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So What’s Happenin” in the Garden?

December 9, 2012

Bishop Composting, Gardening, Healthy Lifestyle, Vegetables , , , , 2 Comments

I am back home for a full week before running off to California again. Now I don’t mind going to California mind you, at least they are having a California start into a winter. It was nice, cool, a little rain, some wind and a bit of fog. I didn’t mind that a bit. Houston will not budge, it is still stuck in a end of summer doldrums well into December. Today, December 8th, a day removed from one of the most emotional days in American history, December 7th 1941, the bombing of Pearl Harbor we are still running our AC unit!. Today in Houston we were “blessed” with 82 degrees for the high and 64 on the low side. Sunday should mirror today. Monday, yes Monday, our version of winter will arrive and may even linger for most of the week. The high will be 54 degrees and the low will nudge freezing at 34 degrees F. My tomatoes in the barrel on the patio are days away from being ripe but I am afraid that they will finish the process on the kitchen counter. I picked one and sliced it this evening and it is a bit too firm.

A barrel full of tomatoes nearly ready to pick,

A barrel full of tomatoes nearly ready to pick.

I picked some turnips and a few carrots today, one of the turnips had a growth runaway. It just dwarfed the rest of its bed mates. I made a mess of turnip greens for an evening snack and the turnips, well I will find a way to get them into play over the next several days. Turnip greens update – I just ate the greens with a little sea salt and crumbled, thick slice bacon along with a glass of my recently kegged Dirty Honey Blonde Ale. Turnip greens are something I didn’t grow up on but the great flavor and vitamin component will make them a more frequent visitor to the kitchen. Both the greens and the beer wee pretty durned good. Some further reading on turnip greens. http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=144

Turnips and carrots ready fo the kithen

Turnips and carrots ready fo the kithen

An extra large turnip!

An extra large turnip!

The freeze or near freeze will finish off my tomato vines, the ancho/poblano peppers will hang on a little longer changing from that characteristic dark green of the immature Poblano to the red color of the mature Ancho – same pepper but two names based on color and maturity – as it matures it turns red and becomes hotter. The name ancho is associated the mature red dried version.

The rest of the garden….carrots are getting thick their beds, turnips are kicking butt, my curly kale is getting close to picking size, broccoli may be getting close to heading, the cabbage is showing signs of creating heads and the Brussel sprouts are now showing some energy to reach on up and develop some size. The sugar snap peas, I’ll have to wait as the sugar snap peas are just starting to flower. I have been pinching flowers off of my poor confused strawberry plants – they think it is a warm early spring…..I may have to chat with them as I have done with the asparagus – be quiet, develop your roots and wait for the real spring. My lettuces are looking good but sparse. I will put a third round of lettuce seeds out and hopefully it won’t be too warm for better germination.

Kozmic Purple carrots

Kozmic Purple carrots

Last week a spread a fresh batch of worm castings and have a very full wheelbarrow full of finished compost to spread. A brief visit to my friend John’s garden this evening showed a need for some of my compost. Some clean-up work will be needed as the tomato plants will have be pulled. I have some onion sets for him and I think some garlic cloves. By the end of the week I should get his garden looking good and ready for our brief winter.

The neighborhood is filled with leaves just begging for a visit from my leaf vacuum/shredder……I may have to go back to work for a week just to rest up from what I have planned this week!

TTFN

Bishop

Cinderella Pumpkin…

November 29, 2012

Bishop Baking, Composting, Recipe , Leave a comment

I took one of the house decorations, a large Cinderella Pumpkin (Rouge Vif d’Etampes), cut it into segments and baked it. This pumpkin is a French heirloom that was introduced to the US around 1883. It is flat in shape and deeply lobed. Normally the pumpkins gracing our fall decorating are dealt with once they become mushy, ooze and attract fruit flies. Not a total loss, they always wound up in the compost bins. Through my blogging and blog reading I have discovered that folks still take the time to actually use pumpkins as a wonderful addition to the table. It is a bit of work but the aromas and flavors are awesome.

It starts with dismantling the pumpkin.

Out on my garden bench, I make the first cuts using the lobes as guides.

The color of the flesh is stunning.

Sections cut prior to scrapping out the seeds.

I noticed that some of the seeds had begun to sprout.

The surgery produced 10 lobes of the deep orange flesh for baking.

