Easy green actions and articles.

Here are a few easy online actions and interesting articles to make the world a better, greener, happier, place, 

Sign Friends of the Earth's petition, asking the government to do all it can to stop climate change before it's too late.

'Nature is the ultimate carbon capture and storage machine. The fastest and cheapest way for Britain to suck carbon out the air would be to double tree cover, restore our peatlands and wetlands, restore fish populations in the North Sea to their historic levels, and end the chemical warfare in the countryside that has led to the catastrophic collapse of insect and bird populations'

Let's all plant some more trees, ok?

Do you have some old (gently worn) bras to get rid of?  Send them to Smalls for All so they can be given to women in Africa who would otherwise have to go without.

Check out Greenpeace's plastic league table to see where your favourite supermarket ranks.

Some great, not-scary articles from Positive News this month - like Britain's endangered wildlife has made a come back, European agriculture could go green and still feed the whole continent, and a UK wide plastic bread bag recycling scheme has been launched. 

'Most of all, I wish Marie Kondo would just say stop! Stop buying all this stuff. The only solution to our waste crisis is to halt the consumerism clogging our landfills, polluting our oceans and overcrowding our homes. Because what would really spark joy would be a world that isn’t overflowing with garbage.'

Do you know what would spark more joy?  Buying less crap. Indeed. 

On the same note, check out Lindsay's post - 6 places to declutter to that aren't the charity shop.

The EU has voted to ban all single use plastics by 2021!

Every Wednesday this amazing group of women stand in protest of the fracking taking place in Lancashire.  Earthquakes have been reported near fracking sites in the UK, so sign this petition to show your support for a fracking ban.  

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Diary of a permaculture (ish) garden, February and March 2019.

Hello!  The garden is waking up (and so am I, I always want to hibernate through the winter!).  There's some blossom already, beautiful pink almond blossom and white on the new cherry plum trees.

The crocus have been and gone.

In the front garden I've planted a couple of patches of zingy yellow daffodils.  Some by the new cherry tree just as you come onto the drive, a pretty little springy area with some snowdrops, muscari, daffs and a hellebore my mum bought me.  The other in the corner by the fence, there's a new rose (a David Austen rose called 'generous gardener' that was my lovely valentines present) and some daffodils at the front of the bed.  It's always surprising how a few cheap little bulbs can make a garden look pretty and well cared for in the spring.

The new raised beds have gone up in the front garden!!!  I'm soooo pleased with them!

Joe's filling them up with the soil he dug out of the drive when he was levelling it, and I'm adding layers of garden clippings and cardboard to try to create a lasagne bed effect.  The driveway soil is slightly clay-ish, so I'm wanting to break it up with some organic matter, and hoping it'll all rot down together into something nice.  When I get nearer the top of the beds I'll add some bagged compost (I went to get some from Homebase the other day and there was some on offer for £2 a bag - so I bought 8 bags!) and some biochar (which is my new experiment this year).

We've had to have all our gutters replaced this month and I had to move my hotbin composter out of the way.  So it seemed a good opportunity to empty it.  About a million worms were living in there!  My back garden raised beds have had a nice top dressing of compost ready for the new growing season.

I've started planting some seeds in the heated propagator (tomatoes and peppers), chitting some potatoes (Jazzy, Nicola, Kestrel and Swift, I have no idea what I'm doing with potatoes so I just bought a small packet of several varieties to try.  The tray I'm chitting them in is the innards of Joe's Lego advent calendar and it's perfect for the job!) and I have my onions and some supermarket organic garlic ready and waiting to get going. 

Here's the garden in full, for posterity! 

How's your garden?  Have you survived the winter?  Are you ready for spring?

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Library books I've been reading.

