A Manic Weekend Of Gardening! So Good!

After finishing up the DIY in the babies room, the results of which you can see below, I finally managed to get to spend some time in the garden! And what a weekend it was as well. Although a heavy frost greeted Saturday morning, it was clearing going to be a corker of a day. It didn't let us down. Bright sun and blue skies all day. In fact in the backyard, out of the very mild breeze, it actually felt warm! Warm enough to have lunch outside. Tidy!

The Frost, in the morning, see below, quickly gave way to warmth, so after a trip to the garden centre for 100 liters of organic compost, it was time to get busy in the garden. The first task was re-potting all of the hedge cuttings I took last year. Most had survived the winter so transferring them to some bigger pots was required. They are not quite ready to go out into the hedge row yet, although there are a couple of gaps screaming out for their need.

After a required break for a little flat pack manufacture, thank god for IKEA - or not ;-), it was back outside and into the garden to enjoy the sun. The lawn has been slowly growing since the end of winter and in the past couple of weeks it seems to have decided to burst back into life. Happily I am glad to say Toby Buckland from Gardeners' World does know what he is doing! The lawn looks great after scarifying last Autumn following Toby's guidance. In that blog entry I did say " don't find out until Spring so by then they will probably be long gone anyway so I won't be able to chase them down ". After scarifying the lawn looked so bad I was worried it wouldn't come back. It has, and seems to be better than before. Unfortunately despite the lawn surviving Toby Buckland, from Gardeners' World hasn't. He is no longer on the show which is a real shame, but I think that's a story for another blog.

After mowing the lawn for the first time this year, for some reason this is a great thing ;-), that was that for Saturday. More flat pack manufacture called which alas forced me back inside! Oh there was a bit of weeding thrown in for good measure as well. Although the lawn does look as though iut has struggled through the winter well there is a little bit of moss that needs sorting, as well as a few small bare, shady patches that will need reseeding. All in all pretty good though.

Sunday was not as bright as Saturday but still such a beautiful day. This meant spreading the rest of the compost around the hedge boarders. I got through about 8 meters before what was left over of the 100 liters of compost was gone. 100 liters doesn't get you too far. It'll be back to the garden centre next week to get probably 150 more liters for the rest of the garden and hedges.

Glad to see the Peonies are coming back as well. The first shoots, see below, are poking through. Hopefully, in a few months, they will look like what you can see below!

Below are the peonies in bloom last summer.

Anyways to top the garden work off for Sunday, in between helping Mon make curtains, I had to sort out the cleaning of the BBQ! It was so warm and nice this weekend I was almost tempted to have a BBQ this evening. Although the nights are still far too cold, as Saturday's early morning frost clearly highlights! Still it cannot be too far off for BBQ season to officially start! Fingers crossed ;-)

Oh that being said, as I have now cleaned the BBQ, in preparation for a summer in the garden, that probably spells the end of summer! It'll probably rain for the next 4 months ;-)

Have fun

cheers

m

A Translation App and Something to Save Your Petrol Bill!

I really love the Google Translate iPhone app. I also like the Android version but for me the iPhone one tops it due to the spoken translation results. So far there is support for 23 languages including Hungarian, as can be seen above. Please excuse the Monty Python reference ;-) This can get you into no end of trouble! The App is great for me as the spoken translations, to the best of my limited knowledge are incredibly accurate. Helps me when trying to decipher Danish words and how they are spoken. Rest assured, very oddly! Ooops now I am in trouble ;-)

Actually it probably doesn't help but it gives the perception of helping. I know if I was a Google engineer I would be trying to build all sorts of Easter eggs into the product to drop the unwary into :-). OK not professional, but a little bit of fun. Perhaps the Easter Eggs should be widely publicised to avoid embarrassment.

This app has always been a dream of mine since starting to work in mobile. Having been an avid back packer in my day (not that I am over the hill yet, although in a month or two I should be ;-)) and not being tremendous with spoken languages I have always been in need of a translation service. Being a fan of Hitch-hikers guide to the Galaxy, with its translating Babel Fish, I always thought that something like this should actually be achievable. A mobile device, initially is such an obvious candidate to target a translation service at. Always within reach with the available hardware - speaker, microphone and processor, to provide a needed phrase in case of emergency. Although not giving my age away, when I was backpacking mobiles weren't really around, so this wouldn't have helped me then ;-). Perhaps in the latter days of my travels and my current non backpacker travel.

Team this up with an AR concept like Word Lens, which translates text, and you have all you need right? Well almost. It certainly makes travel for the language-ly impaired a whole lot easier! OK the technologies are not 100% accurate but they are certainly a step in the right direction, and at the same time mighty fun to play with. An inner ear Babel Fish translation service though? Well maybe this is 10 years off :-). By then we will have in ear mobiles right? Well we are not too far off with Bluetooth headsets! Add AR glasses into the mix and you become a walking, listen and reading multi linguist. Talking .... well if the folks that you talk to share the same technology as you, then you're fine. Not sure how we get over everybody sounding the same though. As yet the Google Translate app only gives you a single voice for each language.

