I wound the bathroom blind up this morning to find a very light dusting of snow on the lawn, and settled on the leaves of the Magnolia grandiflora. After sorting out the cats' breakfast and the chickens' morning treat of porridge oats and sultanas, and defrosting their water, I refilled the bird table. The little crowd of tits, robins and finches was back within seconds, too cold and too hungry for the luxury of flitting around playing at being frightened by me.
A mixed flock of pheasants and pigeons was under the young oak, eating more of last autumn's bumper crop of acorns. There were still quite a few left, when I raked up a few more oak leaves not so very long ago, but they won't last long at this rate. I don't especially welcome pheasants into the garden, since they eat fritillaries and other flowers, but I don't grudge them acorns in this weather. The nuts make a mess of the grass anyway, or sprout like weeds when the squirrels and jays cache them in the borders, so I'm really quite grateful for something to get on and eat them. Just as long as the pheasants don't all come back for pudding in the fritillary season.
In the front garden the blackbirds have moved in en masse on the three trees of Malus 'Red Sentinel'. They always leave these until late in the winter, and as the fruit are capable of hanging on the tree for a very long time if nothing takes them, the display of small, bright red apples lasted right through January. I don't know if the birds find the fruit unpalatable, only to be eaten after finishing everything nicer, or if they find the slender branches, bowed down under the weight of fruit, uncomfortable to perch on. Whatever the reason, the 'Red Sentinel' season is always late, but has finally been declared open. I like the blackbirds, except when they eat the soft fruit or peck holes in the eating apples before they're ready to pick. I enjoy their full-throated song, and the chuck of their alarm calls. The cocks are handsome birds, plump, black and sleek, yellow of eye and of bill. The hens are softer-looking creatures. I don't begrudge them the crab apples.
It wasn't a day for working outside. The Systems Administrator announced that as it was the weekend it was time to light the fire 'up the top', so that we could have our Saturday night dinner at the dining table instead of on our laps in the study or in the kitchen. The SA gets cabin fever if confined to the study for too long, and regards eating the evening meal in the kitchen as a social failure in a way that I can't fathom. Having grown up with an Aga I've always liked kitchens, anthracite fumes and all. But it is sensible to get some warmth back into the fabric of that end of the house from time to time. By this morning the temperature in the sitting room had fallen to 11 degrees C. After putting the radiator on mid morning, and burning a fire all day (with coal as well as logs), it took until half past four in the afternoon for the first ball in the galilean thermometer on the mantelpiece to drop. This thermometer is remarkably accurate, judged against the weather station indoor sensor, and the lowest ball is calibrated at 18 degrees C. The temperature outside didn't rise above freezing all day, and I think remained at minus one or minus two, and I never switched off the greenhouse heater at all.
One of the friends I saw yesterday has simply retreated with her husband and dog to one room for the duration. They live in a larger and colder house than this one, and with the price of coal what it is aren't able or willing to keep a fire going in two rooms all day. Some do-gooding organisation suggested a couple of months back that people like us should be encouraged to move into smaller homes that we could afford to heat, freeing up our surplus space for families. Apart from the fact that we like our existing homes, and the peace, and the privacy, and our gardens, and having enough shelf space for our books, that is a really helpful suggestion and I've never have thought of it by myself. Wow. Thanks loads. Actually, other friends who live in better insulated, or smaller, or less open plan houses, or just spend three times as much as we do on heating, are sometimes worried by the idea that in winter you simply retreat from a chunk of your house. It's fine. Compared to all the people who can't afford to heat even the one room, or who live in flats so shoddy and badly built that they can never be made properly warm or dry, we have absolutely nothing to grumble about at all. It is a peculiarly English thing, a certain kind of middle class bohemiamism, to deliberately make oneself so elaborately uncomfortable. You can tell we are the sort of people who went for a week's canal holiday in a boat heated only by a coal burning stove, in October.
The cold weather and charging about doing things have made my chest worse again, and although I am very sorry that one of the friends we were due to see tonight is ill himself, it is probably just as well that we don't have to clamber into the car at about the point the snow is due to arrive and go out to supper. April might be the cruellest month, but Eliot hadn't tried living in a 60s built timber framed house in north Essex in February. Maybe if he had he'd have considered it a luxury, making it to the point where the dead land started breeding any lilacs.
Showing posts with label bird food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bird food. Show all posts
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Friday, 20 January 2012
in the kitchen
It rained again this morning, bringing our total rainfall in the past thirty six hours to over 15mm, or more than half an inch in old money. That's useful, but still not nearly enough. When I dug out the non-doing Choisya from the long bed a couple of weeks ago, I was turning up lumps of bone dry earth, once I got more than 15-20 cm below the soil surface.
I amused myself by making a bird crumble, using up a packet of butter bought before Christmas and never eaten in the overwhelming tide of food, that was beyond its sell-by date and gone rather cheesey, and some wholemeal flour bought in one of my periodic delusions that I was going to start making my own bread. Left-over pastry is recommended for the bird table, so by extension birds ought to like a fat-rich mixture of butter and brown flour. I didn't bother cooking it, just rubbed flour into the butter until it went into crumbs. The bird table this afternoon has been visited by dunnocks, great tits, long tailed tits, chaffinches, robins, and a blackbird, and the bird crumble seems to be a success. That's just as well, as there's still a whole pudding basin of the stuff in the fridge.