This is what I've been reading lately, 

This is how it always is - Laurie Frankel

One of my colleagues randomly handed me this book from the new books delivery and said she thought I'd like it, and like it I did. Quirky family of 7 (all with awesome names by the way like Claude, Roosevelt and Orion) where the mum, Rosie, has always wanted a little girl called Poppy, and she gets one when her 5th son comes out as transgender.  I found this so beautiful and interesting, following the whole family as they react to Poppy's transition as a child through to a young adult.  Laurie Frankel is the parent of a transgender child, and the experience she brings to the story makes it even more poignant.  I think this was my favourite book of 2018.

Dear Mrs Bird - AJ Pearce

I loved the first half of this book, but the second half drama happened and it kinda ruined it for me.  Does anyone else just want to read books about mundane everyday life, and people being nice, without authours ruining it with twists, turns, drama and resolution, or is it just me?  Anyway I still liked it, even though it made me a bit sad, the characters talk like grown up Enid Blyton characters and one of them is called Bunty!

The Lonely Life of Biddy Weir - Lesley Allen

Oh my gosh, the first half of this book was a struggle to get through.  Biddy is bullied unrelentingly by girls at her school and we're told about this in great detail.  If you don't want to read about heartbreaking abuse, bullying, anxiety, self harm and isolation then this probably isn't the book for you.  I almost put it down several times.  Having said that, the second part is more hopeful and you'll find yourself rooting for Biddy and loving her new friend Terri and her cosy seaside cottage.  I did a little tear at the end of this, which is always the sign of a good book.

Who runs the world - Virginia Bergin

There are a lot of reviews of this book that say it's man hating, but I enjoyed it and I think with this kind of book you take it with a pinch of salt.  There are no men, they've been wiped out by a virus and women live in a peaceful, crime free, greed free society, coping with the aftermath of climate change.  The young women have never met a man or boy, but the grandmas remember the old times and the protests that happened when the remaining men were put into facilities for their own safety.  Until our protagonist, River, meets a real life boy, escaped from the not so safe facilities, and everything changes. 

The finding of Martha Lost - Caroline Wallace

Martha is a foundling, abandoned as  baby on a train, and adopted by a woman with Very Questionable parenting techniques who runs the lost property department at Liverpool Lime Street Station.  Luckily, it's the seventies and the lady in the station café next door provides cake, music and friendship while Martha solves lost property mysteries (she has a knack for it) and her own mystery too.  

How to Stop Time - Matt Haig

I'm trying to read more books written by men, but then I keep not liking them, and I don't know if it's because I don't like the particular books or I just don't like books written by men (which makes me feel bad - I do like Phillip Pullman so at least there's that!) Anyway, I liked the concept of this but didn't like the writing so much.  This was just ok to me.

Midnight Marked - Chloe Neill

I've read all 13 of this series and this is the last one.  And I'm sad I don't have any more of these light fun vampire stories to work though.  This last one was as fun and silly as the others, I'd highly recommend them if you're looking for a fluffy but engaging urban fantasy series to get your fangs into.

Are we all Lemmings and Snowflakes - Holly Bourne

I so wanted to love this as much as I've loved all of Holly Bourne's other books, but it was pretty hard going.  It's probably a really realistic representation of mental illness, and therefore important to read, understand and think about.  But the actual reading of it is heavy going and I didn't like some of the characters and parts of the plot.  I guess this one wasn't for me, but I'm looking forward to seeing what Holly Bourne writes next. 

What have you been reading? 

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Review, Greggs vegan sausage roll.

Ahh the famous Greggs vegan sausage roll, much rumoured and anticipated, much discussed on social media, but what's it like?

The pastry is really light and flaky, the sausage inside is a good, moist texture and is made of Quorn.  It tastes, well, sausage roll-like.  It's nice.  I've eaten more than one since they launched last week. My mum says they're too salty, my colleague says they're a bit greasy, my meat-eating husband says they taste pretty much like the original Greggs sausage roll.  

My most favourite vegan sausage roll are the Linda McCartney ones.  Comparing the two, the Greggs vegan sausage roll has lighter, crispier pastry, the Linda has thicker pastry, the Greggs has a more succulent filling and it's more salty and umami, the Linda vegan sausage roll is more herby and a bit more stodgy.   

