More terracing

I've had in mind for some time that I'd like to terrace the small steep bit to the south of the garden, but it wasn't anywhere near top of the list of priorities. Then a friend offered me some topsoil, as he was digging a trench by the side of his house to deal with a damp problem. Free topsoil is not something to be sniffed at, round here, so I said yes please, and he brought several vanfuls of mud (in bags) over to our place and dumped it on a spare bit of driveway, next to the small steep bit.

Those bags of mud have sat there since the summer and we're starting to think it would be nice to have that bit of driveway back, if only to dump something else there. So it was that in the middle of January, as the lengthening days made getting outside quite an attractive proposition, I started work on another terrace.

I'd done some thinking about how to do this, and the first question was what to hold it up with. I thought a row of posts or stakes stuck in the ground might be a good start. So, where to get the stakes from? As it happens, we have a couple of coppiced oak trees on the hillside just above the new terrace.

Coppiced oak tree

That is to say, at some point someone cut down a couple of oak trees and they didn't die. Now, an unknown number of years later (at least four. Probably six, guessing when it was likely to have been done), the young shoots are fairly substantial. The first task, then, was to harvest some oak.

It wasn't too difficult to cut, if a bit fiddly where the stems were crowded. Once cut, I then removed all the leaves and small twigs and took them up to the other terrace (yes, it still needs topping up each year). This took a while, but eventually I had a nice collection of straight-ish pieces, roughly sorted by size.

Bits of oak obstructing the driveway.

I then did a bit of pacing out, plucked a few numbers out of the air, and decided that I needed twelve four-foot stakes, to be slammed halfway into the ground so that two feet would be sticking out to hold up the terrace. I selected the twelve thickest pieces and cut them to length. After I'd done this I made some more measurements on the ground, to find out where the posts would need to go so that two feet came up to level with the driveway. Over six feet from the edge, as it turned out. That's too wide - I couldn't reach into the middle from each side. I brought it back to a bit less than four feet wide, so it won't be two feet deep, even at the steepest part of the slope.

Quite a few of the pieces were four feet to the point they forked

The next task was to get the stakes into the ground, pausing only to peel back some of the grass to reveal the kerb marking the edge of the driveway. The first few stakes went in quite easily, but then I hit stony ground - as most of it is round here - and the going got tougher. For the last few, where the slope is shallowest, I didn't make the holes so deep. They won't have to hold up so much mud, anyway.

Yes, my hole-making steel bar has a hook on the top. What of it?

I then cut eleven shorter pieces and stuck those a little bit into the ground, or at least into the grass, in between the structural ones. This enabled me to weave the thinner pieces between the verticals to make a rough fence.

A fence, of sorts

Having got the space defined, it was then a matter of filling it. I have quite a lot of dead leylandii, so I got rid of some of that in the bottom of the bed at the steep end, but there was a limit to how much of that I could get in and still expect to grow things on top of it. Next, I tackled the grass. I left half of it in place, and flipped the other half over on top of it. That makes it sound so easy. It wasn't.

I picked out some of the bigger stones as I went.
I quickly ran out of buckets to put them in.

It's a fairly risky strategy leaving the grass in the new bed like this. If it was buried deeper, it would almost certainly all die, and rot down into a nice loam. As it is, the soil side of the turf isn't more than a few inches deep at most. I foresee weeding.

We've had beautiful weather while I was doing this; for the record, Imbolc was bright and clear, as was the rest of the first week of February. This did mean that I had to wait until the sun was high enough to melt the frost before I could start work in the mornings. This kind of work is hard enough without everything being frozen solid.

A beautiful frosty morning

Finally, I got to using up the topsoil. I have to say, topsoil wasn't an accurate description of very much of it. You could make pots with this stuff. It was also full of stones, which I decided to remove by riddling. Some of the soil went through easily enough but some of the stickier clay just stuck to everything. Some days I only managed a couple of barrowloads.

Riddling

I've been adding wood ash to the soil as I go. I'm not sure whether this will help to break up the clay or not, but it feels like it ought to. We got a delivery of firewood on Tuesday, which came with a bonus load of moss, so I added that too, then when I ran out of moss, I used some sawdust, which isn't ideal because it absorbs nitrogen as it rots. I'll worry about that later.

