Tom's Scones

In September my eldest son, Tom, started high school. This means he is doing all sorts of subjects he has never studied before, such as Spanish, drama and cooking (although they call it "food technology"). Unlike his brother and sister, Tom was never interested in cooking with me at home, and claims not to enjoy it at school either. But he seems to have a natural talent. Yesterday he made these cherry scones, and they were delicious - quite unlike the hard grey lumps I produced the first time I ever attempted them.

It's Not Easy Being Green

Sesame Street has just reached its 40th birthday, so I thought I'd share this lovely video of Kermit singing "It's Not Easy Being Green"

Quilt Maker

You may remember the beautiful quilt I found in a local charity shop (thrift store). It had a date and the maker's name embroidered on it, and I mentioned these when I blogged about it back in 2006.

Well back in October I had a surprise email from the maker, Sandra Loder. She had come across the article about her quilt and got in touch with me. I was delighted to hear from her. She told me that she probably sold it for about £100 - £120. The sashing and blocks are in Laura Ashley fabrics which are probably a few years older than the finished quilt. The block pattern is called Somerset Folded Patchwork (or Somerset Folded Star) and there is a tutorial on a blog called Bronze Wombat. By the way, Bronze Wombat is a super blog and worth a browse if you are at all interested in crafts, gardening and so on from an Australian perspective. The pattern is quite an old one, and the Americans have their own version called porcupine or quill patchwork, although neither of those terms seem to yield much in a Google search so I'd be interested to know if anyone can find any relevant resources.

The quilt is much loved and is in daily use here. Right at this moment it is folded over the back of my sofa along with a crocheted afghan, and piled high with home-made cushions. It decorates our home and it keeps up warm when we snuggle under it in the evenings, and it gives me even more pleasure now I have made contact with the lovely lady who made it.

Buy Nothing Day 2009

There's just over a fortnight to go until Buy Nothing Day 2009. What will you be doing on Saturday 28th November this year? You can keep it simple and just buy nothing all that day. Or you can print out and display a poster from the BND website, or join the Facebook group. There are videos to watch on the BND website too.

If you are feeling a bit more energetic you can join an event, or even organise your own. I like the idea of:

Credit card cut up
Volunteers stand in a shopping mall with a pair of scissors and a sign offering a simple service: to put an end to extortionate interest rates and mounting debt with one considerate cut. Be careful though: in some first-world countries, carrying scissors in public can get you arrested as a "terrorist".

Zombie Walk
The cheerful dead wander around malls, marveling at the blank, comatose expressions on the faces of shoppers. The zombies are happy to be among their own kind, but slightly contemptuous of those who have not yet begun to rot.

Whirl–mart
This activity has the advantage of being most likely to piss off security personnel. You and nine of your closest friends silently drive your shopping carts around in a long, inexplicable conga line without ever actually buying anything.

I love Buy Nothing Day because it makes me smile. We're bombarded with advertising telling us that the way to happiness is through buying stuff. So it is easy to characterise anti-consumerists as being cheerless killjoys (I'll let you in on a secret - some of them really are). But it shouldn't be like that. In truth, the pursuit of happiness through buying stuff is guaranteed to end in misery and dissatisfaction. If you ever actually bought the holy gizmo that made you feel fulfilled and happy you would stop buying stuff, and the businesses don't want you to do that. Wandering through a shopping mall dressed up as a zombie sounds way more fun to me than rushing through a shopping mall trying to find the perfect pair of bootcut low-rise stonewashed jeans in my size before the shops shut.

Mass in Blue

Last night my choir, St George's Singers, sang Will Todd's Mass in Blue at the Royal Northern College of Music. It's the words of the Latin mass set in a jazz idiom. It works surprisingly well and is terrific fun to sing. We were accompanied by the College's jazz ensemble. The soloist was Tina May, whose delivery was quite extraordinary.

The music is very melodic and rhythmic and "catchy". I know I am not the only member of the choir who has been humming the tunes in the shower ever since we started rehearsals. But it is also very sensitively set to the words. It starts solemnly with Kyrie (Lord have Mercy) set to a plaintive melody reminiscent of a negro spiritual, which the soprano soloist takes away in a soaring variation. The Gloria (Glory to God) is joyful and upbeat, but the Credo (We Believe) is my favourite movement. I have always wanted to sing in a Gospel choir and the Gospel-style writing here is probably the closest I will get. The solo part is just sublime and Miss May's singing was incredible. The Benedictus (Blessed is He) is probably the most fun movement to sing as the different parts of the choir imitate musical instruments in a sort of jazz quartet. The Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) is the most musically complex, but it segues unusually into a reprise of the Credo and the whole mass finishes on the most glorious high. The audience applause was as rapturous as any I have ever heard.