The cats were all in favour of spending the morning in the kitchen with me. Wet day outside, warm Aga inside, human company and Schubert's Death and the Maiden on the radio, and the sneaky chance to try and lick out the mixing bowl. What could be nicer? I evicted them before starting on the human food. There is a music society concert this evening, and although nobody has specifically asked me to make anything, I presume that there'll be wine and nibbles afterwards, so I made some cheese stars. I only finally discovered how to do these last year, after getting embroiled in the music club. A friend gives us beautiful cheese straws when we visit her, and I'd asked a few times how they were done, and only ever been told that they were very easy. I thought this must be her way of preserving her culinary secret, until I had to make them myself, and discovered that they were pretty easy. I found recipes in various books, some of which seemed to include a quite ridiculous amount of cheese, to the point of being practically pure baked cheese, and settled on the Good Housekeeping version. It is simply shortcrust pastry, made in the ratio of two parts flour to one part of fat, with half of the butter replaced by grated cheddar, and enriched with egg yolk at the rate of one egg for every 100g of flour. I roll the pastry thin, and as it was raining and I had plenty of time I cut them out in stars with a pastry cutter instead of just slicing the pastry into oblongs. They puff up as they cook, though not as much as flaky pastry, and are done in no more than seven minutes in a fairly hot oven. If they were fatter they would presumably take longer.
It seemed a pity to throw the egg whites down the sink, so I made some meringues (it was still raining). Meringues are very, very easy, so long as you can get your oven cool enough and are not in a hurry. When I was a child, my mother would drop the temperature of our coal fired Aga below its normal range, I think by stuffing a sock in a vent (but maybe she left the door open to cool it, and the sock was for something else), and cook meringues in the lower oven, which was the cooler of the two. The baking tray was lined with rice paper, which stuck in places to the meringues, but was edible and didn't taste of anything. It fascinated me that you could get edible paper. I use baking parchment, not the fancy reusable silicon sort sold by the likes of Lakeland, but the stuff like non-stick greaseproof paper, available in supermarkets. Two egg whites need 100g of caster sugar, and make you about ten normal sized meringues. Whisk the egg whites until they are stiff but not gone into lumps, then add the sugar one dessert spoon at a time, leaving 30 seconds between spoonfuls. You end up with a shiny, frothy mixture like deluxe shaving foam. Spoon it out. Cook it slowly until they are as crunchy as you want. When dried through they sound hollow when tapped. Today's lot got two and a half hours because I went out while they were cooking. If I'd wanted them sticky in the middle I'd have given them less. Our simmer oven sits at just below boiling point, which seems ideal.
And that was the morning gone, apart from firming up the arrangements to meet some friends following a quick chat at last night's lecture on beekeeping research. Its amazing how long you can keep busy with a couple of packets of butter, the tail end of a lump of cheddar, some sugar, some flour, and a couple of eggs.
I amused myself by making a bird crumble, using up a packet of butter bought before Christmas and never eaten in the overwhelming tide of food, that was beyond its sell-by date and gone rather cheesey, and some wholemeal flour bought in one of my periodic delusions that I was going to start making my own bread. Left-over pastry is recommended for the bird table, so by extension birds ought to like a fat-rich mixture of butter and brown flour. I didn't bother cooking it, just rubbed flour into the butter until it went into crumbs. The bird table this afternoon has been visited by dunnocks, great tits, long tailed tits, chaffinches, robins, and a blackbird, and the bird crumble seems to be a success. That's just as well, as there's still a whole pudding basin of the stuff in the fridge.
The cats were all in favour of spending the morning in the kitchen with me. Wet day outside, warm Aga inside, human company and Schubert's Death and the Maiden on the radio, and the sneaky chance to try and lick out the mixing bowl. What could be nicer? I evicted them before starting on the human food. There is a music society concert this evening, and although nobody has specifically asked me to make anything, I presume that there'll be wine and nibbles afterwards, so I made some cheese stars. I only finally discovered how to do these last year, after getting embroiled in the music club. A friend gives us beautiful cheese straws when we visit her, and I'd asked a few times how they were done, and only ever been told that they were very easy. I thought this must be her way of preserving her culinary secret, until I had to make them myself, and discovered that they were pretty easy. I found recipes in various books, some of which seemed to include a quite ridiculous amount of cheese, to the point of being practically pure baked cheese, and settled on the Good Housekeeping version. It is simply shortcrust pastry, made in the ratio of two parts flour to one part of fat, with half of the butter replaced by grated cheddar, and enriched with egg yolk at the rate of one egg for every 100g of flour. I roll the pastry thin, and as it was raining and I had plenty of time I cut them out in stars with a pastry cutter instead of just slicing the pastry into oblongs. They puff up as they cook, though not as much as flaky pastry, and are done in no more than seven minutes in a fairly hot oven. If they were fatter they would presumably take longer.
It seemed a pity to throw the egg whites down the sink, so I made some meringues (it was still raining). Meringues are very, very easy, so long as you can get your oven cool enough and are not in a hurry. When I was a child, my mother would drop the temperature of our coal fired Aga below its normal range, I think by stuffing a sock in a vent (but maybe she left the door open to cool it, and the sock was for something else), and cook meringues in the lower oven, which was the cooler of the two. The baking tray was lined with rice paper, which stuck in places to the meringues, but was edible and didn't taste of anything. It fascinated me that you could get edible paper. I use baking parchment, not the fancy reusable silicon sort sold by the likes of Lakeland, but the stuff like non-stick greaseproof paper, available in supermarkets. Two egg whites need 100g of caster sugar, and make you about ten normal sized meringues. Whisk the egg whites until they are stiff but not gone into lumps, then add the sugar one dessert spoon at a time, leaving 30 seconds between spoonfuls. You end up with a shiny, frothy mixture like deluxe shaving foam. Spoon it out. Cook it slowly until they are as crunchy as you want. When dried through they sound hollow when tapped. Today's lot got two and a half hours because I went out while they were cooking. If I'd wanted them sticky in the middle I'd have given them less. Our simmer oven sits at just below boiling point, which seems ideal.
