GreenMum

I'm afraid I don't really blog any more - only because other peoples blogs were so interesting I kept having to read them and then blogging became such a time consuming activity I had to stop.

Obviously I still do 'green' things if I can - making everything as energy efficient as possible has meant I have used less energy compared to the same quarter in previous years for the last 2 years, and British Gas apologised when it threatened to increase my direct debit because I had such a large credit. I have just declared our car off the road to see if we can live without it (although initially this was because of a stupid error I made to do with the registration!)

I had some ideas of some ways to make Christmas a bit greener. They are not 'Greenpeace' ideas, and may not be the 'greenest you can get' but I am sure they are start.
Make at least 1 present (cookies for colleagues, a cake for your child's teacher?)
Buy at least 1 present you wouldn't otherwise buy from your local shops - especially a bookshop or independent retailer.
Get at least 1 present second hand (or free, from Freecycle)(an antique?)
Try and buy a local service, or tickets for a show rather than a consumer item - or food which can be eaten and leaves less to go to landfill after the festivities are over.
If you make a list for others, try and include a charity item, and if you can't bear not to have all the gifts yourself, an item from a charity - Oxfam have stores and World Wildlife Fund amongst a host of others have websites.

Would it be too much of an economic disaster if Tesco made a billion less profit this year?

Just a quick blog between rainstorms to say I'm trying Soapnuts to do the family wash. I don't know if they'll be any good and I'm sure they are only environmentally friendly if they avoid being a mass market product (whereupon no doubt large areas of India would be cleared to grow the trees, and it would get air freighted all over the place etc etc), but I shall give them a try. They came with a free 'laundry ball', which you don't add soap too. I've wanted to try these, but don't want to shell out thrity odd quid for something I don't think really works, so I'll give this one a try! I am hoping a combination of Fairy, Soap Nuts and this laundry ball (where you don't need the rinse cycle because there is no soap as such) keep our stuff nice and clean!

Quick, a dry spell..need to get outside.

I had an 'allotment' accident this week - a piece of wire from a cage speared my thunb between the nail and thumb. OUCH! I think it tried to swell under the nail because it hurt like hell all night, so off I went to our Practice nurse at the Docs (who is so lovely). She gave me a tetanus jab, organised some anti-b's and dressed it, so apart from looking really stupid, it feels better now! She did advise me not to go off to Scout Camp to help put up tents, but I really wanted to see the camp (as it is my little Cubs 1st time), find out where it was and what it was like etc that I went against her advise and hammered a few pegs in with a very large mallet (luckily on target!).

I'm glad I went - he's gone off now, SO excited (he's only been in the cubs about 3 weeks..) and I'm sure he'll have a fantastic time. His little brother will miss him though, I may have to put the play tent up so he can 'camp' in there. I did point out to him that he couldn't go and stay as it was such a long way to toddle into my bed at 3:00am!

I am really fearful about the allotment and everything getting blight. I shall be gutted. I'm planning a big day tomorrow (when husband gets back from making Scout Camp breakfast).

I fear for my green credentials at the moment and I'm even too ashamed to admit it to you lot.. Husband has bought a big plasma screen for the club,

but worse than that I need to strip years of paint from our club (metal) windows and bought some stuff that strips about 150 layers at once, read the instructions and am now too scared to use it

but WORSE THAN THAT I have some weedkiller at the club that I desperately need to use on the gravel paths. I can't pull up the weeds (I've tried that) and the area is too big to keep it under control.

I seem to have really nasty chemicals everywhere I turn - een ants in our place shout 'na na nana na' until I spray them with something so toxic that fish get up a petition against it..

The only good thing is that in my spec for refurbishing the Rugby changing rooms I have got them to quote for a low energy lighting solution and valves that turn on the extractor when it is needed and lights that turn on when someone enters the room (and off again when it is empty). In changing rooms no-one ever turns the light off.

Got to go get little one into bed.

My 8 year old son wants to enter his school talent competition. I suggested he told jokes - does anyone know any (suitable) jokes??

Thanks

I was puzzled about my potatoes yesterday so I cut off some leaves and took them round to the guys who know what they are talking about (and manage the committee) and they confirmed Blight. Oh No!

Its only on the earlies but could spread to the maincrop potatoes, tomatoes and aubergines - and I only put those in on Saturday .

I cut off the tops of the earlies (luckily they are Swift - very earlies - so should be ready). In fact I dug up 3 plants today, and although they obviously could have produced a few more pots, those 3 plants are already a better size and quality than any of my crop last year, so I think we'll be OK for new potatoes.

I grow earlies and lates, not 2nd earlies because we can't eat them that fast!

