What herbs you growing?
Uncle B bought my Summer herbs today. He keeps asking if I want anything else and I can’t think of anything.
I have oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, several kinds of mint, borage, hyssop, fennel, dill, something called winter savory, chamomile. Catnip. Growing randomly around the garden: chives, lemon balm, lemon verbena, several varieties of lavender, ground elder. Erm, nettles. Elderflowers. I’m sure I’m forgetting something.
Oh, the thing in the picture, which is called cotton lavender or lavender cotton and is related to neither cotton nor lavender. You can eat it.
What’s missing?
June 5, 2018 — 8:53 pm
Comments: 16
Infrared is magic
I’m a little late getting the surveillance cam going this year. Probably not too late to catch a hedgehog, if we have any (but, sadly, I haven’t seen any signs).
I have a little problem when I have the cameras going: I can’t look away. There’s almost never anything on them, and when there is, it’s going to be a cat, a rat, a fox or a hedgehog. But I got to stare at the pictures like Bigfoot is coming to dinner.
Would you guys mind if I use you as a note pad? It took me forever to get the camera going tonight. It’s super easy when you know, but I didn’t make notes last year. So FYI (or, really, FMI):
- Connect the camera control to the wifi router with the ethernet cable
Point Chrome to 192.168.1.130
When the dialogue pops up, fire up the IE extension
Click ‘connect all video’
I don’t always use Chrome, but it has the IE extension that lets the browser emulation Internet Explorer, which the camera software wants for some reason.
Excuse me, I have to go keep an eye out for the Squatch.
June 4, 2018 — 9:20 pm
Comments: 6
The Chicken Man, the Chicken Man
After work today, we went to see the Chicken Man. I’m sure he has a name, but I’m sure I don’t know what it is.
We bought our first two chickens from him, eight years ago, and one is still going strong. I remember I was eyeballing some baby Orpingtons (perfectly ENORMOUS chickens when they’re all growed up) and Uncle B was looking miserable about it. Thinking of his garden, and what those giant poultry bombs could do to it.
We decided to decide later. On our way out the door, we passed some pretty little chickens. Uncle B said, “what are these? They look nice.” And the chicken man said, “pff! Those are bantams. I thought you wanted chickens.”
And the rest is history.
He’s far away, he’s very expensive, but I needed some stuff and sometimes only the Chicken Man will do. Have a great weekend!
June 1, 2018 — 8:46 pm
Comments: 15
Cut!
Linocut fun.
I took a nap so deep this afternoon, I woke up thinking it was tomorrow morning. I got up, brushed fang, got dressed, let the chickens out and made a cup of coffee before I realized…the dishwasher hadn’t been loaded. And I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried, remember having supper the night before (it’s steak night! Who forgets a good steak?).
No, I had not been drinking.
It was only when I sat down at the computer, called up the clock and saw it was 8 pm that I realized my mistake. Honestly, I thought something horrible had happened to my brain. It’s almost 11 now, and I’m not sure I’m over it.
I bet I don’t sleep tonight…
May 31, 2018 — 9:54 pm
Comments: 14
Score!
Saturday we went to the first big country fair of the season, and one of our very favorites. This one features acres (literally. Probably) of dealers in old junk, prominently old tools.
This was my only buy of the day, but what a score! It was a grubby old canvas tool roll with some rusty bits I didn’t think much of. I picked it up with a pair of pliers I liked the look of, and he charged me a fiver for the lot.
Got it home to find thirteen really nice quality chisels. Rusty to be sure, but they’re cleaning up and sharpening just fine. I’m not the world’s greatest sharpener (and curved chisels aren’t the easiest thing in the world to sharpen), but I’m getting there.
The four little ones on the left are all done. You can see there’s some pitting, but a bit of inner bevel at the edge takes care of that for practical purposes. Yeah, I’ve been burning up the “reclaiming old chisels” YouTube search.
I was actually looking for chisels. I plan to try my hand at some linoleum/wood block printing again (I was a printmaking major in art school). That’s why I need the tiny ones but I’m not in a hurry to put the effort into the larger ones. Even my sharpening skills are adequate for linoleum!
In all the acres of tools, I only found one other man selling chisels. It was a set of six, I think. Good but nothing special, in okay condition with wooden handles. Dude wanted £120 for it. Funny how these places work.
So, you reckon these things originally fit into a wooden handle?
May 30, 2018 — 8:57 pm
Comments: 11
Okay, now what?
I quit smoking twenty one years ago this month. I was a very heavy smoker, but I kicked it on the first try and never once cheated in all the years since. I tell you what, though, I’ve craved a cigarette every damn day of my miserable life since.
Years ago, I read something Jonah Goldberg wrote (it was probably just an entry in The Corner) about how he could smoke the occasional cigar and it didn’t kick off his cigarette cravings. I’ve wanted to try it ever since. I decided I was going to do it for my birthday this year.
Couldn’t find one for my birthday. I’ve asked at the tobacco counter at several supermarkets, but all they had were those little ones that are basically brown cigarettes. When we were in Waitrose Sunday (see above), I thought they were just the kind of place to have a decent cigar.