Once cut and the seeds were removed I moved the cut up sections into the kitchen. I made shallow lipped trays with foil to catch the fluids and placed the foil and sections of pumpkin onto cookie sheets. They baked at 350 deg. F for about an hour and 45 minutes. I removed the sections and cooled them on wire racks until cool enough to handle.

Fresh out of the oven, steaming and smelling so good!

Pardon the mess on the kitchen counter – I promise to clean my mess up!

Cut into chunks, mashed, puree mode in the blender and allowed to sit in the sieve to drain off the free water.

Four cups of the puree were put to use immediately in the form of a pumpkin pie. It is sitting on the rack cooling as I write. I am so looking forward to tasting the ultimately fresh pumpkin pie! I think I still have about 5 quarts of pumpkin puree to deal with. I am told that it freezes well. I see some pumpkin bread in the near future and maybe a pumpkin ale! That sounds very tasty!
FYI – the pumpkin ale was brewed this past weekend!
TTFN

Bishop

The 25th of November – Where is Winter?

November 26, 2012

Bishop Composting, Gardening, Vegetables , , , , , , 7 Comments

Did a quick walk around in the garden and I can’t believe that it is late November and I still have tomatoes setting fruit, the ancho/poblano peppers are still producing, and the usual winter veggies are looking good!

Tomatoes – or at least one variety in my garden.

Juliett Tomatoes still seting and turning red!

Swiss Chard

Swiss Chard – looking very healthy.

Turnips are coming along nicely –

 

Turnips are gaining some size. This one is tennis ball sized and asking to be picked!

Lemons too

Meyer Lemons – I can taste some lemon curd in my future!

Peppers – aren’t they a summer crop?

Poblano or Ancho peppers – locally known as Poblano – great for Rellenos!

Roses and Camelias are blossoming!

I just love the blossom patterns!

Miniature red rose. Bought as a house plant for my wife but is now happily residing next to the Camelia bush.

The strawberry towers are getting filled!

 

Sweet Charlie strawberries are in place and growing.

 

I ate some fresh picked asparagus this moring and then cut the ferns back one more time! Spread some compost pulled weeds – duh! Every day I can pull weeds! I thinned the beets and planted some red and white onion sets….need to head over to John’s house and populate his garden too!

I am in town all week so I should get a lot done….more composting, harvest the worm poop, shred some leaves, make some lemon curd and did I mention pull some weeds?

TTFN

Bishop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Worm Castings Harvested & More Yard Chores

August 7, 2012

Bishop Composting, Gardening, Optimism, Philosophical, Rubbermaid , , 5 Comments

If you have read my past posts you know that I measure summer yard work by how many T-shirts I soak through! Yesterday was a 4 T-shirt day and the work is still not complete. It will be at least a two T-shirt day today….need to finish that last chore so Ben and I can take the kayaks down to Galveston and harvest a few Redfish, Speckled Trout or Flounder!!!

The worms had being toiling away in my Rubbermaid bin eating up the kitchen scraps and providing lots of good food for the garden. As I was harvesting I noticed something that the worms wouldn’t eat…..the skins off of my tomatoes. Six or eight weeks ago I made salsa, tomato sauce and gazpacho. I peeled the skin off of the tomatoes after dipping them in boiling water for 30 seconds or so and then dipping them in cold water. The skins just slide off. That old phrase, “waste not want not” is always part of my “green” credo so the skins, cores and bad spots cut out of the tomatoes went into the bin…..Everything was eaten save the skins. I learned something. I went with the fast harvest practice and a pretty good number passed through the 1/4 inch screen but they will do fine in the garden. Compost worms work near the surface and they should be happy living in the compost I recently spread. The process is outlined in the pictures below.

Soaking strips of newspaper to be added as bedding as I transfer those that toil in the dark into their new home.

The new home waiting for the transfer. Newspaper strips are wrung out so they are not too wet!

That great garden supplement – worm castings….screen box in the background

I pulled weeds, cut back the canes on the rest of the blackberries, cut some flowers for Kathy…..yes I do grow a few flowers. My son Joe had cut John’s lawn and brought back a couple of sacks of grass clippings for my compost pile that I dumped on top of the watermelon rinds and remnants of the fresh pineapple we cored the night before. I sweated some more….made up some organic fertilizer to help the veggies along and then we, Ben, Sierra and I jumped into the next project.