And that was the morning gone, apart from firming up the arrangements to meet some friends following a quick chat at last night's lecture on beekeeping research. Its amazing how long you can keep busy with a couple of packets of butter, the tail end of a lump of cheddar, some sugar, some flour, and a couple of eggs.
Saturday, 7 January 2012
learning from experience
The birds have not eaten all of the seed bought from the farm shop. It turns out to contain what looks like wheat, and some large round seeds I can't identify but which don't seem palatable to song birds, or even starlings. I have encountered the same problem with what looked like a giant bargain bag of wild bird food I got in the feed store when I was buying layers' pellets for the chickens. The Systems Administrator bought the current lot, believing that a bag of bird food for a pound was worth trying, despite my muttered warnings about the last batch of cheap seed. Fortunately the farm shop bag is quite small, and a pound is not a costly experiment. As we agreed, you only find out by trying.
The need to find out by trying seems deeply ingrained into human nature. Tove Jansson, best known to many English readers for her Moomin stories (I still have my copies safely tucked away in the small spare bedroom) wrote for grown-ups as well, and one of her novels, The Summer Book, was serialised on R4 a while back. I liked it so much I immediately bought a copy, and the unabridged original turned out to be even better than the radio version (not always the case, as with the memoirs of Robert Graves' son, which on the radio was an entertaining account of artistic expatriate life in the Med, and in full turned out to include the entire line-up of every jazz band he ever played in). The Summer Book has also entranced everybody I've ever given a copy to, which hasn't always been the case with books I've liked and decided to share. Not much happens, mind you. A little girl and her father and grandmother spend the summer on the family holiday house on a small island. That's about it. One of the episodes which has always stuck in my mind as a universal truth is when the grandmother and little girl row over to a nearby island to introduce themselves to the new family there. The recent arrivals announce their intention of building a landing stage, and the grandmother warns them not to do so, as the winter ice will saw through the legs and destroy it. Rowing back to her own island she tells the child that they will build one, of course, because people always do.
I put out the last of the lard porridge, and put more lard in the Aga to melt to make some more. Fortunately, given I forgot to mention it, this time the SA remembered to look in the simmer oven before putting the lunch in to heat up. Look before you leap, in this house. So never throw logs into a log basket before checking there isn't a cat curled up in it, and never sit on a chair in the dark. The black cat has a tactful habit of purring if you come near him in the bottom of a basket or on a chair (black cat on black leather not the most obvious contrast), or squeaking politely if he thinks maybe you really are going to sit down. His sister, the fat tabby, likes to lie in the middle of the steps between the upper and lower sitting rooms, which can be a trap to the unwary.
Today, for the second day running, I have taken the responsible course and stayed indoors. This feels like (and is) a terrible waste of good gardening weather, but my cold has lodged firmly on my chest. I would like it to clear up as soon as possible, and have to admit that staggering around the garden in a cold wind is unlikely to help. The acid test is that I don't honestly feel up to it. I picked up the camellia pots when I topped up the bird table, and watered them, and those few minutes outside were enough to convince me that this was not the right place to be. I'd be happier if it were raining, because then I wouldn't feel I was missing out. The cold can't be too bad, then. The SA claims to only start seriously worrying about my illnesses at the point when I stop grumbling about them. I try not to take the cold personally, and remember the words of Don Marquis (an early twentieth century American poet, unaccountably overlooked nowadays) 'Men curse germs, but a germ thinks of a man only as a swamp in which he has to live'.
Addendum We watched Winter's Bone last night, one of last year's crop of films, about a seventeen year old girl from a desperately poor part of rural Missouri, searching for her father, who has skipped a court appearance for drugs offences after putting up the family house as bail. It reviewed brilliantly at the time, and Dr Kermode regarded it as his third favourite for the Oscars. It is a very, very good film at several levels, and I recommend it highly. Admittedly, it is not very cheerful (the SA said it made Fish Tank look like Bambi, but I don't think it was that much more depressing), but it was that or an indie film about an Iranian rock band.
The need to find out by trying seems deeply ingrained into human nature. Tove Jansson, best known to many English readers for her Moomin stories (I still have my copies safely tucked away in the small spare bedroom) wrote for grown-ups as well, and one of her novels, The Summer Book, was serialised on R4 a while back. I liked it so much I immediately bought a copy, and the unabridged original turned out to be even better than the radio version (not always the case, as with the memoirs of Robert Graves' son, which on the radio was an entertaining account of artistic expatriate life in the Med, and in full turned out to include the entire line-up of every jazz band he ever played in). The Summer Book has also entranced everybody I've ever given a copy to, which hasn't always been the case with books I've liked and decided to share. Not much happens, mind you. A little girl and her father and grandmother spend the summer on the family holiday house on a small island. That's about it. One of the episodes which has always stuck in my mind as a universal truth is when the grandmother and little girl row over to a nearby island to introduce themselves to the new family there. The recent arrivals announce their intention of building a landing stage, and the grandmother warns them not to do so, as the winter ice will saw through the legs and destroy it. Rowing back to her own island she tells the child that they will build one, of course, because people always do.
