Wulf's Webden

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26 August 2024
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Tighten the Head Screws

Have you heard that saying, “you’d lose your head if it wasn’t screwed on”? I felt like that today when I realised I’d left my Bible, notebook and pens at St Theo’s church, where I was helping with some music yesterday! There were quite a few bits to clear up from the stage and put in the car and I forgot that I’d had my Bible and other bits where I’d sat on the front row for parts of the service. D’oh!

Fortunately, someone from the church was able to confirm that they had found it and I popped back this afternoon to pick it up. As a bonus, I was able to pop into a garden centre on the way back and pick up some seeds to cover gaps in my autumn planting plan.

While I’m going through a phase of being in more different places, I definitely need to make more use of checklists to make sure I don’t forget vital things in my comings and goings.

25 August 2024
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Café Live – August 2024

I can’t often make the Café Live events that Rob Newton hosts because they run monthly on Sunday evenings and I’m normally rehearsing with the Charnwood Symphonic Wind Orchestra. However, the next season for that doesn’t start until next week so I was able to make the trip down to Sileby Methodist to join in tonight.

I took the ukulele and started with my favourite 1920’s medley – Ain’t She Sweet / Five Foot Two / Yes Sir, That’s My Baby. All work very nicely on ukulele, including some tasty diminished chords. Next I did Bring Me Sunshine (not very well) and rounded my set off with a more successful version of I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.

I also took the opportunity to do some sketching on my iPad – results maybe to follow later this week.

24 August 2024
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Seeding Again

This week, I’ve been doing some garden planning for the autumn and beyond and it is time to get back into germinating some seeds. Today I’ve set off some Pak Choi and Mooli, both oriental vegetables and both towards the end of the sowing window but with a chance of producing a crop that will fill in some of the gaps I’ve got coming up.

I’ve also got the microgreen propagator out to get a bit more variety in our salads too.

23 August 2024
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Fly Magnet

I don’t particularly like swatting flies but sometimes they can’t be persuaded to disappear out of an open window or door and so the swat has to come into play. Our swat has been held on the fridge with a magnetic clip but it gets in the way of your hand if you leave it on and, if you take the clip off, the fly has often done a disappearing act.

Today I had a brainwave and spotted that the hole at the end of the handle was about the same size as the stack of small, high-strength magnets that I have. I’ve put three in the gap and secured them with some electrical tape. Now the swat comes off the fridge ready to use and, as a bonus, I can just throw it back (from a reasonably short distance) and will automatically catch and stick.

Flies, be advised to use those open doors and windows without delay!

22 August 2024
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The Ballad of Jed Clampett(ish)

I’m still teaching my friend, Tony, some banjo playing. He is keen to have a go at the Ballad of Jed Clampett (theme tune of The Beverly Hillbillies), which was composed by Paul Henning and performed with the banjo part laid down by Bluegrass pioneer Earl Scruggs. The original is in the key of A (Scruggs seems to be using a capo on the video I’ve seen of his performance) and runs at a speed that I don’t think either Tony or I would easily keep up with. Over the years quite a few people have created their own version of the piece and they do have some variations, so I’ve worked with a few, along with a few executive decisions of my own and created a version (currently titled The Ballad of Jed Clampett(ish) – PDF download link) which we’ll have a go at tomorrow.

It’s certainly banjo music and has a number of licks and patterns characteristic of the bluegrass style. As well as working it out, writing it out had some challenges. I was using Musescore for this one and the best approach I found for the slides and pull offs was using semiquavers followed by a quaver. I couldn’t figure out a neater way to indicate the way they all seem to want to blend the second note with an open string, often just a semitone away.

I was also in two minds about the chords. They aren’t always strictly linked to the notes played but this style of banjo is quite free and easy with scattering extra notes about as a stylistic effect rather than following strict rules of harmony. Again, I took some inspiration from some online sources but allowed myself the liberty of making some tweaks, both to the chords and to the notes, which is why there is an ‘-ish’ on the end of the title!

21 August 2024
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Raking Up

After last week’s plant counting at Morley Quarry, they all got cut down. Don’t worry – that was all part of the management plan and the data from last week will give something to compare a similar count to next year. Today’s Green Gym task was raking up the fallen material and putting it round the edge of the quarry, which was a pretty good workout – a bit more of a physical ‘gym’ than last week’s mental workout.

19 August 2024
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Raspberry Shrub

The soft fruit at the allotment is starting to take off. Today I got a tub of raspberries and almost a full tub of blackberries. The latter are quite firm and will still be good tomorrow but the raspberries don’t keep long. They seem to need using on the day of picking or freezing – even keeping in the fridge seems a bit dicey for this variety.

I am collecting frozen raspberries from earlier, smaller batches but decided to use today’s harvest for another shrub. So far, I’ve just given them a wash and then put them in a sterilised jar topped up with white wine vinegar. Over the next week or two I’ll keep the jar in the fridge, shaking every now and then. Once the vinegar has had time to take on the colour and flavour, I’ll strain off the solids and turn the liquid into a thin syrup by heating with sugar (up to the same weight but I’ll judge by taste) and that should be a fruity shrub cordial which will let me enjoy raspberry season into the autumn.

18 August 2024
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A BBBQ Day

Today has been a big barbeque day. This morning we were going to visit Hathern Baptist but it turned out they were doing a community BBQ at lunchtime so we went back to that and mingled with both church members and many visitors from the local community.

We didn’t overeat though so, when we came back, we had our own BBQ which we had already planned. I’d got some quarter pounder burgers from Lidl, which are excellent, but Jane reminded me that we had a few Morrisons ones in the freezer too. I hadn’t through much of them when we got those but tossed one of those on as as well for comparison. Just as when I’d cooked one in a pan inside a few weeks ago, it was gristly and greasy with a non-descript fat rather than meaty and beefy like the Lidl one. We don’t often buy burgers but, when we do, I’ve got a clear choice of “buy again” and “not again”.

So, that has been our BBBQ Sunday.

17 August 2024
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Leaning no more

Over the last couple of days, I’ve shored up that leaning log store mentioned just over a week ago, waterproofed the roof with some plastic left over from the polytunnel and got it reinstalled down at the far end of the garden. With that in place, it was time to get on and saw and split a lot of the logs that have been sitting awaiting attention. They do gradually season over time but that process is a lot faster when they are in shorter lengths with a lot of exposed surface area.

Winter is still a way off but we should have enough supplies to see us through, even if it is a harsh one.