Up on the allotment, the lid had blown off my compost bin. I found it two plots over, in a tangle of brambles. It's easy to tell which one's mine, because of the fire damage. I banged it back on, securely as I could. That'll keep the rain off allotment fox's noodle.
There was some sogginess. No actual squidginess, though, so I think I'll not worry about having to do something about it. I shoved in some parsnip seeds (it's probably warm enough) though the amount of couch grass in the soil is as ever intimidating. It's been warm enough to get that started, certainly.
The peas were looking a bit cold so I gave them some sticks to slow down air around them (I've planted Meteor, to see if going early will work for peas as it does for broad beans). I was dissatisfied with the fleece/bubble wrap I tried on some early seeds (in comparison, the ones without the covers grew better) so I'm going to look at using brown waste (hard sticks of perennial plants etc.) instead. Added benefit that I can just source it from the edges of the allotment.
Back in the garden, branches had blown off the neighbour's tree, and an empty bucket had fallen over. That was about it. I'm still worried about the aerial that's on the piss, but it didn't get any worse in the storm.
I have a broader worry attached to TV aerials, though.
See, mine (I have two, plus a satellite dish out front) aren't doing a whole lot any more, signal-wise. There's a cable doing all the lifting. But the birds love them. Goldfinches sit on them and sing. Jackdaws bicker and play around the chimneys, starlings line up like commuters waiting for the 9 o'clock breeze to fly off on. They're the treetops of the skyline, and I feel uncertain at the thought of removing them. I remember my mum's account of how an entire row of council houses in view of her last place had everything shaved off the roofs, chimneys and all, and how the long bare skyline no longer saw as many birds, no longer was of as much interest. Maybe it would be good to replace them, instead, with something more tree-like, more branched, and to adapt the chimney to provide nesting space. But maybe even that would be wrong. One of the best things we can do for nature is to be reliable, and not remove habitats that are established.
I didn't do the Big Garden Birdwatch this year. There comes a point, visible in the cracks as I watch the endless documentaries on the nature channels where tourist-like scientists damage the reefs as they complain about the scientist-like tourists damaging the reefs, and cameras record and re-record it all, where even study is damage and even recording harms the recorded item, and in the words of Fal Batz, the imaginary disaffected ornithologist conjured in Peter Greenaway's A Walk Through H, a count is as good as a kill.
There was some sogginess. No actual squidginess, though, so I think I'll not worry about having to do something about it. I shoved in some parsnip seeds (it's probably warm enough) though the amount of couch grass in the soil is as ever intimidating. It's been warm enough to get that started, certainly.
The peas were looking a bit cold so I gave them some sticks to slow down air around them (I've planted Meteor, to see if going early will work for peas as it does for broad beans). I was dissatisfied with the fleece/bubble wrap I tried on some early seeds (in comparison, the ones without the covers grew better) so I'm going to look at using brown waste (hard sticks of perennial plants etc.) instead. Added benefit that I can just source it from the edges of the allotment.
Back in the garden, branches had blown off the neighbour's tree, and an empty bucket had fallen over. That was about it. I'm still worried about the aerial that's on the piss, but it didn't get any worse in the storm.
I have a broader worry attached to TV aerials, though.
See, mine (I have two, plus a satellite dish out front) aren't doing a whole lot any more, signal-wise. There's a cable doing all the lifting. But the birds love them. Goldfinches sit on them and sing. Jackdaws bicker and play around the chimneys, starlings line up like commuters waiting for the 9 o'clock breeze to fly off on. They're the treetops of the skyline, and I feel uncertain at the thought of removing them. I remember my mum's account of how an entire row of council houses in view of her last place had everything shaved off the roofs, chimneys and all, and how the long bare skyline no longer saw as many birds, no longer was of as much interest. Maybe it would be good to replace them, instead, with something more tree-like, more branched, and to adapt the chimney to provide nesting space. But maybe even that would be wrong. One of the best things we can do for nature is to be reliable, and not remove habitats that are established.
I didn't do the Big Garden Birdwatch this year. There comes a point, visible in the cracks as I watch the endless documentaries on the nature channels where tourist-like scientists damage the reefs as they complain about the scientist-like tourists damaging the reefs, and cameras record and re-record it all, where even study is damage and even recording harms the recorded item, and in the words of Fal Batz, the imaginary disaffected ornithologist conjured in Peter Greenaway's A Walk Through H, a count is as good as a kill.
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