When I went to buy mine the store had sold out, but if you ask the staff they'll pop some more in the oven for you and they'll be ready in about 10 minutes.  

Have you tried one yet?

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Charity shopping.

I haven't been blogging for a while, but I have been charity shopping! 

This little plastic woven basket had to come home with me.  It needs a good clean, but I think the best charity shop finds always need a good clean!

Retro woven basket, £2.49, local Age UK charity shop.

If you look carefully at this little pottery brooch you can see that there's little faces in it.

Handmade looking pottery brooch, £1, local hospice charity shop.

An obligatory 'you've found my marbles!' type joke was made by the shop assistant when I bought these and I managed to be polite and not groan.  I always buy marbles when I see them cheap in charity shops because I like to put them in the tops of my pot plants (inside and outside plants) as decorative mulch. 

1.2kg jar of marbles, £1.25, local hospice charity shop.

Finally, I bought a selection of ornaments in the run up to Christmas.  I spotted the little wooden carousel in the shop window and had to run in on my lunch half-hour to buy it, all the others came in a £1 bag of decorations, mixed in with some modern stuff I gave straight back to the charity shop.

Carousel decoration, £1, local hospice charity shop.  Bag of decorations, cost £1 but kindly bought for me by my mum, local PDSA charity shop.

Have you bought anything fantabulous from the charity shops lately?

PS. Check out my other charity shopping posts for more like this! 

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Diary of a permaculture (ish) garden, September and October 2018.

Like every good husband should, mine bought me a big-arse gardening knife for my birthday!  

Ooo yes, it's very effective at getting up big weedy roots - I'm most happy with it.

The front garden is coming on, we hired a skip for Joe to put his diggings into, and completely filled it (we also emptied the loft - don't you love it when the person you bought the house from leaves the loft full of 10 dismantled flatpack cupboards and a bed, thanks for that!).  The next step is to put some hardcore down and compress it down by hiring a whacker plate, then it'll be time to put gravel down.  I'll be relieved when it's done! 

I've been topping up the garden beds with some of the soil dug up from the drive.  This little raised bed is in the corner of the front garden, I used the lasagne method of layering drive-soil, leaves and branches, more drive-soil then a top layer of more leaves.  The top layer of leaves is to stop cats pooping on the soil!  The drive-soil is pretty clay-y, so I hope it'll get better over winter, especially with the garden waste mixed in to help break it up.  

I did the same for the last weedy corner down the side garden.  I hoed and weeded the worst of it, covered in a layer of garden waste (mostly buddleia and raspberry prunings), then a thick layer of driveway soil, I planted some narcissus and tulip bulbs in the soil, and some strawberry plants transferred from around the garden, then covered the whole of the side garden in a layer of hedge trimmings (again - cat poop deterrent).  It looks so much better without all the weeds.

I did the nice autumn activity of collecting up seed heads and acorns and planting them up - we'll see what comes up in spring!

I've been growing some ginger in a pot outside all summer.  I lifted it gently to see how it had grown, which wasn't very much.  I reburied it to let it grow more, but it got frosted and looks super unhappy now!  I'll try again next year though, if we keep having hot summers, and I get an early start with it in the conservatory I should be able to get a better harvest. 

That's kind of it for the garden for the last few months.  The weather has been so rainy, and I've needed some time to look after my family the last couple of months, both of which have meant less time for gardening.  I'll still pop out for a while if we get any dry days, but I've said goodbye to proper gardening for the year, and started dreaming and saving for next year's projects!

I did have a final gardening flourish this afternoon though, in the almost drizzle, grey skies and extreme wind, I planted a tree.  It's a crab apple called 'Red Sentinel', it'll have little red fruits that stay on through the autumn and winter.  I had to trim the roots to fit it into the pot (aka stainless steel bin), I hope it will survive!

How's your garden this month?

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