And they were. I guess. What do I know from a decent cigar? They certainly had a number of very expensive ones. This one set me back £12. I actually had a pang of horror when I got it home and realized IT’S A CUBAN CIGAR. Are those still illegal in the States? I feel very naughty.
Haven’t smoked it yet. I’m not sure I even know how. Uncle B says he’ll lock me out of the house if I smell of cigar. He’s kind of pissed off at me for buying it, to be honest.
May 29, 2018 — 8:03 pm
Comments: 33
Happy Memorial Day!
Hope you’ve had a splendid holiday weekend. Let me tell you about our Sunday.
We went to a fundraiser for a cat sanctuary. Eventually.
We got grievously lost. We’d been to this place before, but Uncle B was unsure of the last few miles and asked me to put the postcode into the satnav. Somehow, it was the wrong postcode entirely.
Forty minute trip took us two and a half hours, mostly up country lanes. Country lanes. Hereabouts, they often aren’t wide enough for two cars to pass (sometimes barely wide enough for one car to squeeze through), with thorn hedges on either side, blind bends and crazy farmers (and livestock) roaring up the other way.
The picture is from a Daily Mail article about a Polish truck driver who got stuck in a lane in Devon, but you get the general idea. This is not a fun driving experience. There is often a lot of backing up involved.
So we were late. There were no more plants at the plant stall or cakes at the cake stall and the cats were all hot, tired and sick of visitors. I got hissed at a lot.
To cheer ourselves up, we stopped at Waitrose on the way home to buy some treats. As Uncle B put our loot in the back of the car, the keys fell out of his pocket just as the hatched closed and the whole car automatically locked itself up tight.
Hour and a half for a service call. Luckily, our man managed to get it open without breaking anything.
Half an hour later, we rolled up on a little town just as a policeman put out the ROAD CLOSED sign. They do that when there’s the slightest accident: close the roads both ways. So it was back onto country lanes, but this time jammed solid with all the detoured traffic in both directions.
Magic.
We got home eventually, and luckily our Saturday and Monday were pretty awesome. We’re about to go sit in the garden, burn things and drink wine.
How was yours?
May 28, 2018 — 7:58 pm
Comments: 6
Crimes against nature
Vertical money!
Vertical.
Money.
Colorful money was bad enough. Plastic money is awful. But vertical money? Get thee behind me!
They cannot resist fiddling with the levers and buttons, can they? I mean, it’s next year and it’s Bank of Ulster, but it will be spendable throughout the UK. I might even have to handle one of these.
We’ve joined the ranks of Bermuda and Kazakhstan. I hope they’re pleased with themselves.
May 24, 2018 — 7:28 pm
Comments: 8
Zzzzz
D’awwww…you get the most adorable results when you Google Image Search “sleepy weasel.” Though most of ’em are ferrets.
Puts me in mind of the time I ran across a ferret rescue at a village fete and squeee’d, “Squee! Weasels!” and the owner replied, “Madame, that is not a weasel. It is a ferret.”
One thing I have learned living here: I probably am not going to like any statement that begins with “Madame…”
Or “Muddum…” as they say. It don’t suit me. It don’t suit me at all.
Innyhoo! Today got away from me somehow and I don’t have anything interesting report, so I’m off to bed, frightfully early. See you in the ante meridiem.
May 22, 2018 — 9:25 pm
Comments: 9
Huh. That’s weird.
Last night we watched a short film called A Welcome to Britain. It was a WWII film made for American GI’s, going over the basics of how to interact with war-weary Brits. Not too heavy-handed, mildly charming. If you’re inclined’ta, you can watch it for yourself here.
It was narrated by Burgess Meredith, who I don’t suppose was particularly famous in 1943. In the very last scene, he lounges in bed, pops a cigarette in a long cigarette holder and does a sort of Penguin impression. See picture. Uncle B and I both sat up and pointed and made “ook!” noises.
I wondered if maybe the cigarette holder was a Burgess Meredith ‘thing’, but no. IMDB says:
On the television series Batman (1966), he developed his grunting Penguin laugh out of necessity. Meredith had given up smoking some twenty-odd years earlier, but his character was required to smoke with a cigarette holder. The smoke would get caught in his throat and he would start coughing. Rather than constantly ruin takes in this matter, he developed the laugh to cover it up. “Actually, it was a pretty funny noise for a penguin to make,” said Meredith. “I sounded more like a duck.” Needless to say, Meredith gave up smoking again immediately after the series ended.
Which is weird. But it also says this, which is even weirder:
He was fascinated by the subject of non-human intelligence, particularly dolphins. He once believed that a dolphin somehow called to him for help in the middle of the night while he was staying at a friend’s home on the beach. He ran out and found the dolphin, caught in a net under a dock down the beach, although there was no way he should have been able to know it was there. He released it, saving its life. He believed it had made some sort of connection with him, perhaps telepathic, to call for help.
Something to think about on a Monday evening.
May 21, 2018 — 8:44 pm
Comments: 12