off on hols…

The usual mad rush before holiday, trying to get everything sorted. Add to the mix that she who knits and the daughter have been ill in the last week, and I am looking forward to sitting on that train at 10:30 when there’s nothing else to do but travel. (And there are no expected engineering works, either :)

This holiday is to Strasbourg by train. Here’s how I explained the outward journey to the daughter:

outward journey to Strasbourg

She who knits thinks that’s a great picture, but I’m skeptical. In my day job I’ve the priviledge to have come across the Edinburgh Development Group and David Sibbert at TED.

Here’s an interesting article on Diavid Sibbert’s blog, linking to a 1971 piece from Alan Watts. I’m amazed at how pertinent it is today.

The Knock at Crieff

The Knock is a small hill to climb at 278 metres, made smaller by starting at Crieff Hydro Hotel halfway up its side. It’s quite steep.

The hill is covered with lovely mixed woodland. There’s lots of beech, birch and oak; some pine and larch; rowan on the upper slopes with bright red berries; elder lower down; and a rather windswept apple tree near the summit, which probably sprung from a discarded apple core. There’s not many young trees on the hill, and I saw some introduced juniper just down from the summit. The grandest tree I saw was a fantastic beech, broad and eminently climable judging by the graffitti high up on the trunk.

About 100 metres from the summit, the slope levels off and the mixed woodland, bracken and grasses are abruptly replaced by moorland: heather covers the ground, broom and small birches are dominant. This gives a good introduction to the view from the top, North past the Highland boundary fault and into rugged country. To the West are more highlands, but to the South lies the fertile Strathearn Valley.

On Saturday the sun shone over Strathearn and 15 miles away the windfarm on the Ochils was turning at quite a pace. These interventions in the landscape are, to my mind, no more intrusive than the fields and villages. Looking from the summit, I could see straight lines of trees all across the valley marking field boundaries from way back. But these fields are relatively new, and would have been viewed as intrusive to the drovers moving South from Crieff in the 18th century. I think there has to be a recognition that no land in Britain is untouched, and one only has to scratch the surface of an idyllic scene to find human intervention, change and displacement.

Benchonzie and Comrie darkened and light rain came in from the North, but nothing that penetrated the woodland canopy on my walk back to the hotel.

The visitscotland website has a good write-up of the walk

google maps, centred on The Knock

Shandon Local Food Group Bring and share

shandon local food bring and share, 22 August

The bring and share food event is today. It’s going to be a busy day as I’ve still got some shopping and baking to do and the Midmar allotments have their open day this afternoon.

Scotmid have been very generous and sent a £25 voucher to help provision the event.

scotmid voucher and shopping list

North Kelvin Meadow Campaign taken to court

At the end of 2008, volunteers began to transform a derelict playing field into an inspiring green space, including a meadow, woodland, a community orchard and allotments. Now, Glasgow City Council is taking the chair and treasurer of the Campaign to court to stop them

North Kelvin Meadow Campaign website

Petition to support the campaign

The red wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

My Dad introduced me to this poem, which I found on the minstrels website

Think global, act local (food)

First, I submitted a response to the now-closed BBSRC (biotechnology and biological sciences research council) consultation on Food Security, and then the Herald notes that Scotland could be hit by food shortages. The latter article links to Mapping and analysis of the resilience of the food supply chain in Scotland. As an advocate of local food, a fan of the transition movement and a blogger, how could I not respond to this? But, you know, I have a day job and an allotment to maintain…

The consultation was hard work. Obviously they were interested in research that was applicable to industrial agriculture and technofixes, but the language is quite neutral. It took me some time to unpick the relatively-anodyne-but-paradoxically-frightening statements and argue against their view that bigger is, if not better, at least easier to study. Here is the BBSRC page on Food Security

First impressions of the latter report are mixed. There’s a big piece of work to look at their list of disruptive events, and see how different the vulnerabilities of local food groups and foodzoning are compared with the standard, just-in-time retail food chain. I hope, of course, that the path we’re taking will prove more resilient. The anecdotal finding that remote and island communities routinely hold greater supplies of food at home, thus mitigating this vulnerability to a limited extent is positive. However, the second most critical vulnerability (after pandemic) is land contamination, and so shorter and more localised supply chains may be completely trashed. I guess the challenge is to maintain diversity whilst also shortening supply chains.

City gardening photos

Caracas embraces city gardening

Two good photos from ‘Wildlife photographer of the year’ 2008

I’ve built a raised bed that’s in quite a lot of shade. Not the best place to put it, but it does mark the boundary of my plot. I can’t put lavander in there, nor rosemary, so I was considering some wild flowers or something for the bees. Ferns would probably work too but the blurb says they’re quite weedy and therefore would get me into trouble with the neighbours.

Also: a stunning photo of a polar bear at sunrise.

I didn’t think it would turn out this way…

Down the allotment with the daughter in the morning, and then distributed some of the surplus rocket to two victims friends. From noon: A long cycle ride with the girl on the bike seat. This evening, I cycled around Dalry. In one pannier, a 1 terabyte external harddrive; in the other, takeout sushi.

Phoenix centre garden cleanup

Had a very productive morning in the playgroup garden, assisted by Stephen and Gavin. Perhaps assisted is the wrong word for it: they did the graft and I faffed around with habitat piles, rakes and compost heaps. All the nettles are now gone and there’s a decent view from the kitchen window, so I think there’s more scope for the kids to get outside during the playgroup sessions.

View from the kitchen before the cleanup

View from the kitchen, after the morning's work

Plenty much vegetation outside the window

much clearer view of the window after our efforts

A respectably-sized compost heap

For the record, it took three of us 2 hours to

• prune the trees outside the kitchen
• pull the ivy off the kitchen wall
• cut back all the weeds around the edge of the garden
• attempted to discourage people climbing over the fence by piling prunings across an ad hoc path
• found a Peppa Pig football and 2 tennis balls
• built a compost heap