Human Lifestyle

I got up at 10ish and by the time I'd had breakfast and woken up properly, it was too late to go into St Nicks and help with their coppicing task.  I ought to have been there when things were starting.  I'll try to get to another EcoActive day task.

So I had a quiet day, with an hour or so working outside, chainsawing and stacking. I cycled round to the bakers in the morning and bought cereals at the Co-op.

Once again I had quite a lot of time on the laptop, keeping the stoves going, making sure my boys were OK, doing kitchen stuff, jarring up dried fruit.

I spent quite a long time filling in a questionnaire to help a student with research.

A generally quiet day... Lots of work to do inside, child management, washing up, computer stuff.

At about 5pm I managed to get some time in the garden, and I did a lot of work... more tidying of brambles, and shredding them, and for the first time since the cold snap after Christmas, I have NO boxes or bags of compostable materials awaiting their destination on the heap... I have finally caught up with the crap, and I hope that I'll now keep on top of what I bring home.

However, when I came in at 8.30pm, my hands were really cut up with bramble prickles... they really hurt. But as most gardeners will tell you, it is preferable to use bare hands as using gloves just doesn't 'do it' for me.. I even prefer to hand-weed nettles without gloves. Yet, on my bike, I wear gloves all the year round. Weird!

A nice bowl of soup for tea, and a pastie and roast butternut squash.

Quite a late start, which was nice, and didn't have much to do until an arranged meeting with David at 7.30, to show The Age of Stupid to some of our friends.

But I did do some work in the garden, some chainsawing, stacking... not that much though.

It was a relatively quiet day. I tried to deliver the DVD to David but he wasn't in. I picked up a small sack of recyclables from Country Fresh, and also some cans and glass jars which a neighbour had thrown in... I'll put them in the recycling.

I did do quite a bit of housework, the usual washing up, log-basket filling, taking now-dry pumpkin seeds off the sheets of paper they were drying on and putting them in a box lid to finish drying and then somehow be processed. I wonder if there is a simple machine which would remove the husk or outer shell, leaving the seed inside? Currently I do it by hand, individually... but I have tens of thousands to do... no easy job. Commercial pumpkin seeds are from a type of pumpkin which has 'naked' seeds.

Anyway, I cycled down to Davids for 7.30 with my copy of Age of Stupid, and David told me that our friend Will was coming, with his Austrian friend Otto. We had a chat afterwards, I explained about Copenhagen, Not Stupid and 10:10. Good to get another few people to see this film.

When I came home things were quiet. Later I watched a powerful film called Hard Candy, about a teenage girl getting her revenge on a paedophile.

I took our youngest to school. Was quite moved by the sight of a tree in the schoolyard with literally hundreds of Orb Web Spiders' webs, all visible because of the autumnal mist and the sun shining through. Several people had said they'd noticed the same phenomenon whilst walking down Windmill Lane.

When I got in, I spent most of the morning inside despite it being a lovely outside, because I had loads to do. I had to book a venue for the Hull Road Ward Planning Panel, and email the members to inform them I did a bit more prep for the quiz on Friday night. I sent an email to a potential facilitator for our visioning meeting. I discussed some work with John from St Nicks for next week. And washed up.

During the afternoon, what there was of it, I did spend a little time in the garden. But at 3 had to go to school and do the first Green Thumbs Gang meeting of the year. This was very exciting and rewarding, because it was harvest! We picked fennel, beetroot, onions, spring onions, garlic, spinach, and LOADS of potatoes. We also had a fairly quick tour of the garden looking at weeds, blight, green potatoes, bolted lettuces and more. An extremely satisfying hour.

I visited Country Fresh on the way home and came back with about 4 boxes of compostables and some bought produce including a couple of avocados as a treat. Spent quite a bit of time sorting out the compostables, layering them with shredded twigs and cardboard, but rescued a good pile of little leeks and some cauliflowers which aren't perfectly shaped... so that might make a good soup or stew for tomorrow... Prepared this lot much later in the evening on the woodstove.

A bit of a hectic morning as Gill took the boys to school and got waylaid by several other mums, came back quite late and whilst was getting on just doing what she normally does, remembered that she had a dental appointment at 10! So she rang for a taxi, I rang her dentist apologising for her probably being late, and she went. Amazingly, she was only 3 mins late and as they were running later still, it didn't matter.

I did things in the house, blanched grapes, washed up. Put grapes in non-stick tin to dry them, chopped up about 15 waste apples and put those to dry on a cake rack.

Had the soup for tea.