A couple of days ago whilst out in the garden I noticed a strange fungus in the grass that I’ve never seen before.
Turns out their common name is “earth tongues”. Other mushrooms are quite common in our lawns, but this s a completely new one to me. I shall have to keep an eye out for it in the future. It was only in one small patch of grass, so perhaps it’s a relatively new arrival.
Another awkward day, but much better than earlier this week. I was sharing the lane with two swimmers of a similar pace and slightly slower than me, swimming continuously. So mostly I could avoid them, but every so often I’d have to decide whether to start a rep early before they got to the wall I was waiting at or delay until they’d got far enough ahead that I’d not mash them into the wall on the turn. I can’t really complain about it, to be fair.
Anyhow, modulo the occasional reps done out of time I managed seventeen of my 50m reps before failing and then easily finished the set off. After resting I made it as far as nine of my 25m reps before having to skip one, and then I needed a second skip at rep twelve. Interestingly, my speeds for the 25s were definitely quicker on average than they have been previously though I wasn’t trying to go any faster.
But, that’s now it. No more swimming until after lockdown. I’m really not sure when I might get back to the pool. It wouldn’t surprise me if it weren’t until after Christmas. Boris said today in PMQs that lockdown would definitely end on the 2nd of December, but Boris says a lot of stuff and then changes his mind later. And even if lockdown does end that day, it doesn’t mean the pool will be open the day after. For now I’ll just have to try to find something else to do. It’s been quite a fight to get back to where I am now and I’d prefer not to have to repeat that.
I struggled today. Partly because the speeds of other swimmers in the lane made it difficult to stay on track with my set, but I think mostly because I just didn’t feel great. I stuck at it as best I could and did the closest approximation of my intended session that was possible, but it wasn’t ideal.
I’m wondering if part of my recent problems isn’t just my body not having adapted to the faster 25m reps. It’s hard to judge, but I think I do feel more tired than I did before I started doing them.
Well, the impending lockdown seems to have brought out all the people who haven’t been swimming since the last one ended. I think there were more people at the pool for my session today than I’ve seen since the day it reopened, and five (including me) were in my lane!
Given the number of people in the lane it was quite tricky to do my set on the correct interval so I had to largely abandon plans and just do the best I could. That meant skipping one or two and delaying swimming until there was enough space that I wouldn’t swim over a slower swimmer in front, or I was far enough ahead that I wouldn’t get in the way of the swimmer who was faster than me.
Not very satisfactory in the end, but I did 50m reps at my expected pace for about thirty minutes, then had a rest and finished off the session doing 25m reps.
Hopefully it will be a bit better tomorrow and Wednesday, which will be my last session before the pool closes for lockdown on Thursday.
When I went for a stroll around the garden at lunchtime I noticed some panes of glass missing from the end of the greenhouse. Closer inspection suggests that the wind must have flexed the frame of the greenhouse sufficiently to release the glass from some of the retaining clips, leaving it free to slide down between the uprights of the frame at an angle until it jammed. When the frame “unflexed”, the remaining clips were then stretched out of shape by the glass.
Fortunately nothing was broken so once I’d found a few spare clips I could replace everything. It was a bit of a surprise though. It’s been very windy here before and I’ve never seen that happen in the fifteen years or thereabouts that we’ve had the greenhouse.
After I ran out of light yesterday I’d not quite finished with the beds I was spreading compost on.
Last night the forecast was for rain all day today, but this morning it was all change (quelle surprise!) with only a little forecast for the morning and occasional heavy showers this afternoon, none of which have actually materialised, so I’ve spent a significant proportion of the daylight hours finishing off what I started yesterday. Now the only bed I can actually still put compost on is the one right at the back (which I also spent some time digging the perennial weeds out of) in this photo — all the others need us to finish eating what’s in them before I can progress any further.
I also noticed that something had been digging around the garlic that I planted a few weeks back, so I’ve put a cage over it to try to protect it a bit.
Whilst doing so I noticed that at least one clove has started to shoot, which is very pleasing (poorly focused photo though, sorry).
If the forecast is to be believed it’s supposed to get drier and a fair bit colder here from the middle of the week, so I’ll try to get that last bed done by the end of next weekend. We might even get a frost on Wednesday night. That might finally push the peppers in the polytunnel into dormancy in which case I’ll have to pot them up, put them in the greenhouse and give them a prune to try to get them through the winter.
This weekend I’ve been working through the list of what I want to grow next year and finding out where I can get the seeds I want. I placed an order for some seeds on Friday, mostly so I could get more garlic (to go in the polytunnel this time, as an experiment to see if it gets rust at all), making the order up to enough to get free postage.
Given our newly-announced impending lockdown however, I think I might try to get the majority of the rest of the seeds ordered just in case there are issues later on. I’m not sure I can see why there would be at this point, but it can’t do any harm.
I had a couple of days off swimming at the tail end of last week, mainly because the timings of sessions had changed for half term and what was available didn’t fit in very well with work and other things I needed to get done.
Now it looks as though I should perhaps have tried harder. Assuming “Lockdown Mark 2” gets through parliament next week, swimming at a sports centre appears to be off the menu from 5th November. Just when I was getting back close to where I was at the start of the year, too 🙁
Normally I’d swim Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, but I’ve booked myself a slot for Wednesday now, on the assumption that I’ll get the first three days next week and that will be it. After that I guess I’ll just have to find something else to do for a month, or possibly even more given that we really don’t know what’s going to happen afterwards yet.
The weather has been fairly poor today thanks to a storm that I’ve already forgotten the name of, but I managed to get outside for a couple of hours this afternoon and started spreading out the remainder of our own compost from last year over more of the beds. I’m honestly not sure where some of my family get their ideas about what is compostable though, having raked it out. I found four lengths of 4mm round steel bar, about 50cm long, loads of lumps of expanded polystyrene (possibly used as crocks in pots?), a bed sheet, plant labels, foil packets for plant seeds, some still containing seeds and at least one not even opened, polypropylene rope, stones, lumps of mortar and large pieces of wood 🙁 Not quite as exciting as the small trowel and pair of secateurs I found when I emptied the previous bin.
I ran out of light before I’d quite finished, but I do now have one bed covered in compost for the full fourteen metre length of the plot, and half of another almost covered. To complete that I need to lift some spring onions that are in the way and aren’t ready yet and move them elsewhere. I may spread a little more of the bought in “green waste” compost over the top, but I’ll worry about that later, when I have more beds covered.
I’m genuinely surprised I could do this so soon after the first (only five days), but the plants are growing nicely at the moment and even the mustards that were planted a little later than the rest had something to offer so I could pick a mixture of pretty much everything I’d planted.
Obviously I was going to need a new container.
Even that wasn’t sufficient however, as I filled it up twice. Clearly a much bigger container is required 🙂
I make that 280g of salad leaves in total — more than twice as much as I harvested last time, which I think will certainly be sufficient to accompany two meals over the next week. I look forward to seeing how the plants get on in terms of producing new leaves during that time.
