Sunlight and geekiness

Belis

If not quite the uninterrupted sun that, until the early hours of the morning, the BBC had been consistently forecasting for several days, but nonetheless, Monday turned out to be the best bank holiday in ... well, for quite some time.

And one nurses a hope that the weather itself realises just how much we need a proper, sustained period of good weather.

Windows were pushed open even before people had seriously decanted themselves from slumber; wood creaking and spraying around the accumulated dust and grime of some eight months of being closed against the gloom and damp and cold.

Sunday had seen a bout of serious tidying in the garden, with bedding plants packed in around the lemon tree, whose surrounding soil, naked against the forgotten heat, was drying out too quickly.

Ever-reliable violas, purple with a yellow face; sweet William, yet to flower, and belis, in delicate strawberry and cream garb.

The tidying produced a number of small snails, all instantly crushed and disposed of. The campaign starts early this year and with some knowledge to begin this struggle.

Dying tulip.

Frankly, much of the rest of the weekend has been spent in sitting outside, writing. Which is partly what a garden should be for.

And yesterday, The Other Half cooked springbok steaks and boervors over a fire, to be served simply with a bread roll and good mustard.

The first braai of the year was consumed with relish. Otto rushed back through the gate the moment it was ready: she may have a smaller appetite than the other cats, but her ears are perfectly attuned to the sound of food being served and what she lacks in appetite, she more than makes up for in the gourmand stakes.

All three of the cats relished a day when they could potter around, in and out of the flat as they pleased, for the best part of eight hours.

Belis.

If you get your hands on any springbok, then like deer, it’s very lean and needs handling with a little care.

The Other Half rubbed olive oil into these and left them between plates, at room temperature, for some time before cooking.

And then, as always, you don’t cook over actual flames, thus reducing the chances of the Great British Uncooked Sausage Syndrome.

It’s actually difficult to get your head around just how quickly the weather has changed.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the nights were still dipping close to or below freezing, and bed was a place to snuggle down into.

Now, as if somehow we’ve had the whole of a conventional spring wedged into that intervening two or three weeks, the temperatures are well up and, at night, it’s almost a question of throwing back the covers to keep from getting over hot.

Violas.

Has there really ever been a winter-spring like it?

And almost as suddenly, everything is in – or coming into – flower and leaf.

One week out of the country and the silver birches in the carpark were suddenly green – and even the planes, always late to turn green, are now close to it.

And even the dying flowers have their own beauty – something that I tried to capture in a brief photographic safari around the garden.

In such conditions, surely spring cleaning is inevitable?

Purple.

I did some – well, sort of: assuming you can call attempting to tidy my iPod and iTunes ‘tidying’ and don't expect something more akin to Mole's efforts in Wind in the Willows.

It was mostly a question of trying to impose some order onto the rather grotty new version, which seems determined to create chaos, particularly in my large (and growing) classical music section.

This, geeky as it sounds, also brought about my ranting moment of the weekend, as I tried to change details and import cover art, which the present system seems remarkably reluctant to do all by itself.

And when you’re scrolling through an iPod, having cover art is a nice, helpful way of identifying what you have and what you want.

And, oh goodness – more of it this evening.

Okay, it's not just the software developers' problem – it is quite astonishing just how many albums appear to have a choice of four or more lots of data when you're importing them.

Then, of course, there is no consistency in the basic labels are arranged: for instance, some stuff comes in as R Strauss, while others come in as Strauss (R). But this rather screws with any hopes of an ordered list.

The solution, then, is to change the data, but the new version of iTines seems intent on making it more difficult to find and then fully highlight the required album. And this is a long-term project to digitise and organise the whole of a rather large collection.

Technology – wonderful when it works, and a complete pain in the proverbial when you find yourself struggling with it!

Planning for growth

Ready for an afternoon's serious planning.

‘Take time to plan properly’ must have been one of the most important lessons that my teachers ever managed to drum into my head.

It was, of course, meant most particularly of exams, but its application is hardly limited.

That doesn’t mean I’m always very good at doing it, but today, it was thoroughly applied to the garden.

Early on a blustery afternoon, after a morning’s housework and with blue visible overhead once again, I set out to properly measure and map my little Schleswig-Holstein.

There’s much I managed to do on the patio last year – and much I have planned for this – but the expansion area, in the biggest of the three beds in the gated communal car park, represents the biggest challenge for the coming months. Even just for the planning stage.

There’s a tree in this space that I have commandeered, and which one of my neighbours did an extraordinary job of helping clear. The rest of the space is going to be for communal decking so that we can sit out together on summery evenings (if these materialise), nursing the odd bottle or glass.

My space amounts to 13’ by about six and a half foot – give or take the odd bit of an inch – with one corner off that rectangle, plus the aforementioned tree, which has its lowest branches starting at around three feet on one side.

There’s also a couple of roots that I can’t really do much about except plant around, and a stump left over from some bushes, which I hope to get rid of.

With a long tape measure, a notebook and pen, I made a reasonably detailed diagram, which was then turned into a better version that was approximately to scale.

The only place in the house where I could lay out everything I needed is the kitchen, but then again, I’m becoming increasingly fond of taking my computer in there to write while I cook.

As time passes, it becomes less and less simply a place for a few mechanical tasks.

The books in question were the Royal Horticultural Society’s Vegetables in a Small Garden, The RHS Encyclopedia of Gardening (thanks to m’friend George) and volume one of Nigel Slater’s Tender, thanks to my parents, who looked decidedly bemused by the size, the subjects and the approach.