I had a really fantastic day singing this super piece. It will be quite a come-down to start rehearsing boring old familiar Christmas music after this.

The McCains Potato Story

I have been inundated by comments and emails since I resumed blogging. Thanks for all the support, Bean Sprouts readers, it means a great deal to me.

I have also heard from some organisations who would like to be featured on the blog. For example McCains (of the oven chips) thought my readers might be interested in the ‘Potato Story’ bus which is currently touring Liverpool.

McCains say that:

• 1 in 10 children aged 7-11 think chickens lay potatoes (where on earth do they think eggs come from, then?)
• 1 in 5 have no idea that potatoes are grown in the ground (I've grown most of mine in bags this year, but that's just nit-picky)
• 1 in 5 don't realise that chips are made from potatoes

That last one may have something to do with children these days getting their chips from plastic bags of frozen oven chips. And no doubt McCains have a marketing agenda here. I doubt they are acting out of the goodness of their hearts. But someone ought to educate children about where food comes from. I rather liked their Potato Story website which features videos and games and resources for parents and schools. The McCains logo is clearly featured on each page. You can make your own mind up about whether that is brand placement or honesty. I'd have been more uneasy if it wasn't there but that's just my response.

McCains have also offered me a couple of gardening kits for kids, which include a gardening set, colouring book and crayons plus some vouchers. I'll always tell you if I am offered an inducement to include anything on the blog, and I try not to let it affect my decision but I'm only human. I was only ever offered cash once and told readers about it straight away. Mostly I get offered books to review. I remember once I was offered biodegradable poop-scoop bags. I usually give them away as competition prizes to readers and that's what I plan to do with the gardening kits.

What do you think about this kind of education-cum-marketing? I think as long as it doesn't masquerade as being independent and unbiased I am OK with it. Do you agree or disagree?

Paper Dolls

By the infallible method of "switching it off and on again" I have managed to persuade my scanner to talk to my laptop, so I can share with you the crafts I have been doing this morning. I've been making mixed-media paper dolls and dressing them up with scraps of paper and fabric and embellishments.

A part of me is complaining about the futility of this activity. I am not making clothes, or curtains, or furniture or anything else I will use. But another part of me replies "Shut up. It is fun. I am playing and enjoying myself. Not everything has to have a function."

I'll show you some of the dolls in the book. There was a template you were supposed to copy for this doll, and then dress it however you wanted. But I am so sick to death of female figures invariably being represented as stick-thin that I rebelled and drew my own doll with more lifelike proportions (lifelike to me anyway. I had a good look in the mirror and took a few measurements). I tried to keep the cartoony look, such as the over sized head but the big hips and little bust are true-to-life.

I don't think the public run screaming in horror from images of female bodies that are generously padded. I don't think fat (or just average-sized) women look disgusting or repulsive. And I don't think anorexic lollipop-headed women look beautiful. Beautiful women look beautiful, whatever their size or shape, whether they are fashion models or cartoons or paper dolls.

Thanks for the Welcome

Thanks everyone for your kind comments on my last post. I never imagined there would be anyone still reading after all this time.

Yesterday I spent the whole day running around like a blue- fly. The evening was meant to be a relaxing get-together with Lindsey and Andrew, but it took me two-and-a-half hours to make a one-hour journey there. So that only added to my stress.

I decided that today should be a fun day instead, so I have spent the morning doing craft projects from a book called Mixed Mania. I'd like to share my projects with you but my scanner is absolutely refusing to play ball, and as this is meant to be a no-stress day I have quit fighting with it and given up. Instead here is a photo of my dog, Gil, when he was a puppy. He's much bigger than this now but he still has the brain of a Labrador puppy. That is to say he has the brain of a bowl of porridge. On speed.

I'm Back

I've been away, but I'm back now. I've been suffering from depression for the last year or so. I only figured it out in April (with prompting from my sister Stephanie, for which I am very grateful), and started getting some help.

While I was ill I was unable to blog. I was unable to cook or garden or craft. I was unable to answer the telephone or read emails or open letters or see people. I'm much, much better now and all these things are starting to return. What is more there are new things in my life. For example I have a dog who makes me laugh, keeps me company and forces me to leave the house and get exercise. While he and I are walking together I notice the flowers and fruit and nuts as their seasons come and go. I notice the migrating birds, the turning leaves, the changing height of the sun at midday and the phases of the moon. He has really been a vital part of my recovery.

