Human Lifestyle

A good day... spent from about 9am til lunchtime finalising some paperwork with Gill, and then I phoned in the information to the relevant authorities. This was a big relief.

During the afternoon I sorted out the front garden, tidying, chainsawing up some logs, splitting them. Tara popped in briefly to pick up some muesli base; we got 20kg from Suma last time and usually I only get 10, so I've spare, and when she asked last week about the next Suma order, I said we'd just had one, but her request of a bit of muesli base could be granted.

Once she had been and gone, I went down the garden to continue with the pond area, which I'm really enjoying doing. I put a load of ground elder roots in the centre of the newly vacated 'New Zealand bin' made of pallets raised up off the ground, with a load of vegetation and twigs under them (and some fruit and veg 'resources') and will put a load more on top... the roots will cook!

I came in at 6ish to have tea, a pile of pasta with the rems of tomato soup on, with home grown courgette and our first tomatoes too! Then it was off out to go to the St Nicks AGM.

This slowly got started, after a glass of elderflower wine and some cakes, with a presentation from Lizzie Freeman about Edible York. Lizzie explained how this group had formed following the York in Transition 'Food Open Space' meeting and a visit to the Incredible Edible Todmorden conference. She told us that this local group was part of a much wider move to grow food locally, including Grow Sheffield, Edible Middlesborough and Shoreditch Vacant Lots. We were told about the two current EY projects, Abundance and GardenAble.

For me, Edible York is a very exciting project... and I'm delighted to have donated 30 sacks of compost to the Paragon St raised beds. There are quite a few future sites, including perhaps a big area in the Museum Gardens and, if lucky, a raised bed near the Theatre Royal.

After a break, the AGM proper started. Gail chaired and after her intro, introduced Catherine from York Rotters, Jonathan the new Volunteer Co-ordinator, Rachel the Schools Education Co-ordinator, Tom who's in charge of the recycling collections, and finally Ivana the Centre Manager. There were presentations from all of these people. Ivana told us about the most recent award, given yesterday, the 'Green Pennant', which St Nicks has earned for it's high quality green space.

Then there were the simple elections of the Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary and Treasurer (Tina Funnell is the new Chair, the Treasurer post is now vacant.... anybody want to volunteer? If so, contact St Nicks!) and the Management Group were all voted in too. Several people were leaving their voluntary positions and got thanked.

I didn't hang around to chat once it had finished; I put a small donation in the perspex-fronted compost bin and cycled off towards the University, where a tree has been taken down and the logs left for people to pick them up. Goody!

Home after 10.30pm, and later, I lit the stove to get rid of some of the assorted paper and card etc, and to get some hot water for a late night wash up.

Another late night, went to bed at 3 (whoops) and then lay awake for at least an hour, with absolutely no reason whatsoever this time. But I did drop off eventually.

Was woken at 8 by loud refusals to go to school, so I sleepily and passively talked to the refusnik and then hung around til he got out of the door. I am such a sight in the morning, so dopey and nonthreatening, this seems to work.

When I'm awake, I generally cannot go back to sleep, so I got up and by 10am was dressed and heading down the garden, to sort out the slightly nightmarish situation with my voluntary compostables collection. I finished the cleaning out of the pallet bin, which is perched on 3 horizontal pallets and lined with metal mesh, both these to reduce access by rats. I then put a load of shredded hedge (remember last year, the huge hedge removal? Well, the sacks of shredded twigs have just sat quietly awaiting today!) in the base, and then alternate layers of rotting veg and past-it fruit with shredded pine tree, hedge and other garden material such as artichoke stalks. I must have put on about 20 brewing bin's worth before I came in for lunch at 1.30.

I had a good afternoon with the chainsaw and splitting maul, and re-started the processing of the fruit logs I got from John Bibby last year. I started a new stack in the front of the house, this is green wood and it will take a year or two to dry. I stack it in a particular way: raised up off the ground on bricks and long parallel lengths of wood, to keep the logs out of the wet, and with the bark, if any, uppermost, as this sheds the rain slightly better than the cut surfaces. Also, really important, not touching the wall of the house, as this would possibly allow moisture into the walls and I like the airflow to get to all sides of the logs. I generally don't cover them up, as I don't mind them being rained on as I don't believe it stops the wood drying out. I only have one covered woodstore.

Tea was parsnips and potatoes with a cheese and home-made baked bean toastie... the last of the home made baked beans, thank goodness. I was getting a bit bored of them!

At about 740 I got my bike and headed off to Stonegate and the Car-Free Cities Conference planning meeting. I'm not a core organiser but I am playing a role and have a handful of people to contact and things to do. My dynamo was playing up and after the meeting I tried to fix it but seemingly made it worse. I'll ring Cycle Heaven in the morning and ask for help.

A peaceful evening at home followed, watched an interesting TV programme on diarists, which I enjoyed as I've written a daily diary for over 20 years... until I started writing this blog which I find even more satisfying, and have just about managed to post daily since I started.