First up was to go through my seed tin and list what I wanted to use and when it could be sown.

Next, using the RHS books, expanding that list to set down the space needed for planning a row of what I want to grow.

Then the Slater book to look at recommended varieties and finally, seed catalogues.

The first plan.

After all the lists were made, it was onto filling out detail on my map of the car park plot.

Because I’d done the measurements and made out the lists, that didn’t feel too onerous – and indeed, I seem to have more space than I realised just standing gazing at it earlier.

Now it might all sound very early to be thinking of such things – after all, the snow has hardly departed and, who knows, it may yet come back, but I only really got started very late last year and, as such, didn’t have much opportunity to come up with a proper scheme – and practice the successional sowings that would have ensured I gained much more produce from the available space.

Quite a bit of what I’m intending for the plot can start to be sown outside within the coming month, so if I want to start being able to harvest as early as possible, I have to plan and order now.

I also learned more about companion planting. Not only are nasturtiums good – and they give you salad ingredients, plus seed pods to pickle as well as vivid (edible) colour – but apparently French marigolds are worth planting too.

The smell that they give off is so strong as to mask that of vegetables, apparently, helping to keep pests away. And it’ll also add colour.

Of course, all this is wonderful, but the most dramatic change will come on the patio, where I’m planning a small greenhouse.

Just 110cm high, with three adjustable/removeable shelves, an opening slanted lid, double doors at the front and all fully glazed, it’ll  just fit – and it’ll give me a vast amount more scope.

First, because I’ll be able to grow from seed a lot more. That’s not just cheaper, it also increases options of what variety you want to try.

Second, I’ll also be able to start things off before it’s best to plant them out. That’ll mean, for instance, that I’ll be able to get chili and tomato and strawberry plants going instead of waiting to find something that appeals and is partly grown on the market.

And third, I’ll be able to grow things like mini cucumbers, which will be easier in such an environment, and possibly even winter lettuces too.

Mind, once the shopping list was complete, I suddenly realised that there was little wonder that it was so short when I hadn’t actually been through what seeds I would need to start off life with a little greenhouse.

Last year was, as plenty of seasoned commentators pointed out, a dismal one for gardeners in the UK.

In those circumstances, even though the victories may have been few, they felt momentous – and it was all about taste: the taste of the little turnips, my first strawberries, my first tomatoes; the chilis too.

The discovery of sorrel; the realisation that fresh chives are a joy; the glorious snap of runner beans cooked within minutes of picking.

I’m hooked. And this afternoon’s planning makes me more excited than ever about the gardening year ahead.

I have a camera

Last week in Bournemouth was an unusual conference from a personal, photographic perspective: given the amount of extra social media work our team was doing, I wasn’t slated for any work snapping.

That, of course, had one massive advantage: it meant that my bags were lighter, as I decided to do without an DSLR for the trip.

But it still managed to be an interesting week photographically.

First, because it offered the first official uses of a couple of pictures I’d taken properly: one was a portrait of Neville Lawrence (see below), which was ripped off in 10 seconds at best, with a crush forming around.


I like to think I captured a sense of the quiet dignity of the man.

The second was of Eleanor Smith, the UNISON president for the last year, whose term ended at the close of conference.

For that, I’d had far more time than I’m used to getting, and was fairly chuffed with the result.


When I'd originally processed it on my super duper screen at work, one colleague, walking past, had glanced and assumed that it was Michelle Obama, demanding to know how come I'd got a picture of her!


I'm very happy with the glamour of the shot – but it's not 'weak' glamour, so to speak. Eleanor is a woman who makes everything she wears look like Chanel (yet she's a grandmother, for goodness sake!) but it combines glamour and strength. There's nothing passive or submissive about this shot.


I'm really proud of it.

But away from any such ‘official’ photography I was left, for the week, with my iPhone.

As usual, I was photographing my food – I posted one result earlier this week). But there are always other things that are worth snapping too, especially when you’re away.

As I mentioned not long ago, I’ve noticed that I’ve become rather fond of photographing flowers, although it never started out as a deliberate thing – and indeed, it’s not any sort of a ‘project’ even now.

Using the iPhone with an eye on something more than a snapshot for memory’s sake is an interesting challenge.

On the one hand, the most obvious advantage is its very size and portability. I was never without it, so I was never without a camera.

On the other hand, while the inbuilt camera is remarkably good (I’m still on the third generation, having refused to upgrade because the camera is decent) there is no adjustable zoom or lighting or anything else.

If you have good light, then it can produce remarkably good pictures.

Picture framing can be a tad awkward – certainly if you’re pointing it in a direction where you’re not actually looking into the screen – meaning that ‘straight on’ doesn’t always work as you want it to.


But all in all, it’s not impossible to get interesting results with a phone camera.

There are really big questions that phone cameras raise. Indeed, I'd go further than that and say that modern communications technology as a whole has massive ramifications for society as a whole – see Leveson, for a start.


The British media, as a whole, is trying to work out what it can provide/sell to the consumer – that's us. Increasingly, it's sensation and gossip.

And local stories that, in all honesty, would not have got even near a national daily only a few years ago.


But that's the world we live in. And 'citizen journalism' is an offshoot. With real journalists either dumped or made to turn a few tweets into a story, we might come to regret that. But that's the way it is, at present, in the UK at least.


But setting that aside, there are things that you can do with a mobile phone – and they don't always have to be  snapshots for the sake of memory.


They're not works of art, but I include a couple of last week's examples for your delectation and delight. As a slight technical note – the flower photographs (taken on my phone) have had very little done with them).