Station 5 on my sprinkler system has needed repair for a long time….I had some young blood to help with the digging so in we dove. First we had to find the valve boxes. I knew approximate locations so it was soon done. Then to decide which valve wa number 5…… Now that was done. We uncovered it and found that it was an inexpensive valve, the diaphragm was horribly mangled so off to Alspaugh’s Ace Hardware I went…. no luck on parts so off to the internet…. part located but with shipping I can replace the valve with a new one….with parts that are readily available.

I order to replace the valve we need to enlarge the hole in order to cut the pipe……no screwed fittings – all glued! Problem two. As the hole was enlarge the signal wires got in the way of the axe…..oh yes an axe – lots of roots and the shovel…… now we have to do some splicing…..got that done.

I installed the sprinkler system in our yard back in Bakersfield California. I worked in the oil patch and was a fan of having the valves arranged in a manifold, with union couplings so if one needed to be removed for replacement I didn’t have to cut pipe. The other benefit is that all if the wiring was run to one spot, location known and protected…. I ran it in a pvc sleeve. The drawback is more PVC to run but that is dirt cheap. My current yard – no map for the valve locations…they are scattered and the wires run willy-nilly!!!!

Ok – glue one side in and move the piping just a little and the pvc behind the valve breaks off – I am on shirt # 4 and I am not changing again. We probe a little and discover that where the next cuts will need to be made there is another PVC line snuggled up against it……Let’s drink a good pale ale Ben and plan to finish in the morning…..Good choice a thunderstorm rolls in, fills the hole with water knocks the power ou as my wife was doing ravioli on the electric stove…….No problem, I am an ex-camper. I brought out my single burner stove and finished the meal off outside…..Hope the power comes back on soon as I am beginning to soak another T-shirt  – need my AC!

This hole keeps getting bigger and more complicated! Ben, Sierra and me…the old sweaty guy.

Ben and his rescue dog, Sierra checking on the progess.

Today will be a better day!

TTFN

Bishop

 

 

 

Hands in the Garden – And Fishing

August 5, 2012

Bishop Composting, Family, Gardening, Philosophical, Relationships, Vermicoposting , , , , 3 Comments

My son Ben walked into the house with his fishing pole. “Going fishing?” I asked. “Yep!”, was his concise answer with no fluff! A man of fewest words!

Then the surprise, a multiple word sentence….”Wanna go with me”, he asks? There was no hesitation on my part so off to the garden we go to dig up some worms. The first shovel full was loaded with big fat wrigglers…..the soil is healthy because of the work these guys do behind the scenes as they churn the compost I add to  the beds…. they add their castings, aerate to soil and create drainage….sorry guys, I need some volunteers to give the up the life of toiling in the garden. I needed some volunteers to go out in a blaze of glory, sacrificing for that trophy catfish waiting in the pond!

On a side note – I probably have three, four or more types of earthworms helping me in the garden. I have added the big store-bought night crawlers left over from past fishing trip. They a larger and seem to thrive in my well composted beds. I have an abundance now of the red wriggler type that stay near the surface and do not burrow. These are also working away in my compost bins – that reminds me….I need to add harvesting the castings to list of chores for the week.

The worms sacrificed themselves but I was a little disappointed in the results – it was as if Ben and I were competing to see who would the smallest fish and the second category was for the fewest fish caught. Not our usual competitive measures of success. I caught the fewest(4) and Ben caught the smallest fish(small perch). All were returned in good health to be caught again. The pond near the house is a great place to take young ones – I love the smile on a child when they catch their first fish…and for that matter their second, third, fourth – and you get the idea….. always a smile.

It was nice to sit with Ben and even though he is a man of few words, with the right questions we can converse. I was pleased a few months ago when he built a small raised bed at his house in Baton Rouge. I smiled when he told me what he had planted – not the best choices for mid summer but he wass working thee soil, watering and seeing his efforts produce some green foliage. A success in my eyes. We did discuss what to plant when he returns to Baton Rouge August 19th….should be his last year of school at LSU!!!! He doesn’t eat much green stuff  so growing food that he would consume is a challenge. Maybe one of his roommates will be able to enjoy the harvest.

Both off my sons have built raised beds this summer, Joe for his girlfriend and Ben for himself – converts in the making. I have also done somethingelse  right! They fish and fish and find time to fish again. Earlier this summer Ben was home for a week or so for the summer session at LSU he and my youngest joe went off to the lake in our canoe for some bonding and fishing. It looks like success on both fronts. Click on an imaage to display the slideshow.

