previous photo bloggings :: photoblog

Conker Seedling
This month I've finally got back out into the front garden to start its preparation for a second growing season. Last year was the experimental field trial and this coming year I'm having a go at an allotment theme - to make it more manageable and hopefully more productive. Despite last years development and growing success, the soil is still in poor condition, though not bad considering it was just compacted gravel only a year ago. So to improve the soil I've taken to pottering down the road to the local playing field and scooping up trampled leaves from the pavement. These are nicely broken down into nearly soil and I've dug about 12 wheel barrow-fulls in. It's really helped loosen the soil and I hope will improve the growing conditions. While scooping up leaves from under the horse chestnut I found a conker seed which looked to be throwing out a root. I took it in and planted it and now I have a conker tree seedling growing in my bedroom. While re-potting it i took the opportunity to take some photos while it was exposed, roots and all.

first shoot

exposed ready for the photo shoot

ooh! give me some more leaves

yeah, baby, that's it

and I'm spent.
[28-02-10]

Ulaanbatar - Day Trip
I was just sending a the photo of my brother and I to my Godfather and though I should post some here. These photos were taken on our day off on our Trans-Mongolian railway trip to Beijing. We arrived on the train in the morning and went straight off to the Terelj National Park where we climbed Turtle Rock, eat Mongolian food and took a horse ride to visit a local family living in a Ger.

UB in the distance

Stunning 'Rohanian' landscape

Blue is the prayer flag colour of Mongolia

Chris and I on our horses/ponies
[22-12-09]

Kitchener Community Harvest Meal
This year, with the success of the new vegetable gardens (both the raised bed and the front garden-field project) we decided to have a harvest celebration meal. It also doubled as a good bye to Emery, who was leaving the next day to return to America (weep!), and myself, as I was leaving for my Trans-Siberian odyssey the next day as well.

It was a tremendous meal with six dishes entirely prepared from the garden (excluding the pancake flour - next year wheat!), two rice options (one with garden veg) and chilly con-carne with some garden bits. There were (I think) eleven of us in all who joined and what a lovely celebration it was, staying up till gone 3am chatting.

Some gathered folks (Emery, Ying and Suyeon)

Garden Potatoes in sweet sesame saue

Korean pancakes with garden greens

Green beans Ying's Chinese style

Boiled Brittish greens

Con-carne and non-carne

Tomatoe an spinach salad

Black grapes from Château Kim
[02-10-09]

Picasa Mac Working
I re-installed my Mac OSX operating system to try and solve my power issue. It didn't work, but on the up side when I re-installed Picasa I was relieved to find it now working again. Can't think what had happened to make it fail, but I'm thankful to have it back again. This means I can finally get on with having a look at and sorting through the photos from my recent over-land family adventure to Shanghai. Here is one sample photo from a brief stop along the Trans-Siberian Railway.

At each station we had between 10 and 30 minutes to stretch our legs
[30-11-09]