As the end came in view, I was determined to get the job finished before the forecast rain on Friday. On Thursday I got eight barrowloads of soil riddled and dumped in the new bed. This meant working on after dark, but luckily we have an outside light just there. I was exhausted by the time I finished, though.

The last thing I did, on Friday morning, was to trim the stakes down to just a little taller than the bed. Here is the finished bed.

Now I have to decide what to grow in it. I'm currently thinking about sweetcorn and sunflowers, but that may change as I work out what's going where in the rest of the garden. In the meantime, I still have quite a lot of topsoil to find a home for.

And now for something completely different

Unexpected reasons for learning Welsh: Finding oneself working as an extra in a TV drama, and all the directions are given in Welsh.

Between takes

I'll back up a little. The police drama Hinterland is filmed in this area, in both Welsh and English. This is terribly exciting and we had to watch the first series at least twice because the first time through we kept saying, Oh look, that's so and so! or, That's not the route to Aberystwyth, or, He'll never get mobile phone signal there, (really, we want to know what network he's with). This detracts somewhat from appreciating the story. We've also watched each episode in both Welsh (with subtitles) and English, as each scene is filmed in both languages.

They're filming Series 2 at the moment and a call went out for locals to come along and play an angry mob of farmers and wives. Quite a few of those who turned up are actually farmers and their wives, one of whom had a few words to say about costume requirements. Do we really have to play to the stereotype? Why can't we just turn up in whatever we'd usually wear? Well, quite.

It was fascinating to see how much goes into making a few seconds of film. The scene involved the detectives driving away from a remote rural location (most of the locations in this series are remote and rural), past an angry mob (who are unimpressed with the progress of the investigation). When we arrived at the base - not the location itself, but a nearby pub with a large car park - the first thing that happened was breakfast. This was a good start. We then had our costumes checked by wardrobe for suitability, and any brand names and labels were hidden. We then piled into various vehicles and headed over to the location; a farm gate with a line of police tape across it.

Most of the day was spent standing around this gate, interspersed with moving back to allow the car through, and glowering at it. This had to be done many times to be shot from many different angles. We had to make sure we stood and moved in exactly the same place each time, and didn't adjust our clothes, which was checked frequently by wardrobe. Ian's long hair caused them problems as the wind kept blowing it over his shoulders.

My lack of Welsh knowledge didn't cause too many problems. The longest instructions turned out to be a health and safety briefing that boiled down to, Don't get your toes run over. I only slipped up once, when I nearly pinched the star's place in the car, going from base to location. Luckily I was spotted and stopped before it got too embarrassing.

It's incredible how much work goes into each scene, and this one didn't even include any dialogue. We spent half a day standing around in the cold, and depending on which angles are chosen, may not even end up on screen, but it was good fun get a look behind the scenes. If you haven't seen Hinterland, and if you like your detectives dark and brooding, do watch it. It's very good.

New year thoughts

The solstice has been and gone and, as the year turns, we have now come to Imbolc, which coincides with Candlemas, St Brigid's day, and Groundhog Day. I'm not sure how much these various festivals have in common, but the first of the three spring festivals (the other two being the spring equinox - Easter - and Beltane, or May Day) seems to me like a good time to mark the new year, so this is when you get my new year ramblings.

As I have mentioned previously, I had depression towards the end of last year. I'm glad to say that with the lengthening days in January it started to lift, but it took me out for a good three months. From the equinox to the solstice, there were many days when getting up and dressed, feeding myself and my husband were as much as I could do. That said, I was able to do that much every day, so it could have been a lot worse. A year ago I hit on the theory that autumn depression is in fact a shift in motivation towards food gathering and storage. I'm not sure that entirely holds - there were harvesting tasks, notably cleaning sugar beet, that I couldn't face, but on the other hand, I found some enthusiasm for foraging, at least in fits and starts.

I adopted an attitude of acceptance: It doesn't matter if I don't achieve anything, this is depression, I get it every year, there are reasons why it's particularly bad this year, it will pass. And so it has.