The allotment guys did a tour aronud the plots yesterday and lots of plots have got blight, I went off to buy some spray and sprayed the crops I've got left, and when I got back, all other potatoes on the site were tinged blueish with the spray. Seems word got around - hopefully faster than the blight.

I'll be SO dissappointed if my tomatoes get it because I lavish them with lots of love and attention. I've got sweet peppers to plant next week, and they can get it too.

Sigh.

My autumn planted garlic has got rust as well, so they'll have to come up too. Lots of plots have that as well - I thought I might escape things doing the rounds as my plot is on the end and sandwiched between an overgrown plot with plumb trees and on one side and more trees on the other.

The other weird thing was that I turned up on Thursday evening to find big footprints though my sweetcorn patch. Where could they have possibly been going - hedge at end, trees/brambles and stinging nettles either side ??? I don't lock my shed, and don't leave anything interesting in it. Who knows.

The local infants are coming back for a look around the plot - I hope there is still something left standing. They planted onions last time they were there, and they are still upright and green. ((cross fingers)).

I don't blog as often as I used to, I'm outside a lot 'tending to things'. I guess it will quieten down and I'll get back to recycling and light bulbs. I have taken my eye off the ball, I forgot there was no choir at school today so they had to call me to collect my eldest, and then I forgot the time for cubs and he was half an hour early. Poor Soul!

And I'm getting my little one christened. I wanted to use the club for the party afterwards, but husband vetoed it because there is football outside, so I'm having it here. I've got 6 days to try and get the place looking like we live in a lovely family home, not the disgusting mess it really is. I've moved a few tons to the loft so far, washed all the sofa covers and shampooed 1 carpet.

I really hope its a nice day (the garden is fine..)

See ya

Well, it all worked out well today. All my hard work.

Little one and I went to the allotment and got our first punnet full of strawberries - Fantastic!

I've been digging and digging lately, and made a few last minute alterations to the plan, and I've got SO many things to plant - tomatoes (plum, normal and cherry), aubergine, broccolli, sweet peppers, chilli peppers, sweetcorn, melon, courgettes, pumpkin (I planted butternut squash seeds straight in), cabbages (red and white), purple sprouting broccolli, onions (froms seed) leeks plus herbs - coriander parsley and basil. Thats just the stuff I started off in the shed first - oh and cucumber that have now grown so huge in the shed, and are growing what look like massive cucumbers, so they can stay there.

My husband doesn't know it yet, but I need all day Saturday so he'll have to entertain the kids.. (they can do boy things like go to the golf range, kick a ball in the park, watch sport on TV and fight over the remote..)

He'll get the hang of it - I'll look after them for the whole of half term next week.

I'll let you know if the strawbs were tasty.

Apart from grass cuttings and veggie peelings I also put (among some other things..) tea bags and eggshells, hoover dust, and shredded paper (just try and steal my identity from in the composter - Huh) into my garden compost.

However there comes a time when there must be some compost in there to get out - and I need something to earth up my potatoes (as I planted them a little too close together and its hard to get earth from between the rows..) so I tackled the garden compost.

I did this last year - so I remembered to put an old plastic sheet in front of it. Its one of those 'cone' composters. It does have a small hatch in the bottom, but that is impossible to remove compost from, so we pulled off the cone and put it in a new position. Then I tried to get the uncomposted stuff off the top and put it back in, and then get the good stuff from the bottom and put it on my plastic sheet to have a close look and make sure its not full of undecomposed food, then bag it up and take it away.

It sounds easy doesn't it - but I seem to then get surrounded by compost - some OK and some not, all really heavy and difficult to work, so I sorted it out and got the good stuff on the plastic sheet to dry off a bit.

All in all I was up to my elbows in muck but when I mixed it with some potting compost it was Fantastic! I put some over the top of my garden pots - I'm sure it will be nutritious and help keep the water in and the rest is now at the allotment, ready to be mixed and put onto my spuds.

My husband came over while I was there digging up a bed on Saturday and asked me why everyone elses potatoes were better than mine. - probably because they spend all day there on a Sunday and I get 3 hours over the weekend!

This is the month I need to put in extra hours so I can keep up with the game. I have so much in my shed ready to plant I can't wait to get them out there. I don't want to put too much out before the end of the month in case it doesn't survive and if it is too wet the slugs get it - they've demolished 1 runner bean and have started on number 2 (despite my beer trap, horse hair and sawdust around it and some slug pellets hiding under the edge of the path!

My eldest is going to cubs tonight, so I can have an hour and a half while he's there to help those spuds!

Have a good week.

The other week I took my Dyson to the repair shop as the filter collects with dust and it doesn't hoover as it should. They looked at me a bit strangely, but a couple of days later I collected it (at a cost of £50ish) and found it had needed 1 hours work and 2 new filters (I had already changed the filters..). You've done what I did, I mentioned. No, they explained, we cleaned it all out thoroughly as well. So home it came.