I have also taken up art. I love drawing and painting, and other media such as lino prints. I don't think I am expressing any deep inner feelings through my art, unless I have deep inner feelings about fruit and vegetables. But while I am creating I am so engrossed in wordless evaluations of colour, light, line, form etc. that my verbal self-critical inner dialogue is completely closed down, and temporarily I have peace. And this peace has lengthened and spread so that now the nasty inner dialogue is rarely heard at all.

One by one I have picked up the threads of my life and started doing the things that used to give me joy, and reconnected with the people who love and support me. Now I feel ready to begin blogging again. So if there is anyone out there who still reads Bean Sprouts - hi. Thanks for sticking with me. It's good to be home.

I am very sorry for the spam

Some sort of automated spam bot has been sending messages in Chinese to every single Bean Sprouts post ever. This is irritating enough, but it means that people who have commented on the blog are receiving lots of unwanted emails telling them about followup comments, which are nothing but spam.

I have now added word verification as an anti-spam measure, which I hope should stop this particular spam bot. I apologise to Bean Sprouts readers if their mailboxes are full of this garbage. Imagine what my mail box looks like!

Thanks to VegPlotting for alerting me to the spam bot and sharing the solution with me.

Wet Moon

I saw a beautiful "wet moon" tonight; the crescent moon is tilted on its side. It looks like a bowl, or a smile. If you are in the Northern hemisphere and the sky is clear where you are, why not go and have a look at the wet moon? As in the photo, Venus is quite close by the moon tonight.

I used an astronomy website to make the following sky map. You'll need to know your latitude and longitude to get an accurate map for your position, but thanks to the wonders of the internet it's very easy to find that out too. I used this latitude and longitude finder. If you plan on a bit of stargazing tonight, you could print off a star chart for your own location so you know what you are looking at.

Potatoes in Bags

In October or November my dad ordered me a kit from Marshall's for growing potatoes in bags. His intention was that I would have home-grown potatoes for Christmas. But the kit only arrived a week or so ago, so today Steph and I planted them up, with some help from Eleanor and Rebecca.

You put about 8" of compost in the bottom of the bag then put three chitted spuds on top and cover with about another 4" of compost. Keep it watered, and as the shoots appear you cover them with more compost until the bag is full. I've had friends who used this method and they were amazed at the size of the crop. They told me the bag is just jam packed full of potatoes by the end.

The kit came with three bags and fifteen Swift seed potatoes. The instructions said to put three spuds in each bag, so we jabbed some holes in the bottom of a half-empty compost bag and planted that up as well. There's nothing magic about the bags that Marshall's sent me - you can grow spuds in any sack or bag or bucket of roughly the right size. The only "magic" is that receiving a kit through the post gave me a kick up the behind to actually do it. Thanks, Dad.

Allotments All the Rage

The BBC is reporting that allotments are all the rage. A combination of the credit crunch and eco-awareness is driving a huge interest in vegetable growing. National waiting lists for allotments are said to be over 100,000. According to the BBC:

In some areas, it's more difficult to get an allotment than it is to get in to the most exclusive London clubs, with waiting lists running to 10 years - those that have not been closed altogether.

In order to feed the demand, the National Trust is releasing enough land for 1000 allotments. What caught my eye about the story though was a link to Landshare.net. With a strapline "Linking people who want to grow their own food to space where they can grow it", it struck me as a brilliant idea whose time has come. The ubiquitous Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall appears in a video on the site explaining how the idea works. Or at least that's that it says - I couldn't get it to play. But from what I can gather it seems to be encouraging people to offer their underused gardens in exchange for some of the produce.

So if you can't get an allotment why not sign up to the Landshare website and see if anyone near you has a garden you could use to grow some produce? Or if you have good intentions to do something with your garden but you never seem to actually do it, why not offer your land to someone who desperately wants it? You get to see your garden looking cared-for and productive. You get a share of some of the produce. You get to build up relationships with people in your local community. It's a real win-win arrangement.

Back to the Allotment

Ed and I went back to the allotment today for the first time in 2009. We were almost scared of what we would find, and it certainly looked weedy and neglected when we got there. But we harvested some leeks and some borecole (a curly cabbage-related thing). And we found most of the weeds were shallow, surface-rooted things which came up very easily. In an hour and a half we had cleared about an eighth of the whole plot, which is very encouraging.