TTFN

Bishop

Rainy Day Musings

July 13, 2012

Bishop Canning, Composting, Cucumber gazpacho, Gardening, Vegetables , , , , 3 Comments

Yes Lord I know we needed the rain…..couldn’t you have at least spread the bounty over many weeks rather than this past 8-10 days….? I did wade out into the garden to gather up some cherry tomatoes for my daughter. My tomatoes are swelling up and splitting! I snack on a few of those immediately as the they go bad fast and the fruit flies just materialize out of thin air to their damage.

I want to get out and ride the bicycle a little this week and have only been able to sneak in one decent ride and a couple of runs to the store on the bike with the shopping bags…. I can get about 4 grocery sacks in the panniers without overdoing it. On one of the grocery runs it began to rain and I had to pull up under an overhang in front of the local grill, “Three B’s”. While waiting out the rain I had a St Arnold’s Double IPA – very nice. FYI – St Arnold’s is a local Houston craft Brewery that is garnering a great reputation. The wait was about a pint in length and then dash off to the house before the next shower.

While it is raining I have been reading through the current issue of the “Urban Farm”. Two articles were of perfect timing. One was concerning the resurgence in home canning. It fit very nicely with my efforts over the  past several weeks. Jams, pickles, salsa, spaghetti sauce and some uncanned but frozen tomato and cucumber gazpachos. The family really enjoyed the salsa last night…..a lot like Pace Picante sauce made right here in Houston. Article was written by Lindsay Evans living in rural North Central Washington.

The second article of interest was about trench composting. Seems like a great way to get nutrients into he soil in an easy and straight forward way. Let mother nature and her earthworm and microbe warriors do the heavy lifting…. I will consider the method as the beds begin to ready themselves for fall and winter plantings. An option for smaller amounts is to use an auger and drill a hole to be filled with kitchen wastes… I have a post hole digger that would accomplish the same thing.  Article was written by Jessica Walliser – Pittsburg, PA composter by trench and bin.

http://www.urbanfarmonline.com/

2.5 + inches of rain this morning – over 6.5 cm for those that know how to measure uniformly and more on the way!

This Morning’s Rain Total

TTFN

Bishop

A Composting We Will Go!

July 7, 2012

Bishop Composting, Gardening, Healthy Lifestyle, mulching, Vegetables 2 Comments

Hi Ho the Dairy Oh, A Composting We Will Go! This is a delayed post….I created this blog posting and set aside as a draft then forgot about it….such is life with CRS. (can’t remember shtuff) – 3 weeks ago maybe. Why can I remember my third grade teacher, Miss Keck with such clarity and can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday?

It is a hot and sweaty job in the Houston heat to turn the pile and harvest to black gold…no, not Texas Tea or commonly known as crude oil! I am talking about the organic ,material piled high in my bins and rotted down through microbial action of probably billions of too small to be seen critters’ munching away and converting the browns and greens into the almost black rich compost that every garden craves. The microscopic critters do get some help from the worms…just under the surface are the red wrigglers that have found their way out of the vermicomposting bin and the big ole earthworms the migrate to the deeper, cooler and more mature regions of the pile.

This recent turning of the pile has produced 2 and a half wheel barrow loads of rich compost. One load has been added to my most recently established raised bed. It is in need of big help. When I built this bed I used quite a bite of supposedly organic materials, existing heavy clay soil, organic compost, composted cow manure and topsoil. Not money well spent. The 4 bags of “Miracle Grow” organic labeled compost were primarily sawdust and very small wood chips. Technically, yes it is organic but it is a far from being a source of plant nutrition – the sawdust and wood products lock up nitrogen until they break down sufficiently…probably in a year or less for our hot humid climate. The composted cow manure was at least 30% sand and probably 10-15% wood chips… some readily available nutrients but not what I wanted. The top soil again was loaded with small wood chips, sand and some “soil”. I realized the error of my ways when most of the seedlings came up looking anemic and with most the growth was stunted. This recent wheel barrow load supplemented two other loads that I had added 3 months ago to this bed … growth is improving so I am feeling better.

The first of several loads heading to the garden.

Getting down to the bottom of the bin. What luscious yummy garden food!