Has the service made a difference? - I should say so. It could suck the skin off a sausage now. Fantastic. In fact once the nozzle is on the floor, it is quite hard to move it about and I daren't use it near any flimsy rugs in case they disappear up the tube.

You can buy a new hoover for £50, but my renovated one is so much better than that. I believe Dysons keep the repair shops in business (my Dyson is 8 years old) and that's fine by me - I would hate my local shops to go out of business.

My little one had a tummy bug at the weekend . He missed out on a weekend of 'Fetes'. Around here schools and scouts have most of the Fete business, and we had one on Saturday and one on Sunday (which we thought was going to get drowned out, but didn't). My eldest got recruited into Cubs, so he's very excited and I offloaded my spare seedling plants to the plant stall, and then took back those they couldn't sell and freecycled them to local allotments where they are trying to raise £30,000 to repair buildings on their site - so my extra seeds helped some good causes. I don't grow extra seedling plants on purpose, I just vastly underestimated the number that would grow, and I hate throwing them away.

A couple of weeks ago I couldn't dig because it was so sunny and the ground was too hard. Now its too wet.

Have a good week.

When I was at school we had ladies come round and check our hair for nits (Nitty Nora we called them). I would have been devastated if they had found any in my hair, and luckily they didn't. I guess if they had I guess we would have done something about it pronto.

These days Nitty Nora has retired and Nits are all around! In every school newsletter we get warnings and have 'bug buster' days. It doesn't work.

Last Friday my little one got sent home from the childminders because she said she saw one in his hair. How bad did I feel?? I felt like the worst mother in the world - and now my childminder knows it too! - I feel like I'm classed in the same group as the mothers who buy their kids something from the sweetshop for their breakfast on their way into school in the morning.

I did think we were winning the latest Nit war. I don't use chemical shampoos though - not really for chemical reasons (although that too) but because I've done it in the past and it doesn't work. And they REALLY smell - and very worst of all, my kids might let a nit jump into MY hair and there is NO WAY I'm going to smell like that all day. Not unless I didn't see anyone until it had worn off and for a couple of extra days for good measure.

We have a comb for upstairs and one for downstairs and we comb in the bath and we comb before school (and I comb in secret while I wash my hair - just in case).

My sister has just lent us her 'electronic' comb. You can set it on 'sense a nit' mode, comb it through and it stops making a noise when it meets one. Then you can set it on 'Zap A Nit' mode and it makes a satisfying Zap when it gets one.

I thought this was a great idea and contacted the manufacturers with a view to selling it via schools (this is the way lots of things get sold now, with a donation to the school 'friends' group for each one sold). They seemed quite keen - it works well in the States apparantly. They haven't contacted me with a price yet though, so maybe they're not interested.

In the meantime, I am only going out in my dark glasses and big scarf, so no-one knows its me - that BAD MOTHER - and making my little one wear a hat at all times..

Have a nice weekend.

I'm really sorry if rain spoilt your bank holiday, or if you've had more rain recently than you know what to do with, but I spent 3 hours on my allotment this morning, trying to break up what seemed like concrete blocks. We had a downpour (the first for weeks, it seems) this afternoon so I popped back this evening and broke up all the lumps in a jiffy. Lovely!

My 2 biggest boys went to see Spiderman this afternoon (they thought it was about half an hour too long) leaving me and little one to play footie in the living room, clean the house and make Sunday Dinner for us and my sisters' family, so we weren't really disturbed by the rain.

The allotment has SO much to do on it - I've spent about 7 hours there sorting out my 'beans bed' and digging another area for parsnips and carrots. True to form I think the first sowing of parsnips have failed, although carrots are doing better under the polytunnel.

The childrens beds are a bit weedy as well, so they got sorted out, with Mare's Tail duly dug out/hoed off. There's be a lot of that this summer.

Because of the rain I could pile some more earth on my spuds as well - as the earth between the rows had been too hard to pile up on them.

I've just got to dig the brassica bed, cougettes/pumpkin bed, Tomato bed and make sure the area for cabbages/caulis is OK to plant them out in a few weeks. And then I have to find some space for all the winter veg & onions I have growing slowly but surely in the greenhouse.

A couple of weeks ago I dug in a green manure I had planted over the winter. I want to put sweetcorn/aubergine and maybe try a cucumber in this area, so I hope it has rotted down. I've never planted green manure before so we'll see how it goes.

My husband thinks I'm spending too much time there. There is loads and loads to do at this time of year and I did take on an extra bit next door that takes a lot of time, but it is wonderfully peaceful and a definite unwind zone.

Back to the trials and tribulations of the new Astro tomorrow.

Have a good week.