I put out the last of the lard porridge, and put more lard in the Aga to melt to make some more. Fortunately, given I forgot to mention it, this time the SA remembered to look in the simmer oven before putting the lunch in to heat up. Look before you leap, in this house. So never throw logs into a log basket before checking there isn't a cat curled up in it, and never sit on a chair in the dark. The black cat has a tactful habit of purring if you come near him in the bottom of a basket or on a chair (black cat on black leather not the most obvious contrast), or squeaking politely if he thinks maybe you really are going to sit down. His sister, the fat tabby, likes to lie in the middle of the steps between the upper and lower sitting rooms, which can be a trap to the unwary.
Today, for the second day running, I have taken the responsible course and stayed indoors. This feels like (and is) a terrible waste of good gardening weather, but my cold has lodged firmly on my chest. I would like it to clear up as soon as possible, and have to admit that staggering around the garden in a cold wind is unlikely to help. The acid test is that I don't honestly feel up to it. I picked up the camellia pots when I topped up the bird table, and watered them, and those few minutes outside were enough to convince me that this was not the right place to be. I'd be happier if it were raining, because then I wouldn't feel I was missing out. The cold can't be too bad, then. The SA claims to only start seriously worrying about my illnesses at the point when I stop grumbling about them. I try not to take the cold personally, and remember the words of Don Marquis (an early twentieth century American poet, unaccountably overlooked nowadays) 'Men curse germs, but a germ thinks of a man only as a swamp in which he has to live'.
Addendum We watched Winter's Bone last night, one of last year's crop of films, about a seventeen year old girl from a desperately poor part of rural Missouri, searching for her father, who has skipped a court appearance for drugs offences after putting up the family house as bail. It reviewed brilliantly at the time, and Dr Kermode regarded it as his third favourite for the Oscars. It is a very, very good film at several levels, and I recommend it highly. Admittedly, it is not very cheerful (the SA said it made Fish Tank look like Bambi, but I don't think it was that much more depressing), but it was that or an indie film about an Iranian rock band.
Sunday, 11 December 2011
birds and beasties
Now that winter is properly here, we're feeding the birds. There was a spotted woodpecker on the table a couple of days ago, tucking into the lard with porridge oats. I can't tell the difference between Greater and Lesser, but think it's fair to assume that it was whichever is the more common. They seem to have had a good year, and when it was warm enough to sit outside watching the chickens, the Systems Administrator used to see them quite regularly around the garden. The main visitors to the table are blue and great tits, robins, chaffinches, and hedge sparrows, plus a few goldfinches and on one or two occasions the long tailed tits. Last winter when it got really cold the blackbirds came, but there are still lots of berries in the wood and garden, and they don't generally bother with our offerings until they've stripped the shrubs. The coal tits are shy, and will only feed on the table if things get really tough in the wild.
The cats are keen to lick the lard with porridge oats, given half a chance, and I found the big tabby with his face in the bowl of bird food on the kitchen worktop. The first time we saw his mother, she was sitting up on a kitchen unit with her long snout in a bowl of fruit while her doting owner enquired whether she had eaten that waspie, so we knew then what to expect. Some of the larger birds would like to take a big piece of lard and porridge oats away, to eat later, but it breaks up, and I found a lump on the steps down to the conservatory, where the black cat was licking at it. I put it back on the bird table. I do not believe that lard with porridge oats is good for cats.
To try and stop the cats from gulping their food, in case that is what was making them sick, we have been doling out tins in small spoonfuls, and making them wait between courses while they work out whether they are actually still hungry. I've read accounts by people who grew up in large families of how they learnt to gulp their food, so as to be in the running for seconds before their siblings had eaten everything, and I think the same thing can happen when you have five cats. The new feeding regime is working in the sense that there haven't been any more pools of cat sick for several days, but it means that feline breakfast stretches over an hour and a half, and throughout the day whichever of us comes within reach of the food dishes is likely to be met by at least one furry accuser, staring meaningfully at the empty plates, or the door of the cat food cupboard.
There was ice on the pond yesterday morning, real ice that hadn't melted completely by the end of the day. The trouble with ice is that the grey tabby, who appears to believe that she ought to be able to walk on water and that it is only by some quirk or error that this ability has been denied to her, likes to sit in the middle of the pond when it's frozen. With ice like we had last winter this isn't an issue, as I could have sat on the pond myself if I'd wanted to (I didn't) but with thin ice who knows? When she gets an idea in her head she is the most obstinate creature I know, but I have no idea how good her judgement is as to whether ice will bear her weight, which is something under 5kg. She is now 12, desperately skinny and perpetually hungry, and we never expected her to make old bones, but though she seems to have a frail constitution she has a will of iron. It would be a pity if she drowned or froze to death falling through the ice on the pond.
As it was drizzling and cold I thought I would go and see if I could get some cheap camellia pots at one of the local garden centres, that used to be good for cheap pots. They didn't have any suitable pots, or even any space in the car park, and I had to go and park round the corner and walk up the road. What they did have was a grotto with Father Christmas and his Reindeer, with a very long queue of parents and small children trailing back from it through the shop. Poor reindeer. There seem to be more and more of these reindeer experiences about at Christmas, but I'm not sure it is a very nice experience for the reindeer, being kept in a sort of shed in a garden centre and gawped at by an endless stream of unfamiliar people.
