Being Young & Eco-conscious: Re-using and Recycling

I guess I'm quite unusual in being so interested in green issues at such a young age, and I've been pondering this lately. In many ways I'm a typical young adult in that I like partying, shopping and hanging around with my friends. But equally I somehow need to find the time to maintain my garden, look after my animals and bees and learn more about sustainability and permaculture. Unusually I know how to spin my own yarn and weave it, which local wild plants are good to eat and what to do with them, how to brew wine, beer, and cider (proper booze, not the chemical rubbish most people my age drink!) and how to make paper, my own cosmetics and to some extent, clothing. I see these skills as essential to my future survival - I am beginning to see that we cannot halt climate change, etc, and instead we need to focus on how to adapt to new living conditions. But at the same time I want to be able to go to electricity-rich gigs, enjoy foreign holidays and my regular Costa order, and buy fashionable shoes, at least while I still can. How to reconcile all these things?

In some ways the recession has helped me to do this, particularly in terms of re-using and recycling. Let's take fashion, for example (something that I'm very interested in, but can't afford and have doubts about in terms of green-ness). Now 90% of the clothes I buy come from the local charity shop. I'm lucky in that Mum volunteers there twice a week, and so I often get first dibs on any interesting bits and bobs that get donated. It's amazing what people will throw away - Aquascutum suits, beautiful Italian leather boots, Jaeger dresses, leather satchels...a large portion of my wardrobe now consists of perfectly wearable designer cast-offs from other people, some of them unworn with the labels still in! My favourite buy recently was a matching set of scarf, T-shirt and skirt in a wonderful Indian block-print fabric, good brand etc, no marks, tears, perfect condition.......and it all cost me £1. It seems that people will often throw something away the minute it gets a tiny stain or gets a bit too last week; the waste is unbelievable, but I certainly benefit from it. And anything too raggedy to sell still makes money for the charity shop, as they sell it all as rags. Recycling and re-using at its most basic perhaps, but I think it's fantastic!

^ Recent charity shop purchases; my wardrobe, full of second-hand goodies :)

Charity shop and clothing tips:

• Go to more up-market areas - this is where you will find higher quality goodies
• Support a particular charity or your local shop, or shop around to find a charity shop with the best selection
• charity shops have got a little more trendy recently, and some have hiked up their prices. Good for the charity, so if you're feeling generous go for it, but personally, I wouldn't spend more than £10 on a posh dress, and for basic things such as jeans or a nice second hand top, I'd stick to the pound rail unless for something really special! If something has been sitting there for weeks, you may be able to get it at a discounted price, and if an item is out of season (e.g. you buy a jumper when it's summer) it's more likely to be cheaper, too. Don't be afraid to shop out of season!
• it helps if you're a creative, quirky dresser who can see potential in seemingly redundant pieces. Think about combining and layering different things. If you're good at sewing etc, look for interesting fabrics - even if you don't like the item as it is, you might be able to transform it into something else.
• don't discard an item if it has a stain or a rip - it could be easily fixed by you or a crafty friend. In my experience even things that say "dry clean only" can be washed successfully at a low temperature or by hand
• don't donate disgusting items. Volunteers don't want to trawl through smelly, sweaty, cigarette-stinking, stained, grubby clothes, and nobody wants to buy these either. Wash everything first, and if something is a little too far gone, check that they have a rag bin, or go to your local dump and see if they have one there.
• share clothes and other items between friends, neighbours and family. In this way we've been lucky enough to get a greenhouse, potential duck-pond, bins to keep animal feed in, furniture, clothing, books, etc.
• keep a look out also for interesting jewellery and accessories, as well as furniture, knitting needles, books, DVD's etc...especially titles that are now out of print
• try Freecycle, swapshops, car boot sales, and sharing/hiring shops etc. too! (particularly good for furniture, tools, plant seeds etc)
• also - USE YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY for books, DVD's, even toys and games, and for finding leaflets about days out, local producers and events, and courses. My one even showcases the work of local artists and jewellery designers.