From my perspective of now, this has coloured my view of the past year, so I have to make an effort to look back past the autumn equinox, and appreciate the rest of the year for what it was. Reading back to earlier blog posts, I see that the year didn't start too well either, with last year's depression not quite lifting in the spring, possibly due to poor diet. On the other hand, we did have a glorious summer, and I can't help being cheered by that much sunshine.

I can't avoid the fact that this past year has been dominated by a lack of money. Ian earns his living by writing about classic cars (and yes, we are fully aware of the ironic juxtaposition between our green lifestyle and this source of income, but cars are his passion). He gave up a staff position on a magazine to work freelance so we could move to Wales. When times are hard, freelance commissions will go before staff jobs, and times have been hard. Visits to friends and family were cut back, foods such as avocados and honey were reclassified as expensive luxuries, for occasional treats only, and our underwear is in tatters.

There was the prospect of something that had us hoping for most of the year, but it came to nothing in the end.

In the meantime, the obvious question was asked, mostly by well-meaning family and friends, Why don't I get a job? I didn't, though. I even cut back on what little paid work I had been doing. In hindsight, perhaps not so sensible, but on the other hand, it did have the desired effect. I'd been struggling to focus on a challenging project, so I cut back on other things and succeeded in paying attention to the solar panels. And that's the point. I have struggled with this. Although in theory I could get a job for a short period of time, just until things are looking better, I fear it would take me away from what I want to do with my life and I'm not sure I'd be able to turn back. We have friends here who tried self sufficiency and have more or less given up. I can see that happening to me.

Learning self sufficiency skills is not easy, but it's more than that. It's not just that I need space to give my attention to difficult projects, there's also a shift in mindset. The longer I'm out of the mainstream world of paid work and consumerism, the more alien it is to me. Of course I haven't left it completely - we're not hermits - but I mostly don't engage with a world in which trade is central. I don't sell my time and skills, and as far as possible, I produce rather than purchase. Given the all pervading presence of commerce, it takes a certain amount of isolation to maintain an anti-commercial mindset. Alternatively, if I manage to sustain my current frame of mind whilst re-engaging with the world, the constant contradictions would be quite distressing.

This all sounds rather melodramatic, and of course it's not as all-or-nothing as I've made out, but I'm struggling to express why I'm reluctant to return to the world of paid work. I fear losing what I've gained in the last four years; I fear turning away from the road I'm on in case I can't find it again.

That said, we do need some money. A few months ago I was moaning to a friend about our lack of funds and she said, But isn't this what you want? To live without money? Well... yes and no. Yes, I would love to be completely self sufficient*, but that's not realistic right now. I'm working on developing my skills - this last year I've learnt plumbing, for example, which is a case in point to illustrate why some money is necessary. I may not have to pay someone to do the work, but I still need to pay for the materials. In the more everyday area of food, I bake my own bread, but I don't grind the flour (though that might be something I could do in the future) and I don't grow my own wheat. The latter is something I'm unlikely to try, as the climate here is not well suited to it. There are limits to our self sufficiency. I will continue to push those limits back, but I can't realistically see the prospect of us living without money entirely.

There is obviously a conflict between my desire to avoid the commercial world and our need for money, albeit not a huge amount of it. I find this easier to live with if Ian's the one earning the money, which brings us back to the fact that he hasn't been earning as much as we need recently. Now, finally, there is the prospect of something a bit more stable. I can't quite believe it yet, but it's progressed far enough that I can tell you about it. As well as his freelance work, Ian volunteers for a local community transport group, providing bus services for routes that aren't commercially viable. In rural areas this can be a lifeline. There are a couple of paid roles in this organisation, and the holder of one these roles has just resigned. Ian will be filling in temporarily, and will apply when the job is advertised. Hopefully, we'll have a regular income before too long. He will also be able to continue writing about cars in his spare time.

Looking forward to the new year with a little less anxiety now, I'm starting to think about the garden, and various projects that I'll write about in other posts. I don't generally make resolutions, as I think that's setting yourself up for failure, but this year I felt the need for one or two. Firstly, I need to cut down on my computer use. I find it all too easy to get stuck on the computer, particularly when depressed, and this has become a habit. I've decided on the modest rule of not switching the computer on at breakfast time. Instead of Just browsing facebook while I have breakfast, which so often ends up consuming the whole morning, I must get up and do something, even if only the washing up, before switching the machine on.