The cats are keen to lick the lard with porridge oats, given half a chance, and I found the big tabby with his face in the bowl of bird food on the kitchen worktop. The first time we saw his mother, she was sitting up on a kitchen unit with her long snout in a bowl of fruit while her doting owner enquired whether she had eaten that waspie, so we knew then what to expect. Some of the larger birds would like to take a big piece of lard and porridge oats away, to eat later, but it breaks up, and I found a lump on the steps down to the conservatory, where the black cat was licking at it. I put it back on the bird table. I do not believe that lard with porridge oats is good for cats.
To try and stop the cats from gulping their food, in case that is what was making them sick, we have been doling out tins in small spoonfuls, and making them wait between courses while they work out whether they are actually still hungry. I've read accounts by people who grew up in large families of how they learnt to gulp their food, so as to be in the running for seconds before their siblings had eaten everything, and I think the same thing can happen when you have five cats. The new feeding regime is working in the sense that there haven't been any more pools of cat sick for several days, but it means that feline breakfast stretches over an hour and a half, and throughout the day whichever of us comes within reach of the food dishes is likely to be met by at least one furry accuser, staring meaningfully at the empty plates, or the door of the cat food cupboard.
There was ice on the pond yesterday morning, real ice that hadn't melted completely by the end of the day. The trouble with ice is that the grey tabby, who appears to believe that she ought to be able to walk on water and that it is only by some quirk or error that this ability has been denied to her, likes to sit in the middle of the pond when it's frozen. With ice like we had last winter this isn't an issue, as I could have sat on the pond myself if I'd wanted to (I didn't) but with thin ice who knows? When she gets an idea in her head she is the most obstinate creature I know, but I have no idea how good her judgement is as to whether ice will bear her weight, which is something under 5kg. She is now 12, desperately skinny and perpetually hungry, and we never expected her to make old bones, but though she seems to have a frail constitution she has a will of iron. It would be a pity if she drowned or froze to death falling through the ice on the pond.
As it was drizzling and cold I thought I would go and see if I could get some cheap camellia pots at one of the local garden centres, that used to be good for cheap pots. They didn't have any suitable pots, or even any space in the car park, and I had to go and park round the corner and walk up the road. What they did have was a grotto with Father Christmas and his Reindeer, with a very long queue of parents and small children trailing back from it through the shop. Poor reindeer. There seem to be more and more of these reindeer experiences about at Christmas, but I'm not sure it is a very nice experience for the reindeer, being kept in a sort of shed in a garden centre and gawped at by an endless stream of unfamiliar people.
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
cold winds
The wind had a chill edge today. The chickens gave up mid morning, and just went and sat in their house instead of their usual corner of the run. I feel sorry for them. It isn't very interesting being a chicken in bleak December, but there isn't much I can do about it.
I set out to make a homemade lard cake for the birds, done by melting a block of lard in the simmer oven, then pouring porridge oats into it until all the lard is soaked up. Unfortunately the first time I checked the lard it hadn't finished melting, and then I forgot all about it, and the Systems Administrator shoved the soup for lunch into the oven without looking, and molten lard slopped over the edge of the basin and on to the oven shelf, transferred itself to the bottom of the soup saucepan and so the oven hob, and dripped to the base of the cool oven. It turns out that the simmer oven shelf can be removed for cleaning. I've managed to get by without knowing that for the past five years, not being especially keen on oven cleaning and not having spilt lard on it before.
The SA filled up the peanut feeder for the first time this winter, and within a very short space of time there were fifteen tits on it and clustering around it. Even the long tailed tits came, and we haven't seen them near the bird table before all season. It was amazing how quickly word got around that there was something good to eat in that red wire cage, and that it was safe to go in. How do they know? Especially the ones that hatched this year and may never have seen peanuts before. Though birds can be cleverer than we expect. I heard on Radio 4 that members of the crow family that hide food when other birds are observing them will return later and move their stash to a new hiding place, but don't bother if they don't think they were seen hiding the food the first time. That puts their theory of mind ahead of the human nine and ten year old autistic children I heard about on Radio 4 this morning.
The heating oil arrived, and we now have a full tank, having been down to the last bar on the electronic gauge. The SA ordered the delivery more than a week ago, and we were starting to get slightly twitchy. The central heating hasn't been turned on yet, but we might now venture to run the radiator in the bedroom. Probably just that one for now, and maybe the small one in the sitting room whose valve has broken, if the SA can't work out how to turn it off. The Aga heats the kitchen and the study is heated by a log burner. Indeed, so deeply ingrained is the habit of never running the radiator in the study that it has a bookshelf in front of it with the TV on top. The oil delivery was 1925 litres and will last us a year or slightly longer. I am dismayed that we use such a lot, but the SA tells me that compared to friends also living in detached country houses our consumption is about 40% of the norm. We have put insulation into the loft space we have, all 15cm of it, and installed double glazing, and a super efficient condensing boiler, and there isn't anything else cost-effective we can do, short of deciding that cold showers are really bracing and healthy and improve your immune system. The best thing to do with this house when we trundle off to the retirement home would be to demolish it and start again. It is just a gigantic shed. There are no cavities to insulate.
Addendum One of the cats has been being sick. I had to clear up a mess from the stairs this morning, and the SA had to clear up in the hall over the weekend. This evening, just as I was browsing through the Guardian arts pages on-line, I heard cat sick noises from the hall, and found the grey tabby throwing up on the hall chair. She managed to puke into my wellington boots which had been left (bad move) in front of the chair. Sometimes my Franciscan love of animals almost deserts me.