I am pretty well done adding new beds to my backyard farm so from this point forward all additions will be Bishop made compost. I am looking for some well-rotted or composted horse manure and I may have located some.  Craigslist is for more than finding casual encounters, or at least it is here in Houston. The farm and garden section has me drooling….yes, not a pretty sight but when you can get a pick-up load of aged horse manure for little more than $40.00 – gas included, you can get a little excited. That is a little more than 2 cubic yards if not mounded high – about 2 cubic meters for those lucky enough to be on the metric system.

While typing that last paragraph it reminded me to remind Joe, my youngest son, to remember to mow the grass….and most importantly dump the grass into the left bin of my two bin compost pile. Although it should be obvious I decided to be a Dad and give explicit instructions…..leave nothing to chance with a teenager! Dear iPhone, please send my text message ASAP! The right bin has about a wheelbarrow and a half of luscious compost waiting to start feeding the hungry plants….I don’t want it buried under a couple of weeks of grass cuttings. The only cost of moving the grass cuttings over to the left side is copious amounts of Houston inspired sweat required for the task….I will sweat when I want and when I know that I must… I will try to conserve my sweating for NEEDED activities!

I am still in California( update left New Mexico yesterday in Midland TX this morning and back in Houston before night fall)  but I have traded the cool foggy evenings and mornings for the heat of the central California Valley in my “real” home town of Bakersfield California. I am trying to think of something that does not grow well here???????  My mother-in-law’s backyard, besides looking like a park, has a variety of citrus trees. The grapefruit tree is loaded to the point of sagging heavily. FYI, my mother-in-low just poked her head into the room and reminded me about the fresh apricots just picked off of the neighbor’s tree. My, my, my, California, if the government here wasn’t so broke I would consider returning – maybe!

A garden tool hook that reminds me of how easy it is to sweat in Houston and also a reminder of the fruits of hard labor!

TTFN

Bishop

Potatoes Are Harvested

May 11, 2012

Bishop Composting, Gardening, Potato Growing, Potatoes, Rubbermaid , 1 Comment

Just finished up the potato harvest…..mixed results. The Rubbermaid bin seemed to be a little more prolific…. I had high hopes for my wire baskets. I was anticipating small new potatoes up the length of the plants that were systematically covered  with soil, mulch and compost. I found many more clinging to the plant stems in the bin. I may have had better success all the way around had not the leaves come under attack by a little critter….a little orange bug destroying the leaves….apparently the nymph stage of a leaf hopper. I did get some potatoes and we will enjoy them!

I did reap a bounty of composted material from the baskets and the bin. Two wheel barrow loads of the good stuff. I will try again next spring and probably use some 40 + gallon garbage cans or recycled 55 gallon food grade plastic drums. As a bonus the material from the baskets and bins were loaded with worms… the red wriggler composting types near the surface and some big fat earthworms churning away in the middle…. One wheel barrow load has been spread and I will work on the other soon….

Had garlic mashed potatoes last night….I really think I can tell a difference between the store bought spuds….who knows how long they have been stored and what they have been sprayed with….vs. mine, fresh from the garden! I also grilled some carrots that I recently harvested… That was a first for me and they were not bad at all….need to try that again. Tomatoes are really looking good – a real surprise is the volunteer plant that I let grow….loaded up with clusters of cherry tomatoes!

Click on the photos for a larger image.

TTFN

Bishop

Making Ready to Transfer the Worms

May 7, 2012

Bishop Composting, Gardening, Healthy Lifestyle, Organic, Potato Growing, Rubbermaid, Vegetables, Vermicoposting , , , , Leave a comment

The worm bin is getting to be well filled with that wonderful stuff euphemistically referred to as worm castings – worm poop – I use Rubbermaid containers…36 quart size to house them. They reside in the garage year round and the Houston heat does not seem to bother them. I actually made two bins when I ventured off into worm world. I have found that 4 months or so is an ideal time to let the little guys toil away in darkness before preparing their new abode and harvest more of the good stuff.

As part of my ongoing research into growing methods…..not really research, its just that I get bored easily and I am always want to try something new and different. The back-up bin was put to use growing potatoes. In addition to the 4 foot tall wire baskets housing potatoes I tossed a handful of extras into the bin filled with about 8 inches of soil. Over the next few months I kept adding shredded leaves and compost as the plants grew. Yesterday I decided it was time to make ready the bin for the worms and dumped the contents – potatoes, leaves, compost and all.
I was pleasantly surprised…with minimal efforts I have 8 or so pounds of naturally grown potatoes. My wife is wanting to cook the new potatoes today….I agree hun!