If you can't find what you want second hand, or want something special, then there are still loads of places you can go. Look at local producers' cooperatives, and sites such as eBay and Etsy. Supporting smaller and local producers is still a valid option, and many smaller companies still have better eco-credentials than high-street brands. I like Etsy for jewellery, and eBay is good for everything. Recently Dad bought an old stainless steel basin which we will turn into a solar wax extractor, and we even bought a whole greenhouse once. Look for unusual options too. We buy old blue mango chutney barrels for £10 each and convert these into vessels for growing veg and producing compost. And don't forget that you can learn to make and re-use different items for yourself - learn to knit, make your own furniture or propagate your own plants from a friend or one of the many professionals and teachers out there who are happy to share their knowledge.

More Bees

Well, yesterday I visited the 1st swarm of the year (the one I didn't go and collect, currently the only one we have so far actually taken home to the apiary) and wow! HUGE swarm, as big as a good-sized whole colony, and boy are they busy! They have already built out about 4 frames of wax with no foundation to help them along. 3 whole frames are already full of nectar, with more throughout the rest of the hive. They're building up really quick and look like really hard working bees. The only thing is, despite the fact they've been there exactly a week now and are bringing in pollen, there is NO BROOD. So, either the queen hasn't got going yet, or she's not working, or she's dead/gone somewhere. But they look like they're doing good, so we're going to leave them to it for a while longer, and if there's still no sign, they will get a frame of eggs from another hive so they can make a new queen. We're having to breed all our own queens this year, as we don't trust the queens from last year's breeder, and Hawaiian queens have now been banned by Defra because SHB or something has been found in Hawaii...this isn't a problem though as we are really excited about breeding our own queens! Just hope it works!

And now onto a disgusting job that I had to do that I just had to write about! The other day Dad showed me that wax moths have got into some of our stored frames...this is not acceptable, as they can absolutely destroy frames and even whole hives! While Dad was working it was mine and Pabi Bach's job to squish as many adults and larvae as we could find...however Pabi Bach was too squeamish and so it came down to me (the vegetarian of the family...felt guilty and disgusted, but also got rather carried away). The larvae, when prodded in a particular part of their anatomy, explode like a zit (nice). If you don't get them there they carry on wriggling...it was a very gooey job, and not at all pleasant.

^ wax moth nest, chewed up wax and soft, spider's web-like stuff

^ adult wax moth - small grey moth with a kind of golden-brown spot on the thorax

^ a wax moth larvae in the nest

^ the picture isn't very clear, but the larvae create sort of tunnels through the wax, eventually destroying the whole lot if you don't gte rid of them.

^ More wax moth damage

Later that evening I also had to protect Pabi Bach from a cockchafer beetle that seemed intent on dive-bombing us...although harmless (except if you're a prized plant) these beetles are about 3cm long, brown, buzzy and seem to have no breaks, and so we found it pretty alarming when it flew through her window that evening and started uncontrollably whizzing around the room! (It soared menacingly over Pabi, she gave a piercing scream, I turned and started to bolt for the door when it hove into view in front of me. I stopped, it kept on coming, hit me on the mouth and went spiralling off into a corner. Meanwhile Pabi and I made a break for it). I think she owes me a few gruesome jobs now...

^ blurry pic of the mosntrous blood-thirsty cockchafer...

Legal Drug Cultivation

This evening Dad and I went up to see some old neighbours who moved into a new house with a bigger garden, and have very kindly offered it to us for veg cultivation and apiary! Vicky was asking us if we knew what the weed invading her new area of wildflower meadow was so we brought some back to look it up.

It's sort of thistle-like, with some fine hairs, serated edges and almost dandylion shaped leaves...and it turns out that it is a type of wild lettuce, lactuca serriola, which apparently has some of the same properties as opium! I tried some and it was alright - a bit bitter but more or less edible. I'm not sure I'll be consuming it in any great quantity any time soon but if I end up deciding to "expand my mind" I'll know where to go!

(I think I'd better slip in a small disclaimer here as we live in a mad world: if you do something stupid or pick the wrong plant and poison yourself as a result of reading this blog, it's your own bloody fault and nothing to do with me!).

Dave and Vicky's garden is amazing. They obviously love gardening but as Dave has MS it is of course difficult. But it's so cool that they've offered to share their garden with us and I can't wait to get going. People are beginning to operate schemes like this up and down the country, and teamed up with the increase in demand for allotments it looks like more and more people will be rebuilding their communities through growing their own. Exciting times!

