Digital detox

'Digital detox' has made it into the Oxford Dictionary, and is the term for a period of abstinance from computers and digital gadgets.  You can go on a digital detox camp, apparently, I suppose a bit like a boot camp :o)   

We are going away, and we have choosen not to take the iPad with us.  It will do us both good not to be linked to a computer for a while; I think we probably use it far more than we would like to admit to.  I know I feel a bit cut off if I can't check up on various blogs, or indeed be able to blog myself, and N reaches for the iPad to look up things all through the day.  Great for having information at your finger-tips, 24/7, but there's an inherent danger in relying on digital communication.  So for us it makes sense to have some 'down time' away from the keyboard, email and blogs.

We are going to Thassos, a little Greek island.  It's very green, very beautiful and very quiet!  Same size as our island but only about one fifth of the population.  Lovely beaches (and the swimming is safe and the water warm so we will spend a lot of time in the sea), good walking, quite a bit of history and very friendly people.  We will eat locally grown produce bought at the local shop - we don't mind mis-shapen fruit and veg, and the taste is far superior.  It's a very simple, traditional way of life and suits us well.

This is Gus, a little mouse who travels with us.   He is a well-travelled little chap and is very good at making friends in new countries.  He also has a wardrobe of clothes to reflect the places he has visited (maybe I shouldn't admit to making clothes for a six-inch toy mouse, but it's become a bit of a tradition, making Gus a new outfit if we go somewhere new), but this time, in the spirit of frugality, he is wearing a pair of shorts he had for a previous trip, a sun-visor made from a margarine tub lid, and a very nifty pair of sunglasses that N manufactured this morning from some garden wire and shiny black card.  On reflection, maybe we are taking this too far!!

I love this sling N has made to support the cucumber as it grows :)  When we return, we shall have plenty to keep us busy in the garden; we need to dig out a couple of the beds, lift and split the perennials, take cuttings and plant the brassica seedlings from the nursery.   Autumn will be upon us, and there's a lot to do.

Thanks for visiting.

Recent thriftiness

It's been lovely and sunny here for the last few days (although the temperature is dropping in the evening and it's now possible to sleep under the duvet instead of on top!), so we have been making the most of it and enjoying some lovely walks along the seafront.  There's always something to watch and look at, even if it's just the comings and goings of the various ferries across the Solent.

I've continued with a bit of dead-heading in the garden.  It's a job I really don't mind at all as it makes me get 'up close and personal' with the plants.  It also means I can spot any unwanted seedlings (the verbena bonarensis self-seeded a couple of years ago and it's been a battle of wits between us - I like to think I just about have the upper hand now) and weeds that might be taking hold.

However, there's also time for making things.  We're off on our hols at the weekend, and so far my expenditure for this has been £3, on a baseball cap to keep the sun out of my eyes.  I haven't bought any new clothes or shoes or accessories to co-ordinate with outfits, I just wear what I have.  I'm not out to make a fashion statement at all, we just want to have a quiet time together.

This is a photo of a beach wrap I bought on a trip to India several years ago.  I have another wrap in turquoise, or at least I did:

it's now a kaftan and belt, just right for covering up to and from the beach, or for breakfast on the balcony.  It was a bit of a trial and error as far as a pattern was concerned.  To begin with I folded the wrap in half, sewed side seams (leaving armholes) and across the shoulders.  This resulted in the 'pillowcase look' - not very flattering at all ;-).  I realised that some shaping was required and have just shaped under the arm (the photo shows it quite well), and straight down the side seams so I've reduced the width of the kaftan a fair bit.  The belt is made from the surplus fabric, and just gives a bit of shape.  Total cost = nothing.

N and I both enjoy reading and doing puzzles when we're travelling and on the beach, but we a bit shocked when we saw the price of puzzle-books in the newsagent.  A bit of lateral thinking, and N has come up with a solution.

A sudoku board, made from a scrap of wood found in the shed, with a bulldog clip stuck on to hold puzzles.  A couple of years ago N was given four books of sudoku for Christmas, and he enjoys testing himself with the really difficult ones.  That means the easy ones are left, but they are the ones that I prefer, so he's taken a few from each book and put them on my sudoku board, and stocked his up with the toughies.  Pencils and rubber in a little bag and we are set to keep our brains ticking over on holiday.  And the cost?  Nothing.

