to the sequel which is coming out in the theatres now. We won't be going to Hellboy 2. Which is odd, because we've really liked other things involving Guillermo del Toro.
It was also a good weekend despite our suffering garden. We took in our last tomato harvest, and it's a big one. I need to find space to ripen tomatoes and things to do with them after. Tomato blight hit the crop again this year, but counting or blessing we at least managed to ripen some tomatoes this time. We won't be deterred! We'll just rotate our vegetable plan and try again next year. In the meantime, anyone have a great recipe for tomato sauce that I can keep in cans to use for pasta and pizza over the winter? I mowed late yesterday, about 7pm (I can do this because it only takes a half hour to mow our grass, at the most). After finishing we had a wander around the garden pointing out the good, the bad, and the ugly. The ugly was already gone since we'd taken out the tomatoes on Sunday. But the bad is that we have a lot of hard graft planned for the winter in the form of digging over lots of soil, digging out lots of rubble to possibly extend the pond, and digging in more soil for the front flower beds. Lots of digging. We also need to plan the vegetable garden a little better so we order our organic seeds and start our plants off on time. The good is the fabulous looking decorative corn and things we learned from all the herbs and flowers and vegetables we planted this year. Gardening has a steap learning curve, but it's very rewarding and there's always next year to do improve. I'll try to add a picture of the corn later when the sun comes out (hopefully).
It was a good weekend despite watching some bad films. We watched Ju-On: The Grudge 2... please don't bother. I'm easily scared by horror films but even I wasn't convinced by this one. I don't remember seeing the first one, but Neil says this sequel seemed like they were just cashing in and lacked the story to do a decent job. We did watch the whole thing though, which is more than I can say for Hellboy. It was recently on telly so we thought we'd see if it was worth going to the sequel which is coming out in the theatres now. We won't be going to Hellboy 2. Which is odd, because we've really liked other things involving Guillermo del Toro.
It was also a good weekend despite our suffering garden. We took in our last tomato harvest, and it's a big one. I need to find space to ripen tomatoes and things to do with them after. Tomato blight hit the crop again this year, but counting or blessing we at least managed to ripen some tomatoes this time. We won't be deterred! We'll just rotate our vegetable plan and try again next year. In the meantime, anyone have a great recipe for tomato sauce that I can keep in cans to use for pasta and pizza over the winter? I mowed late yesterday, about 7pm (I can do this because it only takes a half hour to mow our grass, at the most). After finishing we had a wander around the garden pointing out the good, the bad, and the ugly. The ugly was already gone since we'd taken out the tomatoes on Sunday. But the bad is that we have a lot of hard graft planned for the winter in the form of digging over lots of soil, digging out lots of rubble to possibly extend the pond, and digging in more soil for the front flower beds. Lots of digging. We also need to plan the vegetable garden a little better so we order our organic seeds and start our plants off on time. The good is the fabulous looking decorative corn and things we learned from all the herbs and flowers and vegetables we planted this year. Gardening has a steap learning curve, but it's very rewarding and there's always next year to do improve. I'll try to add a picture of the corn later when the sun comes out (hopefully).
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
Pizza! Pizza!
This is such an easy pizza dough recipe that I thought some people might actually want to know about it. It was developed (based on existing techniques and recipes) by Neil.
The recipe:
1tsp of sugar
2tsps of yeast
250g of warm water (hand hot)
Group B
30g of oil
1tsp of salt
250g of strong bread flour
Mix ingredients of Group A together in a large bowl then set aside (someplace kinda warm and not drafty is good) to double in size. Then add ingredients of Group B, knead about 10 minutes (we rarely ever knead for more than 3 minutes if making pizza dough) and set aside to rise again. Use for pizza crust, bread, rolls, even donuts.
On Monday night we used it, with some slight alterations*, to make this...
... and a small deep dish pizza that was so tasty we couldn't wait to dive in before I took a photo. We also used our latest tomato harvest to make the tomato sauce and tomato slices. Maybe someday we'll be able to make a pizza entirely from ingredients in our garden. Lets see, we'll need a wheat field, a mushroom forest, a cow or buffalo, a sugar cane field, onions, tomatoes and herbs. 3 out of 7 already!