Phormium Fruit Net

We have a garden full of Phormium tenax (New Zealand flax). It's a plant with flat, broad, spiky leaves and my mum loves it, so a while ago when one of our neighbours was getting rid of 5 small phormium plants Mum couldn't say no. It grows fairly large - we have a mature one that takes up about 1m x 1m x 1m, but it's worth the space coz it's so blooming useful!

I think I've already mentioned in an earlier post that I used Phormium fibres to train our espalier apple trees. Well, this week I've gone one step further and made my own Phormium fruit net.

Phormium is such a useful plant, I think everyone should try and grow a bit! I've used it for string, I've woven place mats out of it, and now I've made a fruit net...and the Maori of its native New Zealand traditionally use Phormium to weave stunning ceremonial cloaks. It's all done by hand - no loom - and it's so intricate and delicate...if you look it up on the internet you'll be astounded at the stuff they can do with it!

In our south-facing front garden we have a cluster of fruit bushes - a red currant, white currant, black currant and gooseberry. They're planted very tightly but so far are doing well. The problem is that last year Mr and Mrs Blackbird beat me to it and I only managed a handful of blackcurrants. Well, this year we have several baby blackbirds too and so this year action must be taken.

Last year we used a plastic net. It was bright green, and broke where you didn't want it to and stayed strong when it would have been more helpful for it to be easy to break. It was also completely useless at keeping Willow out of my celery. It is just the sort of stuff that I hate to see go into the environment. So, while I'm deciding how to dispose of it, I'm opting for a more natural sort of net this year.

To begin with, I cut quite a few phormium leaves at the point where they become stiff, pithy and traingular, rather than flat. I then slit them in half - they're very easy to split along their length, but you need sharp scissors to cut across the fibres! I then split each half into smaller strips - a maximum of about 4mm across.

Next I tied them together using a simple double knot until I had lengths that were approx. 2 armspans long. I made lots of lengths like these.

I then used my bean poles as a frame, tying a long strand horizontally at each end of the frame. I then tied more lengths onto this base length at regular-ish intervals, again with a simple double knot.

I had an odd number of vertical strands.

I then tied the strands loosely into pairs, leaving gaps to give the net and open structure. Of course, as I had an odd number, when I got to the other end I had one left over. I simply tied it onto the strand next to it and worked my way back along the row, so that this time the strand I had started with was the one left over.

I carried on working until I got fed up! And now the net is over the fruit bushes. It might be a bit small but I'm hoping it will act as a deterent in any case.

This is by no means the quickest option, but it only took me an afternoon and in my view an afternoon of tying knots is a lesser evil than that horrible green plastic stuff that will take millenia to rot down. So I'm happy :-) .

Just got to see if it works now!

Victoriana Chic Gone Too Far

Now, I have to admit that I do like a nice antique or vintage Victorian mourning veil etc. as much as the next girl, but this is taking it too far!

Our heating has been broken for ages but now we have no hot water. So we are bathing like Victorians!

I.e. we boil the kettle and take a bucket of hot water up and try and get washed as quickly as possible to avoid getting cold (us and the water).

All I can say is that it really makes you appreciate having hot water on tap - and convinces me that solar hot water would really be a good idea. The sun is more reliable than the bloke we've employed to fix it!

Just look at the 1970s NZ beekeeper and his hive about 30 seconds into this film! Wow!

This is just one of the many videos on food security, permaculture, sustainability, self-sufficiency etc. available to watch on YouTube - have a look!

Pondering Eco-ness

Today the newest issue of Country Smallholding magazine came through the letterbox. I was flipping through it when I came across an article by James Strawbridge from It's Not Easy Being Green and saw a sentence that went something like "trying to live as naturally as possible". This reminded me of the latest series of It's Not Easy Being Green when he was trialing hydroponics to try and grow "strawberries in December". This has got me thinking about what it means to be "green".

