Showing posts with label spring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spring. Show all posts

Wednesday, 13 April 2011

Sunshine!


What a gloriously sunny weekend we had! Since I was still fighting off my cold I decided not to go to the allotment and stay in and craft (with the window open, so it was still sunny), but my plans were foiled.

On saturday our new housemate, the lovely Amanda, took us out to Sowerby Bridge for mongolian stir fry at Temujin (nom nom nom) and a bit of a wander. We had a really nice walk around the town, naturally I spent half of it wittering on about interesting old buildings, but I think Amanda and Niall have learned to tune me out now :) The information board said that the town really started to kick off in the seventeenth century, and there were some amazing frankenbuildings that looked to be pretty old. We also found a gaggle of geese on the Calder, with their own little fleet of goslings, which were so very fluffy!


On sunday I did manage to get a ton of craft done, which will be discussed in my other blog, while watching ancient episodes of Time Team -Niall helped me with the pompom for one of the hats - I can never get the hang of them. Having exhausted our sitting power for the day we trekked out to the Early Music Shop in Salts Mill, where we had a wonderful time looking at lutes and rebecs and harps and recorders made from what appear to be drinking horns. They even have lute playing lessons - may be a thing to do in the summer :) It was so nice out we wandered around the park in Saltaire and had a drink at the Boathouse.







I did the whole trial thing on monday, hopefully that's done with now... and tuesday was Jen's birthday, so the usual suspects met up in Bradford in a semblance of a social life; it was great to see everyone again!


Photos: Geese on the Calder; a beautiful old building; magnolias in the sunshine in Saltaire; easily the most hilarious photograph of Niall EVER; the usual suspects: Bones, Me, Charlotte and Jen.

Monday, 7 March 2011

Spring a-Springing

There was a massive clearing day up at the allotment this weekend, loads of people came to help get several decades worth of accumulated fly tipping off our gardens and into a bin lorry. Under the rubbish, signs of life are beginning to emerge in the form of snowdrops (yay!) and bindweed (sigh). We shifted several bin lorries' worth of stuff, as well as filling the scrap lorry three times over - as you can imagine, the site looks a hell of a lot better now. We finally got rid of the two fridges and wheelie-bin full of glass, the pile of foam and the least usable tyres - the difference is enormous :D We're even considering putting in a pond!



Elsewhere on site, drastic measures are being employed to discourage more tipping... heh heh heh. Makes me laugh every time I pass the thing!



I've been busy writing recently, too, mostly fanfiction, but also some funding application stuff for a potential PhD. Been sewing too, but since that's a present, I can't talk about it just yet - suffice it to say it went well and was fun to do!


I got the call that the trial was starting up again in April. I'm a bit sick of it hanging over everyone now - I mean, I know a lot of people were affected a lot more than me, but it's just always there in the back of your head, and I've had enough of it now.

Photos: Fridge-lessness; snowdrops; drastic measures

Wednesday, 8 September 2010

Biddulph, for a spell


9th of May 2010
i'm back in biddulph at the moment, staying with jacabsolute and the Venerable Bede (mum and grandad) and i've finished the last of this term's essays so i decided not to bring any work. i brought reading... but hey, that's kind of fun :) what it means is i finally had time to take some more shots of the garden for my Fairy Grove series on dA (http://parlanchina.deviantart.com/). the garden has been beautiful at this time of year for as long as i can remember; when i was little it was the Venerable Bede looking after the veg and grandma working with the flowers (and me getting in the way), and now it's a jacabsolute and uncle Keith collaboration :) i help out when i can, but living so far away rather prohibits that. i dug out the tomato patch in the greenhouse today though, so that's something. it feels kind of awesome to be working the soil that has been worked by the hands of my family :) feels right, you know?