I did actually implement that rule in early January, and it's going well so far; I'm a lot more active than I was before Christmas, and the kitchen's generally tidier, too. This might be more to do with the lengthening days than rules about computer use, but I think it's a good rule anyway. I think I need a little more routine in my life (I'll come back to that another time), and this is a first step.

The other resolution I considered is not your typical new year's resolution: I'm resolving to take less responsibility. Let me explain where I'm coming from with this. Over the past year I have been observing myself, in the same way that I did before making the decision to quit my job and try self sufficiency. I've known for some time that I have a bad case of volunteeritis. I've always thought of myself as a strong, capable woman. All the women in my family are strong, and this is a source of pride for me. When faced with adversity, I do not crumble, oh no, I step up to the mark and deal with it. I can handle anything! The trouble is, I can't.

Whenever something needs doing, my natural tendency is to think, I could do that, and mostly it's true, I could. When I moved schools at the age of 16, my new teachers expected far higher standards than I was used to. I discovered then that if more is expected of a person, then more is delivered. It was an important lesson: If I challenge myself to do more than I think I can, then I probably will be able to do it. This is often conveyed as Step out of your comfort zone. I took that lesson on board wholeheartedly, never shying away from the difficult. In fact, I stepped out of my comfort zone so often that I really don't know what my comfort zone looks like. It's not a place I'm familiar with. I think maybe it's time to explore it, not with a view to retreating there for ever, but just to get acquainted.

The trouble with constantly accepting tasks that are beyond what you think you can do is that sometimes they actually are beyond you.

I volunteered as treasurer for a national club we're members of, with no knowledge of accounting. I'm pretty good with numbers - how hard can it be? Very hard, as it turns out, especially when taking over from someone with considerable expertise in moving numbers around to make them look right. Especially when you discover that a long-standing, popular member of the club has stolen a substantial sum of money. That was stressful.

I volunteered as a committee member for a local community group. The principle attribute required for this seemed to be local knowledge, in which I felt myself singularly lacking. I spent much of the time in committee meetings with no idea what was going on, feeling very much out of my depth.

I also volunteered to take over the running of live music events at our local hotel. This last was frankly ludicrous, as I know very little about music and lack the vocabulary to talk about it. I also take a dim view of the whole business of marketing. If there's a fun event happening, I am not the person to cajole everyone into joining in. My attitude is to let people know it's happening, then it's up to them if they want to come along. If they'd rather have a nice, quiet evening at home, that's entirely up to them. As a music promoter, I am the least suitable person in the world.

I have now extricated myself from these things, with varying degrees of grace, and currently have few responsibilities. I was chatting to someone in the pub the other day who asked about my resolutions, so I told him. A little later I mentioned an upcoming event... You've got an event? As in, you're organising it? What about no responsibility? he said. Well, um, that's different. On reflection, it is different because the event in question is quite easy, relative to many of the things I take on. I suppose you could say that it's well within my comfort zone. Also, it's Ian's gig, really. I'll be honest - I know this is a resolution I'm not going to keep, but I will try to think carefully before taking on new challenges about whether I really am capable of doing them, and what impact they might have on the rest of my life.

Last year was tough, but I'm feeling positive going into the new year. Things are looking up and I'm confident it's going to be a better year. Look - even the eggs are smiling!

---

* That is, I'd love to be part of a self sufficient community. It may be possible to live entirely by one's own efforts, but the general consensus amongst those who've tried it is that a small community is a better option.

New shower

We have an old electric shower here. It's very feeble, but in summer it does provide our only source of running hot water; for anything else we have to boil the kettle. The long term plan has always been to replace it with one plumbed into the hot water system, but that rather depends on having a fully functioning hot water system, which depends on having solar panels to heat the water in the summer. In the winter we light the fire every day for heating, and that provides heat for the water, too.