And finally, I cut my hair this morning.  Usually I've just given the fringe and side bits a trim and asked N to tidy up the bit at the back, but today I tackled the whole lot myself.  My hair is wavy (and past a certain length it has a tendancy to actually curl into ringlets - LOL - not a good look for the more mature lady, especially one who is decidedly grey!) but it does mean that I can get away with a not-quite-perfect cut.  Having said that, I'm really quite pleased with my effort, and getting rid of the very grey/white hair around my face does, I have to admit, make me feel better.  I have finally embraced going grey, I haven't had my hair coloured now since before last Christmas, and I haven't spent money on having it cut at all this year.  If I had had my hair cut 6 times between January and now, at a cost of £15.00 (about what I used to pay for a dry trim), that would have cost me £90.  A cut and blow dry at £25.00 would have added up to £150, and I'm not even going to think about highlights.  I don't have an income (by choice, I agree) other than a very small amount of savings interest each month, so my money must be spent wisely, and having done the sums, I can't justify spending my few pennies on something I can do myself. 

The Abbey

The Abbey bell-tower 

DH and I finally managed to have a better look around Quarr Abbey this week.  We love the place for it's peace and tranquility (and the excellent pots of tea served in the cafe) but actually knew very little of the history of the building, nor had we ever been inside.  However, it is possible to have a tour of the Abbey itself, and a very interesting talk given by one of the monks, Father Luke.  The Abbey is part of a Benedictine Monastery, of which I have very little knowledge, so it was very interesting to learn a little about St Benedict, the principles by which the monks live their lives and the history of Benedictine monks on the Island.  The present monastery has been at the present site since 1907, and the Abbey was constructed in 1912, although there was an abbey close by, founded in 1132, which was destroyed during the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII.   We also found the information about the building and design of the Abbey interesting, and seeing inside, we began to appreciate what the architect, Dom Paul Bellot,  was aspiring to.  It is built entirely from bricks, quite unusual, apparently, for such a building, and it is considered the architect's finest design.  It certainly is a lovely building inside, wonderful patterned brickwork, with arches soaring upwards to focus worshippers' thoughts on God.  The sunlight streaming in through the windows cast the most stunning light on the paved floor - it was really beautiful.

Father Luke explained the various daily services that are held in the Abbey - seven in all through the course of the day, beginning with Vigils at 05.30 and ending with Compline at 20.00.  One thing which I think resonated with us was the fact that for quite a part of the day (and night), silence is observed.  No talking or chatting.  There are others around so it is not necessarily solitude, but time to simply be quiet to reflect, pray and study the Bible, or to go about the daily business of the monastery.  N and I are quite happy to spend time in silence, reading or sewing quietly away, but I suspect many people would find the absence of some kind of noisy distraction unnerving.  It was a very interesting hour and I wouldn't mind learning a little more.

Close to the present Abbey site are the remains of the original abbey which was destroyed  - stone from the ruins has been found in a number of prominent buildings around the Island

In the garden, we pulled a good crop of carrots with plenty more still to come.  I've been continuing dead-heading the summer flowering plants, and general tidying-up.  We're mulling over plans for next year.

On the Down to Earth blog, Rhonda has challenged us again on the subject of plastic bags.  The number of plastic bags littering our roadsides, shredded in trees and hedges and floating in rivers and seas is staggering.  I try to do my bit, working on the principle than 'something is better than nothing'.  Earlier this year I made a couple of strong fabric shopping bags which hang by the front door so they are handy to grab on my way out to town.  We re-use plastic bags at the supermarket, and by having my own bags with me I can refuse any new ones offered me in shops, even though that seems to confuse some shop assistants.  

I have started to read some articles online about supermarkets' policies regarding plastic bags, and I intend to follow this up.  I have already found that not just plastic bags, but also other types of plastic film, can be recycled at some supermarkets, so I need to check out the recycling logos more carefully and start making the effort to dispose of that type of plastic at Tesco, rather than in the recycling bin at home.   

The other thing that occurred to me while reading around this subject is the increase in customers who order their grocery shopping online and have it delivered to their house.  Obviously everything is packed in single-use plastic bags.  I suppose some people might choose to unpack their shopping there and then, and hand the bags back to the delivery-driver, but I wonder, in reality, how many customers actually do that.  That's an awful lot of plastic bags being handed out.  I may need to ask some questions. 
As an update to this, I found this link, but I wonder how many customers use the 'no-bag' facility.