* These alterations were due to a lack of plain bread flour and my herb fixation. I had enough strong plain bread flour to start the dough, but not enough when adding group B. So I used strong soft grain bread flour which gave a really nice nutty flavour and a bit of crunch. I also added some fresh chopped rosemary to the dough which made it smell fantastic!
The recipe:
Group A
150g of strong bread flour 1tsp of sugar
2tsps of yeast
250g of warm water (hand hot)
Group B
30g of oil
1tsp of salt
250g of strong bread flour
Mix ingredients of Group A together in a large bowl then set aside (someplace kinda warm and not drafty is good) to double in size. Then add ingredients of Group B, knead about 10 minutes (we rarely ever knead for more than 3 minutes if making pizza dough) and set aside to rise again. Use for pizza crust, bread, rolls, even donuts.
On Monday night we used it, with some slight alterations*, to make this...
... and a small deep dish pizza that was so tasty we couldn't wait to dive in before I took a photo. We also used our latest tomato harvest to make the tomato sauce and tomato slices. Maybe someday we'll be able to make a pizza entirely from ingredients in our garden. Lets see, we'll need a wheat field, a mushroom forest, a cow or buffalo, a sugar cane field, onions, tomatoes and herbs. 3 out of 7 already!* These alterations were due to a lack of plain bread flour and my herb fixation. I had enough strong plain bread flour to start the dough, but not enough when adding group B. So I used strong soft grain bread flour which gave a really nice nutty flavour and a bit of crunch. I also added some fresh chopped rosemary to the dough which made it smell fantastic!
Sunday, 10 August 2008
today's garden harvest
Neil and I collected a good looking harvest from our modest vegetable garden today. What do you think?
This is the second harvest of the tomatoes and potatoes. The first harvests were cooked and eaten right away (and I didn't think of taking a photo until we'd sate back with full tummies). They made delicious roast potatoes and a tasty tomato sauce, respectively. It is the final harvest of beans though, I pulled out the poor plants today which have been devastated by slugs, snails and caterpillars this year but still provided beans a plenty, they were some hard workin' organic dwarf bean plants!
We also took in a crazy tomato today.
Neil thinks it looks like an angel; I think it looks like a rabbit; what do you think? (Don't say tomato, because we know it's a tomato.)
This is the second harvest of the tomatoes and potatoes. The first harvests were cooked and eaten right away (and I didn't think of taking a photo until we'd sate back with full tummies). They made delicious roast potatoes and a tasty tomato sauce, respectively. It is the final harvest of beans though, I pulled out the poor plants today which have been devastated by slugs, snails and caterpillars this year but still provided beans a plenty, they were some hard workin' organic dwarf bean plants!
We also took in a crazy tomato today.
Neil thinks it looks like an angel; I think it looks like a rabbit; what do you think? (Don't say tomato, because we know it's a tomato.)
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
To be a cat in the afternoon
Sometimes I really wish I could be a cat in the afternoon. I feed ours when I get home at 1 o'clock in the afternoon and when they're finished they find a comfy place to relax and digest. Maegan's safe and comfy place is always above the refrigerator (this is where she gets fed as well). Maegan and Owen don't get along because Owen can't help but hunt her.
Owen used to sleep as near to me as he could while still being comfy, until last week. The weather has finally become wonderful here and the herb garden has been growing well. Owen is a herb lover, just like me. He's like a kitten again when he sniffs the thyme or the nibbles the mint. His favorite place at the moment seems to be just in front of the miniature apple tree and underneath the dappled shade of the fennel and oregano.
Doesn't this make you wish you were a cat in the afternoon?
Owen used to sleep as near to me as he could while still being comfy, until last week. The weather has finally become wonderful here and the herb garden has been growing well. Owen is a herb lover, just like me. He's like a kitten again when he sniffs the thyme or the nibbles the mint. His favorite place at the moment seems to be just in front of the miniature apple tree and underneath the dappled shade of the fennel and oregano.
Doesn't this make you wish you were a cat in the afternoon?
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