Firstly, I'll tell you the problems with the Strawbridges' particular brand of green-ness.
- separating people into "light greenies" and "dark greenies"
- trying to get people to go green by making them take a guilt-trip
- strawberries in December?!?!
- green-ness at any cost

In one episode of the most recent series of their programme, they were "helping" some poor bloke who was trying to create an eco holiday home, and rather snootily said that the wanted him to go much more "dark green" than he actually had. They were suggesting this bloke by organic cotton sheets, organic this and organic that...do these people know how much these things cost?! Are they actually aware that there's a recession going on?! The way I see it the "green-ness at any cost" attitude is counter-productive; part of living a greener life is living a more peaceful life, and this poor dude isn't going to get any peace if he has to stay up all night worrying how he's going to pay for his "green" organic cotton bedsheets!

The strawberries in December thing just makes me laugh - I'd much rather follow Hugh F-W's example and eat seasonally. Frankly I don't want to eat strawberries in December anyway - whatever the quality, they are just too cool and crisp for wintertime. Give me hearty stews and braised lamb shanks any wintry day.

The pigeon-holing of dark and light greenies and guilt-tripping thing really gets up my nose. Ever since I read The Transition Handbook, my whole eco philosophy has changed. Alienating people in this way doesn't change anything. They feel bad for a while, but carry on as normal, and eventually will probably ditch the eco-preaching person becuase they've become so boring. People don't like to be patronised, preached to and made to feel like they're the sole root of the world's problems. The Transition approach seems much better to me - the idea is that you INVOLVE all different sorts of people, including local councils, businesses etc., and that you make a green future look so APPEALING that people will work for it without being made to feel guilty. The whole idea is more positive and inclusive, and isn't that what we want from a green society? A low-carbon, inclusive, peaceful society. This is unattainable if you stomp around frightening people into using low-energy lightbulbs like some Green Gestapo.

I have seen the effects of a positive attitude myself; my Dad and I have been campaigning for a new allotment site in our area, and the council have been really supportive and willing to give it a go, which is wonderful. This wouldn't have happened if we'd excluded them and made them out to be the bad guy - by giving people the chance to be included in your green schemes, you may be surprised by the support you get from unexpected and welcome places.

Since discovering permaculture, every other green movement has seemed ridiculously ill-thought out to me. Other people may see it differently, but to me permaculture principles just make sense. And part of permaculture is Poeple Care - i.e. looking after people, as well as the planet. Although I rather envy the Strawbridges and their eco-lifestyle, their attitude makes me grimace. It's this behind-the-times preaching guilt-trippy attitude that makes people roll their eyes whenever someone mentions green issues. In their eagerness to get more people going green, they may just be putting people off such changes. Giving green issues a positive spin is the only way we're going to get anywhere. Just look at the Obamas and their new veg patch! Loads of greenies have been saying "well, that's not enough, they should be doing this, that and the other as well". Come on people! The Obamas are making growing your own seriously cool, and that's way more likely to get people growing and greening than Dick Strawbridge giving them a lecture!

Scenes from the Garden

It's amazing what 2 nights of rain will do. Everything is suddenly really lush and verdant.

The hawthorn is finally out in leaf - such a bright green! Now that they have this cover, the garden is absolutely teeming with birds. Today I saw a pair of goldfinches on my niger seed bird feeder for the first time.

Fruit starting to flower...

And I know I keep going on and on about salads but this one was spectacular and included 18 components.

(Little Gem lettuce, Lollo Rossa lettuce, Chicory Sugarloaf, Lambs Lettuce, young Hop leaves, young Perpetual Spinach leaves, young Rainbow Chard leaves and stems, 2 types of Marjoram, Mint, Parsley, Lemon Balm, Chives, young Blackcurrant leaves, young Blackberry leaves, Pansy petals, Wallflower petals - all of which were picked from the garden).

Online Realtime Weather Station

I found an on-line realtime weather station just half a mile from the bees.

http://www.crondallweather.co.uk/

If it appears very small there is an hyperlink to a full scrren version in the text.

Beecraft Article

I have had an article published in the April 2009 edition of Beecraft magazine!

The magazine website is here: http://www.bee-craft.com/

I'll try and find a link to the article.

General Update

We have made some mead. We didn't use our own honey, as there isn't terribly much of it, so instead we bought some cheap summer honey from Lidl and used that. The mead is flavoured with some Twinings Raspberry, Strawberry and Loganberry tea - you can use all sorts of things to flavour mead, and in one of my favourite books, one about herbs, it mentions a bark container found in a Danish bog that had mead residue in it, from which scientists could establish that the mead had been flavoured with about 20 different things!