The other day I had a shower and it seemed even feebler than usual. I had to turn the flow down to the most pathetic dribble to get the water anywhere near a comfortable temperature. I thought it was just because the incoming water is very cold, but Ian pointed out that it wasn't this bad when the outside temperature was -15°C, and concluded that there's something wrong with the shower. Since there was still some heat, we thought it most likely that one of two heating elements had burnt out. If we could replace that fairly cheaply, our electric shower could limp on a little longer, giving us time to plan a replacement. While I looked up replacement elements, Ian took the cover off the shower unit (after switching off the power at every possible point) to investigate. I heard a startled, Ugh! from the shower room. Was it full of water? I asked. No, mice!

Mice in the shower unit

Yes, that's right. There were mice in our shower fitting, snuggling up to the water heater. At least, presumably that's what they'd been up to when they were alive, which they weren't any more. This raised our hopes that the fault might be as simple as a chewed wire, but alas, there was no sign that the mice had done any damage before getting electrocuted.

In the meantime, I learnt that heating elements are not sold individually, but a replacement heater can assembly may be purchased... for £67.44. We could buy a new shower for not much more than that. OK then, it's not worth buying a replacement part for the old shower - perhaps now's the time to plumb one into the hot water system. This required decisions. The key question is how to get the water coming out at the right temperature. Trying to keep things as simple as possible, I thought that a manual mixer tap might do the job, as our hot water temperature is pretty stable. The alternative is a thermostatic mixer, but I'm not convinced by their reliability, and I assumed they'd be a lot more expensive. Ian looked to the internet to investigate the latter question, while I thought about what other information we might need.

Before abandoning the electric shower entirely, it would be nice to know that our system can supply enough hot water for a shower. It was designed to (by me), but not with much spare capacity, and we don't get the thermal store as hot as I'd originally expected to. Some testing would be necessary. Much as it pained us to take so much heat out of the store, it was the only way to get the answer.

Testing step 1: Run the shower at a desirable flow rate and see how long it takes to fill a bucket. Answer: 2 min. Step 2: Gather up enough buckets for fifteen minutes worth of water. Actually I only got seven; one was full of sloe wine, one was full of engine oil, and I don't know where the tenth is. Still, a fourteen-minute shower is close enough for testing purposes. Step 3: Run the shower at a desirable temperature and measure this with a thermometer. Answer: 39°C, which Ian cross-checked with advice online, and found to be much what everyone else says, which is reassuring. Step 4: Use the kitchen tap, which is a simple mixer tap, to fill the buckets, trying to maintain the same flow rate and temperature as we'd want from the shower.

There are two questions here: How easy is it to keep the temperature steady, and can the thermal store supply that temperature of water for the duration of a shower? The thermometers on the store at the start of the test read 60°C at the top and 40°C in the middle, which is somewhat lower than full, but quite typical in the morning after the heating's been on for a couple of hours. The good news is that the temperature held up quite well for the fourteen minute test. The bad news is that it was very difficult to maintain the temperature in the first five minutes. The hot tap may run at a steady temperature, but the pressure's all over the place, so I was constantly fiddling with the taps until it eventually settled down. That's no good. So much for a simple mixer tap.

Buckets of warm water. We left them in the kitchen so that as they cooled down, the heat would warm the house. It was also quite a good place to put a bowl of bread dough to rise.

Ian's research into thermostatic mixers wasn't very encouraging, either. They seem quite fussy about what inputs they require. In particular, he didn't think our system would be able to provide hot enough water - at least not consistently - for the things to work properly. Hmm, neither of the two options we were considering look very good.

On the subject of thermostatic mixers, we do have one in the system already. Ian's never been convinced that that's what it actually is, but after learning more about them he realised that it's probably just not doing anything most of the time, because the input water isn't hot enough. With the thermal store now hotter (the fire had been lit for some hours by this time), he measured the hot water temperature and found that it was 55°C. That's hotter than we'd ever want coming out of the tap. I reckon 43°C is about the hottest I'd want for doing the dishes, before I'd need to add cold to make it useable. That's not very much higher than we want for the shower. What if...?

What if we turn down the setting for household hot water to a temperature that's comfortable for showering? That way, we wouldn't need a mixer tap at all, either manual or thermostatic. It may seem a bit primitive to have no temperature control in the shower but really, we don't need the temperature to be variable, we just need it right. If the household supply can achieve that, why add anything else? The simplicity of this solution certainly appeals. We can always try it, and if it doesn't work well, upgrade later.