I set out to make a homemade lard cake for the birds, done by melting a block of lard in the simmer oven, then pouring porridge oats into it until all the lard is soaked up. Unfortunately the first time I checked the lard it hadn't finished melting, and then I forgot all about it, and the Systems Administrator shoved the soup for lunch into the oven without looking, and molten lard slopped over the edge of the basin and on to the oven shelf, transferred itself to the bottom of the soup saucepan and so the oven hob, and dripped to the base of the cool oven. It turns out that the simmer oven shelf can be removed for cleaning. I've managed to get by without knowing that for the past five years, not being especially keen on oven cleaning and not having spilt lard on it before.
The SA filled up the peanut feeder for the first time this winter, and within a very short space of time there were fifteen tits on it and clustering around it. Even the long tailed tits came, and we haven't seen them near the bird table before all season. It was amazing how quickly word got around that there was something good to eat in that red wire cage, and that it was safe to go in. How do they know? Especially the ones that hatched this year and may never have seen peanuts before. Though birds can be cleverer than we expect. I heard on Radio 4 that members of the crow family that hide food when other birds are observing them will return later and move their stash to a new hiding place, but don't bother if they don't think they were seen hiding the food the first time. That puts their theory of mind ahead of the human nine and ten year old autistic children I heard about on Radio 4 this morning.
The heating oil arrived, and we now have a full tank, having been down to the last bar on the electronic gauge. The SA ordered the delivery more than a week ago, and we were starting to get slightly twitchy. The central heating hasn't been turned on yet, but we might now venture to run the radiator in the bedroom. Probably just that one for now, and maybe the small one in the sitting room whose valve has broken, if the SA can't work out how to turn it off. The Aga heats the kitchen and the study is heated by a log burner. Indeed, so deeply ingrained is the habit of never running the radiator in the study that it has a bookshelf in front of it with the TV on top. The oil delivery was 1925 litres and will last us a year or slightly longer. I am dismayed that we use such a lot, but the SA tells me that compared to friends also living in detached country houses our consumption is about 40% of the norm. We have put insulation into the loft space we have, all 15cm of it, and installed double glazing, and a super efficient condensing boiler, and there isn't anything else cost-effective we can do, short of deciding that cold showers are really bracing and healthy and improve your immune system. The best thing to do with this house when we trundle off to the retirement home would be to demolish it and start again. It is just a gigantic shed. There are no cavities to insulate.
Addendum One of the cats has been being sick. I had to clear up a mess from the stairs this morning, and the SA had to clear up in the hall over the weekend. This evening, just as I was browsing through the Guardian arts pages on-line, I heard cat sick noises from the hall, and found the grey tabby throwing up on the hall chair. She managed to puke into my wellington boots which had been left (bad move) in front of the chair. Sometimes my Franciscan love of animals almost deserts me.
Sunday, 6 November 2011
winter preparations
I went on stacking the heated tunnel today. In went Olearia, Osmanthus, and Oxydendron. Selected Prunus and Salix, Sorbaria and Tamarix, Pachysandra and Liriope followed.
The Olearia are daisy bushes, shrubby members of the vast family of Compositeae. They are jolly plants, tolerant of sea winds, though some are only so-so hardy. Olearia nummulifolia is one of the hardier, slow growing, with tiny fleshy round green leaves, almost like a succulent. The name means 'leaves like coins'. Folia is clearly something to do with leaves (foliage) and nummarius is the Latin for coin, hence numismatics, the study or collection of currency. There, you could have worked that out. Olearia x haastii is another reasonably hardy one, making a medium sized shrub with small oval leaves in a fetching shade of greenish grey. It is not such a slow grower as the first, but responds well to hard renewal pruning if it is exceeding its allotted space, or getting straggly. Olearia macrodonta has large, toothed leaves reminiscent of a grey holly, but less shiny. It is definitely less hardy than the first two, and last winter mine was cut almost to the ground. They are happy on light soil in full sun.
The Osmanthus section started with O. x burkwoodii, which has moderately small, dark green leaves and sweetly scented white flowers in late spring, and progressed to one of its parents, O. delavayi, which has smaller leaves and is a rather desperately slow grower in its early years, but makes a more elegant plant. Later came several forms of O. heterophyllus. These have prickly leaves that could be superficially mistaken for holly, and there are several variegated forms, quite showy if you like that sort of thing. Look carefully at an Osmanthus and you will see that the leaves are held in opposite pairs, unlike holly whose leaves alternate up the stem. Osmanthus heterophyllus does not develop such good architecture as a mature holly, and I would stick with the latter.
The only willow that gets the protection of the heated tunnel is Salix fargesii. This has stout mahogony twigs with, at this time of the year, large leaf buds in a beautiful shade of lipstick red. It makes a largish shrub, and I have never found the space for it, but I should love to grow it.
During one of my stints on the till I discovered a bird food catalogue. The covering letter to one of the co-owners addressed her as 'Birdcare Buyer'. I suppose that she is the Birdcare Buyer, in much the same way as she is Chief Financial Officer, Head of Human Resources, Chief Media Buyer, Catering Manager, and the Fire Officer. She really is the Fire Officer. The certificate is hanging up in the office. The catalogue cover said that it was for 'Birdcare Power Brands', and the covering letter was so OTT that I copied it out specially for use in the blog. It read as follows:
At long last...it's finally getting colder! Now's the perfect time to tempt your customers with some exciting ideas from the world's finest birdcare collection.