It is fermenting away furiously, is currently pretty cloudy and very frothy on top.

The garden is very spring like and we have eaten the first of the kale that we planted last year, as well as salads. Since the last post we have had one or two other salads. I really enjoy harvesting things from the garden, so I tend to go a bit overboard when Mum asks me to pop out to get a lettuce! The last salad I made contained:

• Little Gem lettuce
• Sugar Loaf chicory
  Lamb's lettuce
• Baby perpetual spinach leaves
• Lemon Balm
• Marjoram
• Fennel
• Chives
• Parsley
• Mint
  Wallflower petals
• Pansy flowers
• Young hawthorn leaves

all of which were picked from the garden!

Later on I hope to be including beetroot, young chard leaves (if the family can stand them), other lettuce varieties, nasturtium leaves, flowers and seeds, Lady's Mantle, young oak leaves, rose petals, tomatoes, onions, spring onions, and who knows what else.

I recently ordered a book from the library - "The Forest Garden" by Robert Hart, who pioneered forest gardening. It's a very thin little booklet, only about twenty pages or so, but it was really interesting to read about the first forest garden - even though forest gardening has moved on a bit since Hart made his, I think it's still good to get a sense of the evolution of an idea and go back to basics to really understand the underlying philosophy. One of the things that really struck me in the book is what he refers to as "Sallets" (salads to you and me). From what he says in the book is sounds as if Hart lived on a diet of entirely raw foods, which I can't say appeals to me, but as I am the official Provider of Salads I was interested in what he put in his - low maintenance herbs such as Good King Henry, for example, which we don't tend to eat nowadays, but which are highly nutritious and easy to grow.

I also have my eye on some other unusual plants, for this year or subsequent years. One of these is the "strawbini" as they call it on the Victoriana Nursery website (http://www.victoriananursery.co.uk/), Blitum capitatum, Chenepodium capitatum. This is a spinach-like plant that also produces red berries, which are meant to taste pretty good. It contains some odd stuff, that can cause health problems if you eat too much of it, but as this is exactly the same as spinach, comfrey, beans and pretty much any other veg you can think of, I'm not at all put off by this. As we don't have a huge amount of room to grow things in, plants that produce two crops in the space of one appeal to me!

We were meant to do our Spring Inspection today, but it is much too cold. We went down to one of our apiaries however to look at the outside of the hives, and top up the feed we're giving the nuc if necessary. A new beekeeper who Dad is mentoring came with us - a nice bloke, though he seemed a bit daunted! There certainly is a fair bit to get your head round when you start beekeeping, but I think the best thing is to get lots of help from more experienced beekeepers and just get down and do it.

The bees were not coming out at all, except for 5 minutes when the sun came out. Unfortunately what was our strongest hive last year looks barely there - if there are any bees, there are not very many. I doubt this is due to starvation, as we've been feeding them throughout the winter, or because of the weather (it was a pretty good winter this year - cold and rather dry, which the bees can cope with. It's wet weather that's really bad for them). I think varroa may have played a part in it - we treated them towards the end of last year, but when looking at the varroa counting board a while ago, varroa numbers were pretty bad. Oh well. We'll just have to be really vigilant this year, and do some more varroa trapping techniques this year.

Luckily, we've come through the two winters we've had bees pretty well. Dad's mentor had 50% losses this year - we lost one hive to starvation in the summer and perhaps one hive this year. I think ti's because we don't leave them alone in the winter like you're meant to - we can't keep away and we're always topping up their feed and generally being overprotective, although I don't doubt that there's some beginners' luck in there too.

Dad and I recently tried tapping one of the enormous ash trees that grow in our back garden - I carved a funnel type piece of wood, we drilled a hole in the tree and slid the funnel in. Nothing happened! No sap at all! It was supposed to be about the right time of year for tapping - when the sap's rising and the leaves haven't yet come out - but it hasn't worked at all! I suppose ash might have been a bit of an odd choice of tree - birch or a maple would probably have been better - but ash is edible, if bitter, and the trees are the perfect size and strength to withstand a bit of tapping. Oh well, it'll be back to the drawing board next spring! (Though I do plan to make some ash key pickle this year, so the trees won't be completely redundant for the rest of the year!).