Another app that I am playing with at the moment is A Glass Of Water built by Toyota. See screenshot below.

This one claims that it can lower your fuel consumption by 10%. Given the price of diesel at the moment, hovering at £1.40 a litre, this is most welcome! Basically the smoother you drive, by managing your acceleration and deceleration, the more fuel efficient you will be! This app imaginatively measures this by spilling water out of the pictured glass if you drive erratically! The less water you spill the more fuel efficient you will be! As you can see by the picture below, the roundabouts near work have proven to be a challenge for keeping the inside of my car virtually dry, with a total of 15 cls spilt!

Have not been able to test the accuracy of the fuel consumption saving yet, but one thing is certain, having this app running in the car while driving does make you think about what you are doing. I feel the need to drive far less aggressively, not that I am an overly aggressive driver anyway. Although admittedly I did fire off a volley of abuse at a driver who nearly ran me off the road while I was testing this the first time! you know what though, I think I was far angrier at the amount of virtual water spilt because of the incident, than my actual safety! Odd! "You B"%#*%#! Do you know how much water you just made me spill!"

A word of warning though. You must ignore the app while driving! Looking at it constantly might make you save a little bit of fuel but it also dramatically increases the risk of accident if you take your eyes off the road! Yeah it's obvious, but I am surprised there is not a disclaimer in the app! To be fair there might be but I didn't see it as I was driving along ;-)

Have fun

cheers

m

As Winter Finally Closes Out The Garden Shows Even More Colour!

Finally winter is coming to a close. To be fair, after a brutally cold and snowy December it has not been all that bad, although there were a couple of damned cold weeks in January! No return of the snow, knock on wood! A couple of years ago it snowed at Easter! Fingers crossed no repeat of that! It hasn't seemed to be an eternal depressing season this year around ;-)

I noted midweek that the sunset in West London is now past 17:30 which means that there is enough working light until at least 6pm. If the weather doesn't freeze the hands too badly that leaves about an hour every day to get out into the garden ;-). Not that I have had an iota of time to do this at the moment. Too much DIY trying to finish off the nursery! That's not a plant nursery but rather a kids bedroom ;-). I figure I have 2 1/2 more weekends work there but if I spend a few evenings as well then in a couple of weeks I should have a little more gardening time. I need it! Despite all the pictures of flowers there are also plenty of weeds taking over the lawn! In fact I need to sort these out this week. Must take a break from the nursery to sort that out!

In the meantime I snuck out for 10 minutes today to grab a few more photos of the new colour in the garden. It is so nice after the bleak winter to see the garden really start to brim with colour again. Although this of course means that the lawn mower and hedge trimmer will soon have to make an appearance!

The picture above is of some mini daffodils. Below, even the Rosemary is showing a little colour after coming into flower

The Crocuses also putting on a fine show

If if yellow is your thing, here is a rather large splash of it!

Finally another few spots of purple.

Love that we are so close to Spring! Hoping that if I finish the DIY, that I might just be able to enjoy it in the garden! ;-)

Have fun

m

More Evidence Of The Garden Springing Back To Life

Yesterday was really the first day that I have been able to get into the Garden this year to clear out a bit of the chaff that has accumulated over the Winter. I am supposed to be sorting out the study and turning it into a nursery but after returning from the hardware store the Sun was simply too beautiful to pass up! Looking at the weather forecast for Sunday suggested rain all day so I simply had to down DIY tools to pick up the gardening ones for a while!

I should add I am glad that I did this when the sun was there, as within 2 hours there was more rain and even hail! Yesterday really did feel like a four seasons in one day yesterday. Grey and overcast, and due to the moisture in the air really cold as I wandered around London for 2 hours while waiting for my car to be serviced. This followed by a far warmer feeling afternoon due to the presence of the glorious sun. Followed by more rain and some hail as I then had to switch back into DIY mode to close out the day!

The title photo of this blog is of the Hortensia which I thought had perished during the winter. It simply looked so horrible and rotten that I thought I would shortly be digging it up! It showed it is made of far sterner stuff though and is coming on Strongly now!

Below are a bunch of Daffodils doing their best impression of B Of A Bang, a sculpture in Manchester

A couple more that I am yet to identify coming on strong and even flowering! Can't spend more time here now! Many chores to do! Will attempt to identify these correctly later on, when time permits. Been a crazy day already and only going to get more crazy!

Have fun

m

Report: Mobile App Market Will Be Worth $75 Billion By 2015 – Apple’s Share: 99%

Enough said really.

