Whilst New York is fitting air purifiers in every classroom, and Belgium is fitting CO2 monitors in public buildings, our wonderful government thinks rhetoric will ventilate our schools and public buildings. So my recommendation for the winter will be to buy extra layers to keep warm – bamboo t-shirts are wonderfully soft, nice woolly jumpers (we have a glut of wool in the Uk, and throw open those windows!
WEATHER
Excellent. Perhaps not usual July weather, but wet and cool. My water butts are full, I am saved an hour or two of watering and all my new plants seem to be thriving. The forecast is for a bit of heat wave later in the month so I look forward to enjoying the best of the British weather at its best, providing a little of something for everyone.
My tomatoes are nearly ready for ripening (I have picked 3 so far) but my next job is drying herbs and putting in jars, jam making, then sun dried tomatoes.
FINALLY
At last we have a policy from Labour. And a very sensible one too. “Make, sell and buy more from Britain”. makes total sense. Economically we need to reduce the debt and increasing manufacturing, especially in high tech and environmental areas would also create skilled, well paid jobs. Educationally we need to shift away from University for the sake of it to more engineering and vocational courses. That is without cutting support for the arts and media where we are already world leaders. Like. it or not, and I do not, Brexit is here – so we need to make the best of it. It is creating problems that will need ingenuity to overcome – a favourite quote of mine is from Boserup “necessity is the mother of invention”.
SHARING
In my road we all have (or had – my rewinding!) 5/6m sq front gardens which are lawns. Yet we all have a lawn mower which we use once a fortnight or longer. And then we have our power drills (used rarely) and so many other appliances like this. I would love to lend out the following pasta maker, yoghurt maker, ravioli maker, pizza stone, jam saucepan (big) and maybe even the food mixer although I do use it regularly, but many do not – and I never used to. I have offered to lend all these things, but no one takes me up? Does this make me a freak for making my own pasta and pizza and yoghurt? But we should share more!
SCHOOL ARCHITECTURE
ELDERFLOWER CORDIAL
RECIPE TIME – PESTO AND OTHER HERBS
TREES IN A BUNGALOW!
LAWNS
Why do you have a lawn? If you can answer positively and say you use it for whatever, that is fine. How many people mow a small lawn using electricity or petrol, for no other purpose than to stop the grass growing? I am not advocating concrete or even plastic grass – but what is the point?
CROWD FARMING
I have just received my second purchase from Crowd Farming Both times the deliveries have been fast and the quality excellent. Firstly clementines then olive oil. The price is ok – not the cheapest but organic olive oil for £10 ltr is not bad.