Available now, [product name] is one of this year's most eagerly awaited product innovations. Reflecting the new trend in premium feeding, it's a brilliant new twist on this popular product category and a guaranteed attention-grabber in store.
One of this year's most eagerly awaited product innovations? Really? Forget the new i-phone, the latest Wii, the promising new cancer drug and the solution to the Eurozone crisis. What people have been waiting for is a new moist, high calorie bird food for robins. What I want to know is, do the people that write this stuff actually believe their own hyperbole, in which case they need help, or are their tongues firmly in their cheeks? If the latter, do they believe that their customers (my employer) are idiots? There are times when I am so, so glad I don't work in marketing.
The Olearia are daisy bushes, shrubby members of the vast family of Compositeae. They are jolly plants, tolerant of sea winds, though some are only so-so hardy. Olearia nummulifolia is one of the hardier, slow growing, with tiny fleshy round green leaves, almost like a succulent. The name means 'leaves like coins'. Folia is clearly something to do with leaves (foliage) and nummarius is the Latin for coin, hence numismatics, the study or collection of currency. There, you could have worked that out. Olearia x haastii is another reasonably hardy one, making a medium sized shrub with small oval leaves in a fetching shade of greenish grey. It is not such a slow grower as the first, but responds well to hard renewal pruning if it is exceeding its allotted space, or getting straggly. Olearia macrodonta has large, toothed leaves reminiscent of a grey holly, but less shiny. It is definitely less hardy than the first two, and last winter mine was cut almost to the ground. They are happy on light soil in full sun.
The Osmanthus section started with O. x burkwoodii, which has moderately small, dark green leaves and sweetly scented white flowers in late spring, and progressed to one of its parents, O. delavayi, which has smaller leaves and is a rather desperately slow grower in its early years, but makes a more elegant plant. Later came several forms of O. heterophyllus. These have prickly leaves that could be superficially mistaken for holly, and there are several variegated forms, quite showy if you like that sort of thing. Look carefully at an Osmanthus and you will see that the leaves are held in opposite pairs, unlike holly whose leaves alternate up the stem. Osmanthus heterophyllus does not develop such good architecture as a mature holly, and I would stick with the latter.
The only willow that gets the protection of the heated tunnel is Salix fargesii. This has stout mahogony twigs with, at this time of the year, large leaf buds in a beautiful shade of lipstick red. It makes a largish shrub, and I have never found the space for it, but I should love to grow it.
During one of my stints on the till I discovered a bird food catalogue. The covering letter to one of the co-owners addressed her as 'Birdcare Buyer'. I suppose that she is the Birdcare Buyer, in much the same way as she is Chief Financial Officer, Head of Human Resources, Chief Media Buyer, Catering Manager, and the Fire Officer. She really is the Fire Officer. The certificate is hanging up in the office. The catalogue cover said that it was for 'Birdcare Power Brands', and the covering letter was so OTT that I copied it out specially for use in the blog. It read as follows:
At long last...it's finally getting colder! Now's the perfect time to tempt your customers with some exciting ideas from the world's finest birdcare collection.
Available now, [product name] is one of this year's most eagerly awaited product innovations. Reflecting the new trend in premium feeding, it's a brilliant new twist on this popular product category and a guaranteed attention-grabber in store.
One of this year's most eagerly awaited product innovations? Really? Forget the new i-phone, the latest Wii, the promising new cancer drug and the solution to the Eurozone crisis. What people have been waiting for is a new moist, high calorie bird food for robins. What I want to know is, do the people that write this stuff actually believe their own hyperbole, in which case they need help, or are their tongues firmly in their cheeks? If the latter, do they believe that their customers (my employer) are idiots? There are times when I am so, so glad I don't work in marketing.
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
day two in the plant centre
Switching on the radio in the kitchen at twenty past six this morning, I deduced from the fact that the news was covering a story about the failure of US policy to support job creating businesses, that the riots had not escalated overnight. Watching last night's live TV cover of the flames spreading through the Croydon furniture store, with never a fire engine in sight as the fire ran out of control, was quite surreal. Though for students of London history the only true novelty was the real-time aerial view. Amanda Vickery's fascinating programme of tales from the Old Bailey looked at rioting just a couple of weeks ago. The mob ye have always with ye. Human nature doesn't change that quickly, even if the young nowadays do possess more electronics than put the first man on the moon, and believe that potatoes grow on trees.
Yesterday's wind had dried things out considerably at work, and meant that we couldn't run any of the automatic irrigation overnight. There were a lot of fallen pots to pick up this morning, and only two of us working in the plant centre, and we hadn't quite finished the watering by the time the first customers arrived. Two of them very nearly got soaked when the automatics in the herbaceous section started up, but fortunately managed to skip out of the way in time. The fact that we were a lot wetter than they were also mollified them.
The gardener has been removing trees this week that have succumbed to honey fungus. This disease is a risk to any garden, and in one that has been in cultivation for over a hundred years is probably almost bound to strike somewhere. The boss is admirably philosophical about it, saying it's a pity to lose them, but it's a chance to plant new things and he'll try something fungus resistant in their place. Styrax was mentioned. Two of the casualties are good sized acers, a snakebark and a nice specimen of A. vitifolium which I always liked, but it can't be helped.