There's Life In The Old Garden Yet!

I was out raking the leaves in the garden yesterday. As you would expect the Birch tree in the backyard is naked and it has simply been ages since I have been in the backyard to do anything, so yesterday it was a must to get out there and do something! I am not entirely sure why as yesterday it was blowing an absolute gale! Raking leaves in gale force winds is possibly not the greatest idea, but somehow I managed!

Was great to be out in the garden again after all of the snow and horrible freezing temperatures. As I was wandering about, well mostly during the speed raking, which is the only manner to rake in gale force winds, I noticed that there are signs of life in the garden! In fact there are even a few winter flowers poking through! The things you see when you have the time to look!

Also some of the bulbs, that we planted, a little too late admittedly, in Autumn are now poking through. Good to see some plantings making an effort! ;-). There are a lot more to come through yet, but we did plant several different types so hopefully they will all make an appearance in the not too distant future. Perhaps the ones below are simply early risers ;-)

Seeing the, albeit very limited, new growth is such a nice sign that we are well into Winter now and that Spring is not too far away! I guess the date, being mid January also gives a nice sign of this ;-) and the lengthening light at the end of the day which is simply a joy! We have had such a bitter winter this year so far, with weeks of below and very close to zero temperatures, and snow. Gradually the temperatures are rising (it has been in the 10 degree Celsius range this past week! Crazy and almost sub tropical!) and the days are lengthening. The Garden seems to be responding! Very nice.

I am not living in a dream world yet. I know we are not out of the Winter yet. Next week the temperatures are supposed to plummet again! Still fingers crossed they won't be as low as they were in December and early January. Well if they are hopefully it won't be so cold for so long! Fingers crossed! In fact everything crossed! I am so over winter!

Roll on Spring!

Cheers

m

Winter Gardening In Copenhagen?

Unlikely! There was more snow in Copenhagen in the 6 days we were there, a foot's worth (30 cm), than for the entire month of December in London. It also never made it above freezing during the Christmas period, so the snow that fell stayed there. Bizzarely, even through all that snow the airport, the trains and the roads never closed down. Sure a few trains were delayed, and people took longer to drive places than normal, but all in all nothing stopped. Well a few flights were cancelled, but these were flights to other airports that were closed such as Brussels, Paris and London. Perhaps the folks at Heathrow should go and have a look at how Copenhagen manages to keep running even through twice as much snow as that which closed Heathrow for days and caused chaos for several more.

We were incredibly lucky to make it out of Heathrow on the Tuesday before Christmas. At that stage, more than 3 days after the 10 - 15 cm of snow had fallen in London, only a third of flights were leaving Heathrow. Crazy. We were on an evening SAS flight which is typically a business travellers flight so I can only assume that SAS cannot afford to lose business Customers so made damned well sure that the flight got off the ground. Out of 5 flights they had that day, 3 of them were cancelled. Oddly there were still empty seats on the flight we took. How on earth does that work? Don't know. I am just thankful that we got off the ground.

What I saw at Heathrow though was terrible. A full 3 days after the snow had fallen the place still looked like a refugee camp. there were people sleeping on mats all over the departures area. Also the refuge of even hundreds more than had spent the previous nights there. There were mats and sliver foil blankets left all over the place. Were these waiting for more people to come back and sleep the night we left?

At the front of the airport large tents were set up for people, who did not have flights, to congregate (and sleep in?) and the Salvos (god bless the Salvation Army) were handing out food and warm drinks.

I felt guilty getting through the airport when so many people were left in a state of anger, confusion, desperation and sheer shock. It was horrible. O.K. I can understand that if we had feet of snow that there are going to be issues getting planes on and off the ground, but 15cm of the stuff 3 days beforehand? Seriously is it that difficult. I remember on the Saturday the news reporting that someone at Heathrow saying not to worry as they had plenty of de-icing chemicals to sort the problem out. Well guess what de-icing chemicals should be used on the ice and not used for drinking. Surely this is what must have been happening?

I certainly hope that the review of the chaos that is being held finds out the root cause of the problem and that something can be done about it. The answer here is yes, and it will probably cost money. I suggest that it it probably money well spent. Either that or Heathrow remains the laughing stock of major international airport hubs.

Unfortunately the people that are affected by it (and I stress I actually wasn't) are not laughing along with the joke.

I truly hope that all the people who were affected by this utter shambles, and lets face it that's what it was, made it home safely and in time to celebrate Christmas with families.

Now wasn't this blog supposed to be about Gardening in winter in Copenhagen? Hmmm sorry a little side tracked by the Heathrow issue ;-). When it comes down to it though you have Buckley's and none chance of gardening in Copenhagen in winter!

Snow ...

... and more snow!

and more snow pictures (and Christmas pictures) on flickr

Have fun

M