(Links to follow tomorrow)
Update 29/8 - finally managed to get links sorted, and updated some info on Quarr Abbey.

Preparing for autumn in the garden

After the excitement of the week end, today was a quiet, pottering sort of day.  Surprisingly for a bank holiday, it was sunny and warm, so we spent some time in the garden, looking around at jobs that will need to be done to prepare for autumn.  

The runner beans - not a successful year at all

Courgettes still flowering and producing

The brassica seedlings N successfully germinated a while back have proved popular with the bugs, and are now little more than spindly shoots devoid of leaves :(.  It's a shame as we were so pleased to have nurtured them to the seedling stage.  However, thankfully we have a Plan B, and took ourselves off to the local nursery to check out their poly tunnels.  Sure enough, we found what we were after and have put by some winter cabbage, broccoli, sprouts and kale to collect mid-September.  By that time they will have grown a little and hardened off ready for us to plant out.  We're very happy to support this little nursery, which works alongside adults with learning disabilities, and they raise many of the plants themselves.

Lots of height ...

... but no sign of a flower yet

I continue to monitor the progress of the sunflowers, which are now taller than me, but I am becoming increasingly concerned about the lack of flowers.  Lots of leaves and plenty of height, just no yellow petals!  The coreopsis, on the other hand, are just blooming away for England; they have proved to be the most reliable and honest little perennials, covered in bright gold daisy-like flowers continuously through the summer and showing no sign of stopping for some time yet.  Some of the other flowering plants are beginning to look a bit straggly, their flower-heads dying back and falling over.  I shall have to take action this week.

Coreopsis gleaming in the sun this afternoon

Several of the tomato plants have finished producing now.  We have had a good crop from all of them, and N has been using some for ratatouille to freeze.  Last year he made tomato sauce with some of the surplus, carefully removing the skins as he went; this year he's simply blitzed a load with the hand blender, skins and all, and frozen the puree in the silicone fairy-cake tray.  Once frozen, the little moulds slide out and are then bagged up to return to the freezer.  They're great with courgette and onion for a lovely accompaniment to meals:  fry diced red onion in a little margarine/butter/olive oil, add sliced courgettes and cook till beginning to caramelise.  Add a couple of tomato moulds, stir into mix and continue to cook until any liquid is gone.  Very, quick, easy and tasty.

From early this morning, we have watched a steady stream of scooters as they made their way to the ferries to leave the Island.  It seems strangely quiet now, and the delightfully distinctive and nostalgic smell and sound of 2-stroke scooter engines has gone for another year.  Another week and it will be September - autumn is just around the corner.









  

Scooter Rally . . . and a killer at the church!

For the last few days the Island has been alive with thousands of scooters, gathering from all over the country for the annual Bank Holiday weekend Scooter Rally.  Lambrettas and Vespas, many vintage and beautifully restored, buzzing around with their  very distinctive puttering 2-stroke engines and accompanying fumes and smell!  All highly nostalgic for those of a certain age - I can of course barely remember!

Yesterday we had a walk along the seafront to admire the machines, parked on every spare inch of the esplanade.  Scooters bedecked with mirrors and lights, Davy Crockett tails and flags.  There was like a big party - they're a very friendly bunch.  Fashions and music of the 60s all around.  About 6000 scooters were expected from clubs around the country, it's one of the biggest rallies of the calendar and very well supported and organised.

Last minute arrivals for the ride-out

 Today we were back again for the 'ride out', and boy, was it a spectacle!  All morning, scooterists had been gathering in a huge car park on the seafront, and at 1 o'clock, their massed ranks formed up and paraded out along the esplanade.  For 20 minutes they just kept streaming out - it was staggering to see.  The noise was almost deafening, and by the end the air was hazy with fumes. 

Ready for the off

 The roads were packed with locals and visitors watching, all enjoying the view.  We never found out the route of the 'ride out' and I'm not at all sure that many of the scooters would have actually made it up the first big hill, let alone all the way round, but for a terrific, fun and good-natured get-together, this was hard to beat.  We spotted a couple of ex-colleagues on one scooter (I nearly knocked the poor lady next to me off her feet with my excitement - oops!) but they'd passed by in a cloud of exhaust fumes before we could get a photo.  Just great, great fun.  And as I type this evening, little groups of scooters are still puttering past the flat.