The next step was to plan the design and see what materials we already had available. We're not fussy about appearance - one day we'll make our bathroom nice, but that's a big job for sometime in the future, no point faffing about with buried pipework now. The plan was to insert a T joint into the hot pipe under the basin and take a pipe from there into the shower, attach a tap and fix it to the wall. The existing shower head has a standard screw fitting, so we can use that. We found a length of 15 mm pipe that had previously been connected to the old gas tank. If you watch the video in that link, at the end you'll see the man come over and tie a knot in the pipe. I had to cut that bit off. We also had a few short bits of 15 mm pipe, and various connectors.

The old gas pipe looked just about long enough, but until I'd bent it into shape, I couldn't be sure, so the next job was pipe bending. Ian was getting quite twitchy at this point as we didn't have much time before the shop shut (it being Sunday afternoon). I insisted that it wasn't worth going to the shop until we knew what we needed, and continued bending the pipe.

Pipe bending

It really was only just long enough to go over the shower screen and have one end low enough to clear the trap on the basin, and the other end low enough that the tap wouldn't hit the old shower unit (we're keeping that as backup. It's not good, but if the hot water runs out completely, it's better than nothing). Then we went and bought parts. All we needed were a tap and one elbow joint. I also bought a bag of olives - the sleeves that go inside the nut in a compression joint - because we have plenty of nuts and it would be really annoying to have to stop work for want of an olive. The total cost of parts was less than £10.

After that, and a tea break and chat to my dad (he called) it was just a matter of turning off the water then being brave and cutting into the pipework to attach all these bits. For some reason, our water wouldn't turn off completely, leaving it dripping. This is very annoying, but does provide an instant check for leaks.

I didn't finish connecting everything up until after dinner. I went round all the nuts, tightening them up and chasing the drips from joint to joint, until there was just one that was still leaking. I tightened further... the dripping increased. I went and slumped on the sofa in despair and Ian took over. He tried applying sealing gunk, but that didn't help, so he removed the offending pipework.

That would be the problem, right there.

The connector was cracked. No wonder it wouldn't stop leaking. Ian then went off and searched for more parts, and found another elbow that I'd missed earlier. Unfortunately I'd used the last of the PTFE tape on the previous joint and the gunk he'd already tried wasn't really the right stuff. And the joint was still dripping. He searched some more and found some very old jointing compound. It took a lot of scraping and stirring to recombine the solid and liquid parts, but eventually we had something that looked like it might be smeared on a screwthread. Ian did this bit, and put it all back together with the replacement elbow.

A hodgepodge of connectors under the basin

So far, no leaks! In the end, the pipework is even fairly neat...

... though perhaps less so at the shower end.

Yes, we did choose that tap.

So how is it, then? I had a shower this morning. I didn't really need one, but I had to test it, even though the thermal store was a bit on the cool side (we were too busy plumbing yesterday to pay full attention to the fire). The temperature, once the hot water came through, started at slightly hotter than I'd want but quickly dropped to slightly cooler. It wasn't uncomfortably cool, but didn't encourage lingering. That was OK, though, because the pressure was so much higher than I'm used to. I'm sure the flow rate was much higher than we used in the test, and not easy to turn down, but it was lovely! With that much water I can get clean quickly, so I don't need to spend fifteen minutes, and it's so much nicer.

We will monitor the situation, but so far this is a clear success. Of course, it does put the pressure on to get the solar panels finished before we stop lighting the fire in the spring.

Wintry things

Winter arrived in Devil's Bridge this morning, almost as abruptly as autumn arrived, back in August. We've had a few hard frosts, but mostly it's been pretty mild, then this morning it snowed....

... and very pretty it is too, though not so nice for birds.

A pair of bullfinches came to feed on dock seeds.

When I say the weather's been mild, it's still quite cold enough to have the heating on and as usual, we're struggling to keep the house warm. The other day I did a maintenance job that I should have done ages ago. I replaced the fire rope seals around the doors on the wood burning stove.

Until I started measuring how much I needed, I hadn't even noticed that the ash flap at the bottom also has a channel to fit rope into. It's not a very big job, though slightly bigger due to the fact that it was previously fixed with cement (it shouldn't be), so I had to chip all that out first.