Peak oil is an issue that interests me, i.e. how, in the future, am I going to be able to take foreign holidays in an eco-friendly way and totally without oil?! One oil-derived product that I use pretty frequently is acrylic paint, and recently I've been wondering what I'm going to do when there is no acrylic paint left. So today I have been trying out natural paints!

They're really easy to make and as you can see from the photos, make pretty nice colours! I found a page about it here :(http://www.bl.uk/learning/artimages/sacredbook/object/paint/makingpaint.html) which mentions using Gum Arabic - as I don't have any of that however I tried using normal cooking oil. It worked a treat! I just mixed some tiny amounts of turmeric, chilli powder and ash into the oil and this is how they turned out!

The chilli powder paint in particular had little grains all over it, but after leaving it to dry for a bit I was able to just brush these off. The oil did soak through the page a bit, but not nearly as much as I'd thought it would, and dries off in not too long a time. You can also use other pigments such as charcoal, ground up brick, and talcum powder to make other colours. As I do more of this I'll be experimenting with different pigments, mixing colours, using different oils and what effects water, salt and vinegar have, etc.

I have sown a first succession of beetroot today, directly in the ground, under cover of our polytunnel. The next things to plant, in April, will be sunflowers, beans, sweetcorn, squashes, cucumbers, courgettes, loofas...the autumn-ripening summer things will be going in next! The stuff I've started off already is looking pretty good, though I'm slightly concerned that the celery hasn't germinated yet!

I'm planning to plant a Three Sisters bed this year, in the front garden, as Carol Klein did on her series Grow Your Own Veg a while back. This system was used, apparently, by the Iriquois, and sees corn, beans and squashes growing together in a symbiotic relationship: the corn supports the beans, the beans put nitrogen in the soil, and the squashes block out all the weeds.

My other big project this year is to turn a little corner of garden into a miniature forest garden! It's south-west facing, sunny, and VERY poor soil - in fact it's probably more builder's rubble than soil! We already have a crab apple tree, violets, ox-eye daisies and a lavender bush there, which we don't want to get rid of, but around these I will be planting perennial and self-seeding edible and medicinal plants, on several layers. There isn't very much room, so I'll be omitting the shrub layer for one thing, and choosing plants that are easy to grow but not too vigorous. I'll grow a climbing fruit bush/cane/creeper up the wall, and then I plan to grow beans up the trunk of the crab apple tree - the tree will provide them all the support for two or three plants, but as the beans are annuals they won't be there long enough to strangle the tree.

The first thing I need to work on is improving the soil a bit, without digging up the things we want to keep. This calls for a small amount of digging, and a lot of mulching. Eventually I want to operate a no-dig policy in the garden anyway, so this could be the perfect little corner to experiment on: just how much can I improve the appalling soil with minimal digging?

Bee Plants

Today Dad and I cleared up a load of frames, and took some clean supers to our hives. The bees aren't filling them up yet; instead we put them on top of the coverboard. This means that the bees can't get to them, but they're already on site and by the time the bees get into them they should already smell like home.

The bees at our second out-apiary were really busy - they totally ignored us and bees with HUGE pollen sacks were coming in faster than I could count them. The nuc at the association out-apiary was busy too. What was our strongest hive last year however seemed to be going a bit slower - we had a quick look when we checked their pollen patty and couldn't see many bees. They may have had a hard winter. However, they were still collecting, so hopefully they'll build up quickly.

There are lots of bee plants in pollen now. We've seen flurescent orange and creamy white crocus pollen, pale yellow hazel, and now some brighter yellow. The gorse is in flower, as are the pussy willow and blackthorn, and I've seen ornamental cherries in bloom too. There should be lots of tree pollens coming out now. All in all, the season is under way! Our spring inspection will take place in 2 weeks, weather permitting.

And now, I leave you with pictures of our front garden, which contains a mixture of edibles and ornamentals.

Primroses and something purple - apparently primroses make a good wine.

Wallflower buds - edible flowers, I believe. Apparently lots of people dig up wallflowers after the first year and replace them with new plants. Our plants are looking a bit leggy, so we have tied them up, but apart from that replacing them seems mad to me - this is their second year and they're already starting to flower.

