Harvesting

Vulgar granny

Aquilegia vulgaris, aka Granny's bonnet

Every one's a winner ..

... that's no lie
you never fail to satisfy

100% success rate with the runner bean seed saved from last year.

Germination anxiety

Around this time of year there's a nagging feeling that there are probably some seeds that should have been sown by now and some seeds which have been sown that should have germinated.

Assuming that anything will grow in the water.

Don't push me ...

... cos I'm close to the edge.

I'm trying not to lose my head.

Uh huh huh huh.

A bigger butt

A bigger butt is needed to cope with all this rain we've been having.

Blue lines

Marigolds on

This and that

Too wet for this ...

... but not for that

Crops

Leeks

Onions

Parsnips

Spinach

Cauliflower

P is for ...

Peas



Pumpkin seeds

Malus domestica

Cox's Orange Pippin blossom buds.

Dulband

The word tulip apparently derives from the old Persian word 'dulband' meaning round.

Cauliflower sprouts

New Pollution

Location: Eastville Park, tributary to the River Frome

Description: Grey/white emulsified sludge

Source: Unknown - tributary runs from underground

Thanks to the heads up from Mr G of Fishponds, who tells me that the whole stream was opaque yesterday and that the Environment Agency was contacted. The tributary flows underground from the centre of Fishponds where any number of possible causes of pollution are possible.

Ooh me plums

Plum blossom

Pushbike

Leaf

A timely reminder to check out The Leaf Label, home to some great music including Murcof, Efterklang, Polar Bear and the wonderfully named Vladislav Delay.

Artist's impression

An artist's impression of what it probably won't look like at the Gloucestershire county cricket ground at Nevil Road: The club resubmitted development plans to Bristol City Council this week, having previously been refused planning permission.

www.bbc.co.uk

Purple heart

Hoveyda's watch

Oddly, I'm just waiting for a BBC political correspondent in Washington DC to phone. No, I haven't gone off my head or decided that blogging about repainting my allotment shed is so banal that I need to invent something, nor does the BBC in Washington need my insight into the Republican Party primaries.

...

And there he was, on the other end of the line, sounding a little bit like a Christopher or Peter Hitchens, responding to the email with my home phone number within ten minutes of me sending it, ever the hardworking hack.

The story starts with an Iranian in Paris in 1941, moves on to Marylebone Road in the mid '70s, falters in Croydon and ends in Nottingham in 1981. The call from Washington DC is merely an epilogue, a testament to the effort that some journalists are willing to expend in correcting errors in previously published articles.

...
UPDATE: 14.03.2012 :
The remainder of the original post has been removed for the time being as the story and its epilogue develop. For more information follow the links below and if you're curious, get in touch.


BBC News - The 'Iranian Schindler' who saved Jews from the Nazis

'In the Lion's Shadow' - Fariborz L. Mokhtari

'In the Lion's Shadow' - Reviews: Amazon.co.uk

Improvements

The builders next door have been making some improvements. Can't quite see what they've changed in the garden since I used to look after it for Irene. Perhaps your eagle eyes can spot the difference.


Before


After

I bet the ground elder comes back though. 'Tis a persistent weed. Watch this space.

Up and coming

Woven

Wide awake on the Keynsham bypass

Rays Bright

(Ray Bright; Australian, slow left-arm, 7-87 v Pakistan 1979/80)

Sugarlump Saturday

The latest in a series of tracks - sketches/demos - produced in no more than a day. The time restraint is partly due to software instability, the builders next door and a nod to creative constraints similar to the Dogme 95 filmmakers.

Due to an unavoidable upgrade to a Macbook Pro running Mac OS Lion, the only music software to be relied upon, after multiple crashes of Ableton Live, is now Logic 9. If its stability continues and the builders put down their drills, time constraints may be relaxed.

Cusp

January sails

Not a chance

Intermittent glitch

Other people's computer problems are a little like other people's dreams. For the person who experiences them they can be frustrating, absorbing, difficult and time consuming to resolve, if not ultimately impossible, with the best option being to move on and look for the next one. People who want to hear about them are few and far between and some of those who don't glaze over or leave the room might attempt to make helpful suggestions but interpretations and solutions are varied, multiple and confusing.

Leeking

Easton sunsets

Cheese for supper

Fuelled by an addiction to cutting up beats and speech, a bit of lunacy, even by standards usually heard here.

If you can't play these audioboo streamed tracks and/or see an empty white box, check your java and javascript...or is it yer Flash?

Alternatively, they can be downloaded for free direct from here.

Song for Irene

Not a shag in sight

Crash and burn

There's been a castastrophic failure in the computer room at Green Lung Towers, following the kernel panic back in September. Almost all of the creative software is now unusable and the browsing and email applications are hanging on by their fingertips to a computer which is itself teetering on the brink. Unfortunately, the series of musical sketches posted below will have to be put on hold until a replacement computer and software are found.

At this time of year the allotment's on ice, or rather, there's ice on the allotment, as the first frosts arrive and heavy rainfall waterlogs the predominantly clay soil. There's still plenty to harvest (kale, winter greens, leeks, parsnips) but now that the onion sets and garlic cloves are in the ground, nothing left to plant or sow for several months.

Just time for a small bonfire before the rain soaked everything, after a mild and dry autumn: Sunflower stalks release a useful amount of potash when burned but there's no point in burning everything in sight and incinerating or rendering homeless all the wee beasties.

Not Cricket

There's just something inherently wrong with bowling underarm.

December Dub

Still Breathing

Multivitamins

Blown Again

Gardeners have a habit of boasting of their successes and not drawing attention to their failures, but to break the mould, here's the first of the season's brussels sprouts, 'blown' again, instead of being tightly formed buds. Perhaps the roots should have been deeper and more firmly planted and maybe they could have done with more potash. Whatever, they'll still be edible.

Periwinkle

"But it's not real music is it?"

On Your Bicycle Maybe

The first of a couple of recent tracks, the first produced with Ableton Live, the second with GarageBand, both recorded within a newly imposed 24 hour rule.

Down The Line Mash Up

Blooming Late

Green 5