We couldn't believe how much difference it made! We'd always thought our second hand stove was just old and leaky but in fact, with new seals in place, it's possible to close down the air flow so much that wood stops burning. Without the flow of cool (room temperature) air into the fire box, it gets a lot hotter and radiates far more heat into the room. We're also using less wood, as it doesn't burn up so quickly. A day after I replaced the rope, Ian investigated the air inlet control, which has never had any noticeable effect before. With the ash cleared out of the vent, it works just fine, so now we have an efficient, controllable stove. It's like having a new one! It's a salutary illustration of the importance of maintenance.

Now, I'm going to go and sit by the fire, but I'll leave you with one more picture of snow, because the sun came out briefly about an hour ago.

The darkest time of the year (and a fireplace)

Take several months of financial stress, add seasonal depression, responsibility for a big, stressful event, a period of intense uncertainty (which isn't resolved yet, so I can't tell you about it) and on top of all that, a dead cat... well, it hasn't been the easiest autumn. There are good days and bad days.

On the good days, I've been working on the fireplace surround. This has been a ragged hole in the wall since I attacked it four years ago.

I've had some ideas about what to do here, but most of my ideas involved spending money, which we'd generally rather avoid, and is currently not an option for merely decorative projects. The part I was most certain of was the brick arch. It would be nice to get hold of some attractive bricks, but perhaps not entirely necessary. I started by searching the property for all the old bricks I could find. One was on the driveway, having been used as an alternative handbrake. Several were serving as a stand for the barbecue. Some were just lying around. Those you see in the photo above were the least scruffy/most similar to each other that I could find.

The next step was to clean the bricks as best I could without buying chemical cleaners (to be avoided for several reasons). Online advice suggested that dishwashing liquid might be worth a try, so I tried it, applied using brushes with both nylon and steel bristles. It didn't make much difference. My next attempt involved play dough. I made up a salt dough and pressed it onto the ends of the bricks, then baked them in a low oven until it was hard. The next day, I soaked it off, then scrubbed with dishwashing liquid again. I can't be entirely sure, but I think that quite a lot more soot came off the second time. Whether the play dough had anything to do with this, I have no idea.

Having selected my bricks, I still didn't know what to do with the edges of the fireplace. I'd quite like to leave the bricks bare, but as you can see, the brickwork is far from tidy. My cousin suggested brick slips - bricks made in thin tile shapes, including corner pieces, sold for applications just like this. It was a good suggestion, but.... money. Then a visiting friend suggested a wood surround. This is much more realistic as we have lots of old floorboards. I was sure I could find a couple of pieces that would suit. I even considered carving some decoration into them, but that would be quite a big project, not to be attempted before Christmas. In the meantime, I considered how to fix up a shelf above the fireplace.

I found the old shelf that had been there before, somewhat weathered now, but not necessarily any the worse for that. I was holding this up in position (it's just a little longer than the width of the arch - the ideal size), wondering what kind of brackets would be suitable, when Ian walked by and said, Ah, a mantlepiece! This comment set off a new train of thought. I'd been referring to the horizontal pieces of wood in my mind as a shelf, and shelves are typically supported by brackets. Mantlepieces, on the other hand, are often part of a fire surround, with supports that sometimes go right down to the floor. I wondered whether we might have any pieces of wood that I could use like that? Initially I was thinking of new cut timber that I might carve, but before long I lighted on the idea of using the leylandii trunks I got from cutting down the hedge. Quite a few of these have been turned into firewood, and some still have branches attached, but there were three trimmed and unburned. I selected the two longest and cut the ends straight across. Here they are in position, under the mantlepiece:

Leylandii trunks holding up mantlepiece and hiding scruffy brickwork

I'm quite pleased with this. They're currently held in place with bits of string - I'll fix them properly after Christmas. No, really, I will!

The bad days come with the rain. Not just the rain, but closed-in, up-in-the-clouds weather that blocks out light and warmth and joy for days on end. The air and the ground get saturated with water so that nothing's ever quite dry, and we get puddles in the store room.