Currant bush coming into leaf!

Pansies - edible. The name comes from the French pensee, which means thought. These are also in their second year - I think I put these in in December 2007. They flower for ages and clearly they can survive the winter and live to flower again!

The first tiny pink forget-me-not flowers (not edible, as far as I know). I can't wait for them to be in full bloom.

Yarns, Planting & Faded Flowers

My mixed fibres yarn (bamboo, nylon, wool, silk, banana...) has spun up really well. I began by carding the silk waste, banana fibre etc. to make them spinable, then carded all the different fibres together to blend them. I then carded these rolags together to blend the fibres even more, but left some distinct little pockets of colour. Here are the finished rolags.

I then simply spun these rolags and plied off into a 2ply yarn. The finished yarn is seen here with the other yarns I've been spinning recently; L to R they are: 75% merino, 25 % silk chunky 2ply; 50% silk cap plied with 50% silk waste; mixed wool and suri alpaca worsted single; the finished yarn (bamboo, banana, nylon, wool, silk); single spun from a silk cap; wool/banana mix, spun from a rolag carded by my teacher Carol.

The greenhouse is already doing its job and is always several degrees warmer than outside - on one sunny day it even reached 30 C! At the moment we have a trestle table in there where we put our seed trays. This week I have sown celery and our first successions of parnsips and mixed lettuces.

My okra seedlings are still inside however, and are looking nice and healthy. Only 2 out of 3 ca

me up but there is still time for me to resow the other one.

And finally, here are some pictures of a faded bunch of flowers - I'm forming an idea for some artwork based on these.

General Update

I haven't written for ages so I've got some serious updating to do!

• Honey harvest: our crop this year was disappointingly small. We got a fair wax crop but the bees had eaten 90% of the honey by the time we got to it, because the summer was so miserable. Next year we will probably take a spring harvest as well as an autumn one and just feed the bees really well. Even though there isn't much of it, our honey does taste divine, even though I say so myself. Things always taste better when they are home produced.

Uncapping

Sorting out the extractor (only cost a tenner!)

Honey!!!

• Unfortunately one of our hives died...probably of starvation. It was a hive we had set up this year, we didn't take any honey from it, and they had been doing so well earlier in the season. The cause was once again, that they'd eaten all their stores, and also our fault - we should have been feeding them. I was so surprised when we went up to the hive and we found out it was dead...it actually smelled like a dead animal, like a piece of roadkill or something. You wouldn't think that piles of dead bees would smell like that, but they do. Like one dead organism.


• Visit to Wales: we avoided the Abergavenny Food Festival like the plague and instead took a trip to the lovely village of Skenfrith. Unfortunately I was unable to stop my father having a scrumping spree. There was a German film crew in the High Street, filming Unter Den Hugeln Von Wales, which apparently means Under The Hills Of Wales. Rather surreal.


• Homemade pasta: we have got so fed up with eating endless spinach and swiss chard that we have been trying to come up with ideas of how to use the stuff...so we made pasta! V. good indeed.

• Chutney: have been making jars and jars of the stuff. We have even managed to make some sugar free stuff for my diabetic dad - the secret is to use eating apples; combined with the sultanas, they provide all the sweetness you need.
• Cidermaking: on my sister's birthday with some of our friends over. We made seven gallons of cider out of the bags and bags of apples we have been collecting....some from our own garden, others from the wild, some were given by friends, and some were "borrowed".... we didn't just stick to cider apples - we did eaters, cookers, the lot, and it made for a really lovely juice...just hope the cider turns out nice! We've got some more apples to do now and all....we might get another few gallons.


• Feeling arty: I've been doing loads of observation recently, and not much final pieceing. i have however taken some half decent photos of my work, and have tried out altering them on the computer...I love the effect! (NB: The following images are copyrighted).


• Geese: the canada geese are flying in thick and fast now; I have heard them lots of times but I saw them for the first time today. I love this time of year. They are so utterly beautiful, they take my breath away.


• Feeling the crunch: we are cutting back on everything and shopping at Lidl. One of my friends today said that he'd barely noticed it was happening! Alright for some...