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bunnLast weekend Mollydog and I walked along the coast from Bude with my Mum and her dogs, then back along the Bude Canal. The Bude canal is a fabulously elaborate construct with loads of particularly dangerously structured locks (now defunct). For something designed to transport 'sand and fertiliser into the center of Cornwall' it must have been an incredible task to build. (Plus, most of the center of Cornwall is *Bodmin Moor*. Fertilise that all you like, it's going to struggle to grow stuff...
There was a very muddy bit in the middle (put in, we theorise, by the bloke who wrote the book of walks who clearly disdains easy walking over a comfortably smooth surface, and wants you to be bouncing off into the hills all the time). What with one thing and another a 5 mile walk ended up taking over 4 hours, which was really too much. Poor Mollydog has been limping all week and we've had to cut her walks right back. I think she's gettin better now though.
I've moved the cats onto Burns Ocean Fish catfood. It's the highest meat food I can find and it also doesn't contain any battery farmed chicken, which is a bit of a win because I've not been able to find that before.
We had a Mighty Burning, and got rid of *most* of the pile of cut wood, last year's Christmas tree and the year before's as well (it's been rather too long since we last had a burning) and a quantity of bramble roots. Particularly pleased about sending the branble roots to a firy hell, though alas there are more where those came from.
The bonfire took soooo long to get going, despite the use of paraffin, barbeque briquettes, dry kindling and firelighters to get it going - we started it about 11amish, but it wasn't really going well till about 2:30pm or later I reckon. Most of the wood was pretty sodden: I'm quite pleased we finally managed to get it to burn so well.
I've been disturbingly idle this week and have done a big rush of work this evening in a (failed) attempt to compensate. Bad, bad me.
There was a very muddy bit in the middle (put in, we theorise, by the bloke who wrote the book of walks who clearly disdains easy walking over a comfortably smooth surface, and wants you to be bouncing off into the hills all the time). What with one thing and another a 5 mile walk ended up taking over 4 hours, which was really too much. Poor Mollydog has been limping all week and we've had to cut her walks right back. I think she's gettin better now though.
I've moved the cats onto Burns Ocean Fish catfood. It's the highest meat food I can find and it also doesn't contain any battery farmed chicken, which is a bit of a win because I've not been able to find that before.
We had a Mighty Burning, and got rid of *most* of the pile of cut wood, last year's Christmas tree and the year before's as well (it's been rather too long since we last had a burning) and a quantity of bramble roots. Particularly pleased about sending the branble roots to a firy hell, though alas there are more where those came from.
The bonfire took soooo long to get going, despite the use of paraffin, barbeque briquettes, dry kindling and firelighters to get it going - we started it about 11amish, but it wasn't really going well till about 2:30pm or later I reckon. Most of the wood was pretty sodden: I'm quite pleased we finally managed to get it to burn so well.
I've been disturbingly idle this week and have done a big rush of work this evening in a (failed) attempt to compensate. Bad, bad me.
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Date: 2006-01-30 02:58 pm (UTC)Polo did some online research about how to start bonfires and found a lot of namby pamby sites saying you should never burn anything and it should all be composted.
All very well if the stuff *can* be composted, but some of the trunks we had to burn would have taken years to break down, and driving it all for miles to somewhere where it could be put through a (petrol powered) industrial strength chipper doesn't strike me as any more environmentally friendly than making it into ash on site. And I suspect some of it (rotting rabbit hutch) might have ended in landfill, which is just silly.
I have two mighty oozing pullulating compost bins, and a shredder, and I mostly lay my hedges back into themselves - and it just *isn't enough*! I sometimes look on my garden as a scary green monstrosity, sitting out there producing more and more *stuff* to be got rid of.
Our cheshire soil was appalling plasticy subsoil stuff that didn't grow anything unless you piled it high with horse poo, but I'm starting to look back on it with nostalgia...