The boss has an odd habit of meeing suppliers and contractors in the back of the shop, instead of the house. Yesterday's visitor was a salesman the boss knew, who has recently moved to a new firm dealing in pet supplies including bird food. They spent most of the time actually talking about chickens, discussing breeds, auto-sexing chicks, methods of hatching eggs, and treatments for scaly leg. Today it was somebody who must be allowed to shoot muntjac on the farm, and the talk was of deer routes, where to put towers on which to watch and wait, gun in hand, the difficulties of stopping children playing on the towers, and the impracticability of shooting deer from horseback. It was all timeless and oddly soothing. Generations of Suffolk men have sat discussing poultry and hunting (though not muntjac given they were only introduced to the UK in 1925).
We were given the pet food literature to compare margins with those on bird food from our existing supplier. The new firm's leaflet didn't make it clear which prices were inc. and which ex. VAT, and when I rang them up the person who answered the phone didn't know, and by close of play nobody had rung me back. I found out the answer (or at least an answer) by calling the salesman on his mobile. The potential new supplier offers lower prices to us, and suggests lower selling prices which would give us a lower percentage margin and smaller absolute mark-up. This might or might not work to our disadvantage depending on the price elasticity of bird food.
Travelling home, the drawback of having to cross the main railway line was again brought home to me as the underpass was shut, leaving all traffic to go over the level crossing. Between trains. The queue had backed up a good mile across the marshes, and I began to wish that I hadn't not bothered to stop for petrol the previous evening, as the Skoda's indicated range was down to 55 miles. The tank and gauge seem curiously non-linear in slow traffic, and 55 miles can drop down to 20 in a lot less than 35 miles. I was caught at the top of the ramp to cross the line by the barriers going down again. Once they lifted and I switched the engine back on I revved it ostentatiously (which is unlike me) to reassure myself that it would lift me up the last few feet and over the line without stalling on the tracks.
Addendum The Systems Administrator has an idea for controlling rioters, which is to spray them with pig slurry. Not high pressure water cannon that knock people off their feet, just hoses of stinking ordure. The theory is that you exploit the Yuk factor, since once rioters and looters have slurry dripping down their faces, running around throwing missiles at the police or anything else won't seem fun, and anything you steal will be ruined, not to mention unsellable. Detection ought to be easier for the next couple of days as well. The S.A. is a fan of the Goon Show, and this idea does seem to owe something to Rice Puddings Shot from Catapults. It is almost a joke, except that it might even work.
Yesterday's wind had dried things out considerably at work, and meant that we couldn't run any of the automatic irrigation overnight. There were a lot of fallen pots to pick up this morning, and only two of us working in the plant centre, and we hadn't quite finished the watering by the time the first customers arrived. Two of them very nearly got soaked when the automatics in the herbaceous section started up, but fortunately managed to skip out of the way in time. The fact that we were a lot wetter than they were also mollified them.
The gardener has been removing trees this week that have succumbed to honey fungus. This disease is a risk to any garden, and in one that has been in cultivation for over a hundred years is probably almost bound to strike somewhere. The boss is admirably philosophical about it, saying it's a pity to lose them, but it's a chance to plant new things and he'll try something fungus resistant in their place. Styrax was mentioned. Two of the casualties are good sized acers, a snakebark and a nice specimen of A. vitifolium which I always liked, but it can't be helped.
The boss has an odd habit of meeing suppliers and contractors in the back of the shop, instead of the house. Yesterday's visitor was a salesman the boss knew, who has recently moved to a new firm dealing in pet supplies including bird food. They spent most of the time actually talking about chickens, discussing breeds, auto-sexing chicks, methods of hatching eggs, and treatments for scaly leg. Today it was somebody who must be allowed to shoot muntjac on the farm, and the talk was of deer routes, where to put towers on which to watch and wait, gun in hand, the difficulties of stopping children playing on the towers, and the impracticability of shooting deer from horseback. It was all timeless and oddly soothing. Generations of Suffolk men have sat discussing poultry and hunting (though not muntjac given they were only introduced to the UK in 1925).
We were given the pet food literature to compare margins with those on bird food from our existing supplier. The new firm's leaflet didn't make it clear which prices were inc. and which ex. VAT, and when I rang them up the person who answered the phone didn't know, and by close of play nobody had rung me back. I found out the answer (or at least an answer) by calling the salesman on his mobile. The potential new supplier offers lower prices to us, and suggests lower selling prices which would give us a lower percentage margin and smaller absolute mark-up. This might or might not work to our disadvantage depending on the price elasticity of bird food.
Travelling home, the drawback of having to cross the main railway line was again brought home to me as the underpass was shut, leaving all traffic to go over the level crossing. Between trains. The queue had backed up a good mile across the marshes, and I began to wish that I hadn't not bothered to stop for petrol the previous evening, as the Skoda's indicated range was down to 55 miles. The tank and gauge seem curiously non-linear in slow traffic, and 55 miles can drop down to 20 in a lot less than 35 miles. I was caught at the top of the ramp to cross the line by the barriers going down again. Once they lifted and I switched the engine back on I revved it ostentatiously (which is unlike me) to reassure myself that it would lift me up the last few feet and over the line without stalling on the tracks.
Addendum The Systems Administrator has an idea for controlling rioters, which is to spray them with pig slurry. Not high pressure water cannon that knock people off their feet, just hoses of stinking ordure. The theory is that you exploit the Yuk factor, since once rioters and looters have slurry dripping down their faces, running around throwing missiles at the police or anything else won't seem fun, and anything you steal will be ruined, not to mention unsellable. Detection ought to be easier for the next couple of days as well. The S.A. is a fan of the Goon Show, and this idea does seem to owe something to Rice Puddings Shot from Catapults. It is almost a joke, except that it might even work.
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