Those orange dots at the top of the picture are squash. I'm having to keep a close eye on them so as to eat them up quickly as they start going mouldy.

The other day, some friends and I discussed what the point of Christmas is. We came up with quite a lot of points, and agreed that you can take your pick. My focus is to fend off the gloom and darkness of this time of year, and celebrate the return of the light. When my mood lifts sufficiently to get anything done, I'm focusing on Christmas. Today, I am mostly making sweets and - the reason I wanted the mantlepiece up before Christmas - I have decorations up.

Mouse ears and chocolate pigs

Evergreens and sparkly things around the fireplace

Tonight is both the solstice and the new moon, so it truly is the longest, darkest night of the year. After this, the light returns. Yuletide greetings to one and all!

Goodbye, Pebble

We went to visit Ian's parents in Devon last week, returning on Friday evening. Pebble greeted us at the door, had some dinner, then raced around like a mad thing for a while before settling on my lap. A little later, I got up to get our dinner and not long after that she started complaining. At first we thought it was just because we'd switched the heat off on her bed (seed propagator at other times of year) but it soon became obvious that she was in pain. We called the vet, monitored the situation for an hour or so, then decided she really did need medical attention urgently so arranged to meet a vet at the surgery. He couldn't give us a definite diagnosis until morning, but said that the symptoms suggested rat poison. We left her with him to do what he could for her, but by morning she was dead.

Today, we buried her in the garden, where I'm planning to plant an elder tree. She did love elderflowers.

Here are some memories of a beloved cat.

Ugh

The thing I hate most about depression - apart from the sluggishness and not caring about anything - is that it makes me stupid. I can't concentrate, I get (even more) absent minded, I forget things. Then stuff like this happens:

Glass cover removed from solar panel when it was sunny, forgotten about, then blown over when it was windy.

Then I hate myself for being so stupid, and I just want to cry.

Sauerkraut and other fermented things

This may make me sound a little odd, but I really like cabbage. Not when it's been boiled too long and served plain, a la school dinners, but steamed until just tender and served with a little acid of some kind - lemon juice, vinegar, apple sauce, and chutney are all good - it makes an excellent side vegetable. My favourite kind of cabbage is red, with the tightly-formed heads. I'm not sure whether it really tastes any different from white or green, but it's so pretty when it's cut.

Sliced red cabbage

It's hardly surprising that I should like sauerkraut, since this is essentially cabbage in acid, specifically lactic acid. Even better, from the point of view of making it, is that I don't even have to buy the acid myself, since, with a little encouragement, bacteria will make it for me. The process goes like this: I add a layer of finely sliced cabbage to a jar, sprinkle on a little salt, press down with a pestle, and repeat until the jar is full. There are no precise measurements involved, or indeed any measurements at all.

To reduce the chance of mould growing on the top, I weigh down the cabbage with (washed and boiled) beach pebbles, which I sprinkle with more salt then top up with water before closing with an air locked lid. This might sound like overkill, but I get a lot of mould growth. It's all very well saying, Just scrape off the mould and discard the top layer, but if you ferment in relatively small jars, as I do, that top layer can be quite a high proportion of the total.

Stones and extra salt

The other appeal of red cabbage is that the pigment is an indicator, so it displays the acidity. Here are two jars, one freshly filled, one after a couple of weeks of fermentation:

Sauerkraut, before and after. Such pretty colours!

As for the other fermented things, I've come to the conclusion that lactofermentation is not the best treatment for everything. It works well for cabbage, which is why this is a classic, and for unripe sloes, which is totally obscure (I haven't heard of anyone else trying it) but make a good alternative to olives. The important thing to bear in mind is that the fermentation process alters flavours in other ways than just adding acid. To my surprise, it completely destroyed the aniseed flavour of Alexanders. Wild garlic leaves work well, but the result is not a substitute for garlic, it's an entirely new flavour. Samphire kind-of worked, but the result was disappointing. I'll stick to vinegar for preserving this in future. Courgettes were successful, but I found that I don't really want to eat pickled courgette that often. Do you ferment things? Have you come across anything that works really well?

Overall, I've found that lactofermentation is a useful preservation method for some things, but it's not universal in its application. I still think it's magic, though.