Well, I thought that was quite enough excitement for one day, so we had a while in the garden, pottering and dead-heading.  Then I heard something that made me stop.  I got N to listen, too, and we both felt it could be a bird of prey.  It was a very distinctive bird cry, and I remembered hearing it a couple of days ago while walking past the church.   We can see the steeple from the flat, and with his binoculars, N could see the bird with it's catch on one of the parapets.  Never ones to miss out on the possibility of a good picture, we headed off down the road, and were rewarded with wonderful (if slightly gory) views of the bird with it's kill.  The people waiting at the bus-stop gave us a few funny looks, but soon they were craning their necks skyward, too.  And the bird of prey?  We are as certain as we can be that it was a peregrine.  And there wasn't just one, but three.  We were just amazed and thrilled to view such a beautiful bird.  Peregrines take their prey in flight, and the pigeon that it was tearing to pieces didn't stand a chance against such a powerful killing machine.  We watched for a while until the peregrine flew off, taking it's dinner with it in it's huge talons.

We are adding peregrine to our list - after all, we were in our garden when we heard it!

All in all, a pretty good day.

(And I must just mention the small matter of the Ashes!!  If you have never listened to cricket commentary on the radio, you are missing an absolute treat.  Great entertainment.)

Just to say thanks

I was all set to blog about the scooter rally today, but that can now wait until tomorrow.  Today I want to say 'thankyou' to everyone who has visited my blog over the past couple of days.   I have been gobsmacked, absolutely stunned by the impact of having my blog linked on Rhonda's Down to Earth blog.  My page views have doubled in 24 hours, and are still increasing.  Lovely readers have left comments!  

Why has this made me so ridiculously happy?

I started this blog at the beginning of the year, partly to see if I could fathom out Blogger, and actually create a blog myself (and that is still very much 'work in progress', as those of you who have far more knowledge of bloggy things will have noticed ;-)), and partly as a diary/journal of our daily potterings.  For me, it has been interesting looking back to see how our garden has grown, quite literally, and seeing the seasons change.  I have enjoyed sitting down most evenings to record our days, taking photos to look back on, and sometimes just jotting down my thoughts.  The only person I told was DH - I was far too timid and cautious to let anyone else know.  

I have gradually, and somewhat tentatively, ventured out into the big wide blogosphere, and discovered so many other people busy blogging away.  It's addictive, isn't it, this blogging lark?  I could spend all day reading about lives in other countries, so different from my own.  Those differences are interesting, yet maybe there are also similarities than link us together, each of us recording, musing and sharing in our own small ways.  I have been amazed by the wealth of wonderful writing I have found, and been awed by beautiful photographs.  But mostly I feel a sense of community through the keyboards of so many others around the world.

Have a great day!

A new bird for the book

We were very excited this morning to see a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker on the garden fence.  It's the first time we've seen one in the garden, although we do see them from time to time on our walks through the local woods (and we hear woodpeckers 'drilling' in tree trunks, too).  Unfortunately we were so absorbed in watching it, neither of us managed to get a camera in hand quickly enough, so no photo.  It had a distinctive red cap, and black and white barred back feathers.  That brings the total number of different birds species we've seen in the garden this year to 27.

We had a walk along the seafront after dinner, making the most of the evening sun.  It was a really low tide, almost to the end of the pier (which is over 680 metres long - a long way to run if you're late for a ferry!!).

Mainland in the distance

The pier, seemingly high and dry.  The little train travels along the one line between Ryde Pier Head and Shanklin, and the coaches are old stock from London Underground.

I've noticed the days are creeping in, little by little.  This past week or so, we've had to put a light on if we've been reading later than about 8.30pm, and the sun isn't quite so high in the sky as it was.  I think this is the first year either of us has had time to really notice the subtle changes in the seasons - when we were at work we were so busy rushing around, there never seemed to be any time to register much.  Now we have time to note the position of the sunsets through the year; to follow the birds nesting and see the fledglings grow; to watch plants grow from seed.  I think we needed to slow down to appreciate these things, and I'm glad we have.

The Island is getting ready for the annual Scooter Rally this weekend - already there are many scooters coming over from the mainland, and on Saturday and Sunday they will all gather on the seafront.  It's quite a spectacle, but just a little noisy!  I shall be there with my camera.

(And if any one visits via Rhonda's Down to Earth blog - welcome, and thanks for dropping by :))