Got up early and got outside to split and stack three big logs I found and brought back last night on a nocturnal sortie! I also did a bit more pruning of the house-height pine tree which is too close to our house and our neighbour wants removed... and we'll be happy too as it cuts a lot of light from our front room. I'm not taking it out all in one go, as the soil will swell and damage our foundations, so I'm removing branches bit by bit, over a couple of years, and later this year I'll take the rest of it out.

So an active morning, followed by a stint of doing emails which was interesting as I engaged in some dialogue with one of the people behind we love the earth centre, about someone on the email contact list who is unhappy about the involvement of RTTG, and has proposed an anarchist 'solution' or response, and has been emailing aggressive rants to others on the list. Several people have asked for their details to be removed from the list because of this person, and I was worried that 'we love the earth centre' was being damaged.

Later in the day I had a good phone conversation with Mike from RTTG, which he said does not yet have any partners for their Earth Centre redevelopment, and that RTTG is a voluntary group with just 3 people at it's centre. Whether he means unpaid (which is what I understand by the word 'voluntary') is something I'll have to check! But what I did ascertain was that half a dozen people involved with WLTEC including myself, are invited to the first open day, where RTTG want to gather ideas for the future of the site. Should be an interesting day!

I also went to see my friend Debbie, as when I got home yesterday, she had given Gill a message about her friend Debbie F, who has died from cirrhosis of the liver; she was an alcoholic. Very sad. I knew Debbie F a bit, and she liked me apparently, but I didn't have time or energy to get to know her better or become a real friend. And as she was often drunk, that put me off trying to be a better friend or try to help. Her problems were just too deep. Anyway, sad to hear the news, and I spent an hour with my friend hearing about the fun times they got up to. I expect I'll attend the funeral next week.

At tea time I shredded the pine tree limbs which were small enough to go into my Mountfield quiet shredder and put the bigger branches in a pile for chopping up and drying.

I managed to get onto the tax website and found that they have to send me a new password in the post. What a palaver!

I went to Bryony's 'leaving drinks' do at the Yorkshire Terrier on Stonegate, and on the way there, met my old partner I lived with for 10 years, and we had a brief but friendly chat. I was really glad to get her email address, as several people from our past have asked me how she is and all I could say was 'she's in York and whenever I see her, she seems OK, but I have no contact details'. But now I'm going to be able to email people's details to her so they can reconnect. I didn't stay at the leaving do for long, as I'd promised Gill I'd get back to assist with the bedtime stuff.

Played a bit of Scrabble in the evening and chatted to Ali on facebook instant messaging. A peaceful evening.

Well a dreadful-pre school time. Even I cannot believe the difficulty getting people motivated to go.

Gill eventually left with our youngest but they met others returning from school as many of the teachers hadn't got in, so although the school isn't officially closed, they were saying to people to go home if they wanted.

So Gill and our now happy boy went to play in the garden for a bit.

I did our monthly Carbon Account stats... gas and electricity meters, and when my graph came up with the new data, I was pleased to see that my carbon footprint, just using the simple home energy and travel stuff that they use, is 0.43 tonnes over the past year. This doesn't take into account my public transport use, food or other things I buy, not that I buy very much..., but it is still low. It is less than a 10th of the UK average of 5 tonnes using this calculator.

So, snow is the big news today... it didn't stop me cycling down to Country Fresh to get vegetables... and a warning, the cold weather will mean that some veg will go up in price and become scarcer. For instance, the local cauliflowers and carrots are now impossible to harvest, and as Country Fresh normally buys in local veg, they will have to buy ones in from elsewhere, making them more expensive. Richard has had another composter taking some unsold veg/fruit,which is fine by me as my trailer has developed a puncture and is out of action. But neither the snow or lack of trailer stopped me getting compostables from Freshways, and I popped into the Co-op for cereals and soya milk too.

I even spent a short while splitting logs.

Gill made a stew for tea, which we had with granary rolls. Simple and delicious. We had Christmas pudding and ice cream afterwards. I then went out on my bike again to visit a freecycler a mile or more away to pick up and unwanted diabolo and a travel Scrabble. I don't find cycling in snow and ice at all difficult. Just a bit cold.

Later, when all was quiet, I did various admin jobs such as some York in Transition stuff, York Green Festival stuff and even some prep for paying my tax!

This is the sponge sitting on a potato sack, the top side.

This is the underside... note a partially rotted tomato skin and grape twigs.

This is the same organism in my hand, to show scale.

So, what is it? Well I believe this is a 'slime mold' which is fairly closely related to fungi, but it's different. It has a really interesting life cycle. It starts as a spore, which germinates and becomes a single celled organism, maybe similar to a bacterium or amoeba. It is motile, ie it can move around. Then, due to some environmental cue, these single celled organisms club together in groups, and start to behave like a multicellular organism, somewhat like a slug. Some cells become the foot, some the front end, etc. They don't develop a mouth or gut though. What happens next is that it settles and starts to grow into what looks more like a fungus, with surfaces or specific parts where sexual reproduction takes place, releasing spores like a fungus. These disperse and become the next generation. So, unless I'm told something different, this is what I think this thing is. Apologies for the poor quality of the photos, Gill's camera isn't designed for close-ups.

I had a quiet evening, watched some TV with the children and prepared a load of bananas and melon for drying. Enjoyed the 3D films on Channel 4.