TTFN

Bishop

Recycle/Reuse/Re-purpose/

February 5, 2012

Bishop Composting, Gardening, Recycling , 4 Comments

A recent call from my Mother got me thinking about the topic. She is 82, a child of the depression, frugal not cheap and has an interesting creative streak that she displays often. She called me to brag a little on her latest recycle/reuse/re-purpose discovery. A couple of years ago I made her a calendar featuring family photos for the various months. Fully opened it measured 11X17 inches, so each sheet is 8.5X11 inches – a standard US paper size. She needed more file folders to aid in organizing her papers and statements and hit upon the idea of using the out of date calendar. She was able to create 6 folders with the photo(s) of family on the outside of the folder ( so she could gaze on our lovely faces) and the meaningless dates on the inside. How clever…….I believe she noticed that when she finished the photos were upside down……I am sure that is fixed by now….

Greeting cards sent to Mom will find their way back in a re-purposed condition with the added bits of this and that she has lying about. Many of the bits and pieces she has lying about become awards that she hands out as outstanding achievement recognition for her 16 or so Tai Chi students…. complete with Chinese characters that she makes up – including some bogus definition & they all seem to believe her! She is a recycled Tai-Chi instructor from one of her previous lives….  She will re-gift and as far as I know it has not boomeranged on her  – yet! Yard sales provide a treasure chest full of goodies for which her creative side will find a use for each and every item – eventually. So, Mom, I must come by some of it naturally and I do think Dad’s genes must be an influence….although he was not nearly as creative as you are…. he had lunch boxes, jars, cigar boxes and file cabinets filled with things that may be needed somewhere down the road…and yes I have a bit of his collection – brought back to Texas after he passed. Note to Kathy – my wife – I needed a hook latch for the new gate I just hung and I knew I had one in my collection….thanks to daughter Ashleigh, I found it in one of the bins that she had organized – result – no trip to the hardware store to buy something that I already had but couldn’t find!

Let’s see if I can tie this back to my little backyard farm…..hmmmmmmm. Second try – just lost 400 words and a photo – the words should still be fresh in my head – operative word is “should” – I do have the photo – the computer is a little more reliable, most of the time.

I know that I have mentioned my recycled fence screening my wife’s portion of the yard from my garden/backyard-farm in previous posts. The fence materials as well as most of the lumber used for the compost bins were from the recycling and remixing done by the Hurricane Ike winds. The eye of the hurricane took well over an hour to pass over our house and neighborhood. The fences that were leaning hard one way were violently whipped to the other direction as the back side hit and the 110 mph winds did a 180 degree turn. In hindsight I could have and should have made a concerted effort to salvage many more down fences…..I could probably still be building for my friend John – he needs a fence as his Golden retriever loves ripe and vine picked tomatoes, as well as many others. I even saved the pulled nails and carefully and patiently was able to straighten and reuse the nails! I have been the recipient of some wine display props no longer needed and heading toward the trash heap…..shelves, wheel barrow, signs, barrels and other do-dads. My garden potting bench was rescued from a garage clean out and until recently my garden hoses were also rescue hand me downs……some work needed like end pieces and duct tape for the minor leaks. My wife helps the community recycling effort through” Kingwood Yardsale”, an online posting site. She buys and sometimes sells through the site…..remember Hun, I am still looking for a small sink to add to my potting bench.

Recycled fence, pots, barrow, bricks - gate is a mix of old & new - arbor - not!.

Both Hurricane Rita and Hurricane Ike  downed literally thousands of trees in our area. From the downed oak trees I have turned out a handful of items on my wood lathe – bowls, boxes, pen & pencil sets, travel mugs and a duck call. This area of Texas is in the midst of a major drought and thousands of dead trees are being removed, most of which become mulch after grinding them up. I have noticed many of the dead trees are being sectioned and sent to some of the small lumber mills that dot the country side. The landfills can’t absorb the massive volumes being generated right now. The photo below was taken a couple of days ago along one of our many “Greenbelt” paths…becoming more and more bare! I have plenty of pieces to work with but I still have my eye out for something special…a burl or a  nice crotch – like from a tree!!!!! or anything that may lend itself to another purpose.

The disappearing green of the green belt.

Those 400 lost words – those words above are parts of what I could remember plus a few more…..I had written some words concerning allotments – a British passion – that were lost  –   those words will find their way into a future post….if I remember!

TTFN

Bishop

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