Offering that extra bit of time for the super vegetables to increase in size, the Allen Valley & King’s Head Leek Club Show entries are on display tomorrow late afternoon, some three weeks after the ‘Allendale Flower Show.’ I may…
Category: Environment
River upland reforestation
Several years ago, we saw the new green anti-rabbit/deer/sheep protectors standing tall on the river bank. It must have been a new environmental venture, with some tangible financial reward for the landowner, but we scoffed: they’ll fail; the sheep will…
All around the ?bloomin’ heather
This diary entry doesn’t work very well without a colour image. I’m not quite sure how it will work in the ‘book of the blog’ which is expected to be printed in monochrome; perhaps our imagination will have to be…
Barney Craig: Carrshield Camping Barn
The Carrshield Camping Barn, renovated out of the old mine shop of Barney Craig, is one of the components of the portfolio of Allen Valleys Enterprise Ltd, or AVEL as the Community Benefit Society is called. AVEL was created to…
Getting ready for the High Forest Show . . .
The posters are up, and the schedule for the show has been in the shops and outlets around the patch for some time. But today is reckoning day, by which time all paperwork for the entries to the show must…
New Wood Chippings for the Play Areas
The announcement went up a week or so ago: new wood chippings are expected [I’d thought, from Kielder Forest Products, but see Comments below]; the park will be closed while the delivery and spreading is accomplished; volunteers would be very…
A memento for the grands
For over a year now, I’ve sat myself at our kitchen table, looking through the big window out over the garden, thinking about things, life, the universe — you know, thinking. While I’ve been sitting, I’ve been watching the birds,…
The traditional Sunday lunch vs the World Diet Plan
This entry started life as an idea of writing about the cooks, mostly mothers it has to be said, who live their lives sustaining the family, who patiently work at cooking the family meals: breakfasts; packed lunches; dinners; day in…
Weird stuff: trashing things
And car petrol caps opened all along Allenfields, Lonkley and Leadgate. What’s going on? It all sounds like a case (or two) of mental health, to me, rather than anything more insidious, though that’s challenging enough. By now the begonias…
Working towards pleasure
Sometimes, probably most of the time, we work for survival. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we work for pleasure, for the sheer delight of work, and then it doesn’t feel like work at all, of course. But there are times, and…