0 comment Tuesday, July 22, 2014 | admin
I had written a pithy or perhaps whingy (depending on your viewpoint) on the Hardest Hit march, but it's gone poof. I can't dig that up again, especially when disabled hate crimes have risen in my area (three people in wheelchairs have been attacks in the past two weeks in my area. I live in Wiltshire, not London, FFS).
*Deep breath*
So I'm going to talk gardens and beer; which I know isn't nearly so interesting for the disability-rights folks who come to visit. But the thing is if you're not enjoying the little bit of life you have, everything becomes hell. I need to take my time out from watching my child regress (yes, it's getting worse, his concentration is going as well as his interest in the outside world). So, I do other things to get my breath back and try desperately to get through the next bad patch.
Today, it was racking the Gnarly Wine and getting the second treatment of finings into the demijohn. I've done this once already but it's still rather cloudy. It might clear, but who knows?. Perhaps not - it may need time in the bottle for a year or two before that happens. In any event, I also managed to get the strawberry cider started - and even did this in between working on the final draft document for sending in my son's appeal for LEA tribunal. Go multi-tasking me. The Primordial Cider is now sitting beneath a towel, yeast starting to activate, and it will be a few weeks before it's ready to put into the bottle, and then a month more before it's ready to drink but I'm looking forward to it.
Also arrived in the post; my "Salsa Garden" from Rocket Gardens! I'm rather chuffed about this, as there's a great selection on offer though now as the weather has become a bit colder I wonder if I shouldn't have kept the growframes up for a bit! I have some Yellow Brandywine toms, Gardeners Delight Toms, Greek basil, three new mint plants, and a dizzying array of peppers both hot and mild. I managed to get these all potted up and watered - though the Brandywine toms are very leggy! - and as I eye the weather for the week I am considering going out and covering them all with some plastic for the night. I took the growhouses down as I felt they were superfluous but now I'm not so sure.
Everything else, however, is shooting up like mad. The spuds are growing amazingly well, and the raspberry and strawberries are setting fruit now. The loganberry is starting to bloom and the dog-roses I planted outside are the favourite stopping place of honeybees, stocking up on pollen and nectar and buzzing like anything. The roses are all getting ready to bloom and I'm stunned at all the bud formation on my flowers - the ones in the back garden are looking to be quite impressive! The front garden not so much but that's mostly due to all the dry and the fact I'm never certain they won't just get vandalised.
There are bits of the garden which have got away from me a bit - the side of the house is well overgrown and I'm going to have to take the hedge cutters to it to beat it back. The front hedge is going a bit nuts as well but I am actually trying to get it to grow a little higher so no issues there, I may give it a "short back and sides" and encourage the top to grow a bit. I haven't bothered to do anything with the snowberry this year, and the cleavers is starting to compete with the found peony, which I'm going to have to move once I can figure out where to move it to.
Still, it will give me stuff to do, and the one moment child came out of his head for a bit, he pointed out the roses were blooming. I'll be looking forward to bringing our first bouquet of flowers inside as I'm sure that will put some light in my son's eyes again. I pick salad every few days to have as lunch or tea, and grin at the latest cat exploring my huge patch of catmint. The albino blackbird comes down to strut about and flash his white feathers at rivals, and I prepare to have my first home grown fruit of the year.
I breathe in, and breathe out, paint and create, fold clothes, and just put aside the fear for a while, as we all must learn to do.
*Deep breath*
So I'm going to talk gardens and beer; which I know isn't nearly so interesting for the disability-rights folks who come to visit. But the thing is if you're not enjoying the little bit of life you have, everything becomes hell. I need to take my time out from watching my child regress (yes, it's getting worse, his concentration is going as well as his interest in the outside world). So, I do other things to get my breath back and try desperately to get through the next bad patch.
Today, it was racking the Gnarly Wine and getting the second treatment of finings into the demijohn. I've done this once already but it's still rather cloudy. It might clear, but who knows?. Perhaps not - it may need time in the bottle for a year or two before that happens. In any event, I also managed to get the strawberry cider started - and even did this in between working on the final draft document for sending in my son's appeal for LEA tribunal. Go multi-tasking me. The Primordial Cider is now sitting beneath a towel, yeast starting to activate, and it will be a few weeks before it's ready to put into the bottle, and then a month more before it's ready to drink but I'm looking forward to it.
Also arrived in the post; my "Salsa Garden" from Rocket Gardens! I'm rather chuffed about this, as there's a great selection on offer though now as the weather has become a bit colder I wonder if I shouldn't have kept the growframes up for a bit! I have some Yellow Brandywine toms, Gardeners Delight Toms, Greek basil, three new mint plants, and a dizzying array of peppers both hot and mild. I managed to get these all potted up and watered - though the Brandywine toms are very leggy! - and as I eye the weather for the week I am considering going out and covering them all with some plastic for the night. I took the growhouses down as I felt they were superfluous but now I'm not so sure.
Everything else, however, is shooting up like mad. The spuds are growing amazingly well, and the raspberry and strawberries are setting fruit now. The loganberry is starting to bloom and the dog-roses I planted outside are the favourite stopping place of honeybees, stocking up on pollen and nectar and buzzing like anything. The roses are all getting ready to bloom and I'm stunned at all the bud formation on my flowers - the ones in the back garden are looking to be quite impressive! The front garden not so much but that's mostly due to all the dry and the fact I'm never certain they won't just get vandalised.
There are bits of the garden which have got away from me a bit - the side of the house is well overgrown and I'm going to have to take the hedge cutters to it to beat it back. The front hedge is going a bit nuts as well but I am actually trying to get it to grow a little higher so no issues there, I may give it a "short back and sides" and encourage the top to grow a bit. I haven't bothered to do anything with the snowberry this year, and the cleavers is starting to compete with the found peony, which I'm going to have to move once I can figure out where to move it to.
Still, it will give me stuff to do, and the one moment child came out of his head for a bit, he pointed out the roses were blooming. I'll be looking forward to bringing our first bouquet of flowers inside as I'm sure that will put some light in my son's eyes again. I pick salad every few days to have as lunch or tea, and grin at the latest cat exploring my huge patch of catmint. The albino blackbird comes down to strut about and flash his white feathers at rivals, and I prepare to have my first home grown fruit of the year.
I breathe in, and breathe out, paint and create, fold clothes, and just put aside the fear for a while, as we all must learn to do.
Labels: Food, Garden, Good Life