I'll go back later in the week and plant something in the ground we cleared. Broad beans and garlic can go in at this time. And we'll return once a week to clear a bit more. By the time spring really gets started we should have it all shipshape.

I enjoyed myself enormously. I had forgotten how much I love going there. It helped that it was a beautiful day. The sky was blue and the sun was shining, although there was an inch of ice in the water butt. But after only a short while of digging we had stripped off our layers of woolies and were in our shirtsleeves. I chatted to one of the allotment holders who filled me in on what had happened since I was last there. I took stock of what is still there - my soft fruit bushes, my apple tree, the rhubarb is already coming up and so are the daffodils. Ed and I planned what we would plant in the coming season.

It's good to have dirt under my nails again.

Happy Christmas Bean Sprouts Readers

Happy Christmas to all Bean Sprouts readers. Unlike last year, I haven't been keeping you up-to-date with all my festive preparations. Sorry about that. But the preparations have been going on nevertheless - making decorations, giving carol concerts, making gingerbread houses, attending the children's nativity plays, making pickles, playing music, getting ready for dad's arrival from Ireland, and lots of other activities. December's full moon was observed, and the winter solstice remarked, but I didn't share them with you all. I feel bad about that, it's not you - it's me. I simply let myself get out of the habit of regular blogging. I promise to do better in 2009. But for now I wish you all a very merry Christmas, and see you again soon.

Tumble Dryer Again

A lot of people commented on the Tumble Dryer story I posted last week. Many were surprised that I admitted to having a tumble dryer. Simon Sherlock said "I'm astonished anybody can afford to run a tumble dryer at the moment, and amazed that Mel even considers one." And Compostwoman said "We don't have one...never have , never will..we dry stuff on the line OR in the house and if it looks wet, I don't wash stuff until another day."

But others were pleased I had written about it. Lizzie said "I felt a lot less naughty for occasional use of the tumble drier when I read your post Melanie. I cant dry on radiators at the moment as that would involve putting the heating on, which we havn't so far this year." and Anonymous said "It's easy for those who don't use tumble driers to feel smug - however consider that other people's life styles, house size, family size might make life more difficult for them to do this"

If people can dry their clothes without using electricity then obviously that's great. It's great for the environment, it's great for their finances, it's great for their clothes too - nothing feels or smells the same as line-dried clothes.

But for some people (me, for example, and several Bean Sprouts readers too) it's not an option all the time. And I guess for some people it's not an option any of the time. I don't feel bad about this. I do other things for the environment and for my bills. I am confident that I am doing what I can do. And I keep trying to learn more and do more to do my bit to live more sustainably on the planet.

I'm thinking of changing the tagline on this blog to "Bean Sprouts - Greener Than Thou". Just kidding. I'm actually thinking of changing it to "Bean Sprouts - You Don't Have To Do Everything". You don't have to do everything. You just have to do something. You don't have to live in a cave. You don't have to go about in damp clothes if there's just no green way for you to dry them. You don't have to save the planet single-handedly. And you don't have to feel bad about the things other people do that aren't practical for you. There's almost certainly something you do that they don't do, anyway. It's not a competition to see who's greenest. What it is, is a feeling of personal responsibility that I should do my bit. And I do, so my occasional use of the tumble dryer doesn't bother me.

Sunday Funnies

I love this video of a bloke who spends over £80 on beauty products which the saleswoman promised would make him feel more youthful, energised and better-looking. Two weeks later he shows "before and after" photos of himself to passers-by who all agree he looks no different. So he returns to the store and loudly demands his money back. The reactions of the staff and other shoppers are priceless.

Buy Nothing Day

Happy Buy Nothing Day 2008! According to the BND website:

It's a simple idea, which challenges consumer culture by asking us to switch off from shopping for a day. Its a global stand off from consumerism - celebrated as a holiday by some and street party for others! Anyone can take part provided they spend a day without spending!

As we enter the headlong rush towards Christmas, it sometimes seems like every celebration is an excuse for a huge orgy of consumption these days. So I really love the idea of a celebration specifically and solely about non-consumption. I will be observing BND 2008 by working on my home-made Christmas presents and spending time at home with my family. We might paint some Warhammer fantasy miniatures together. We might play some multi-player Wii games. If the weather is nice we might head to the park. I'll probably send some Buy Nothing Day e-cards (they're free, natch).

What are you going to do for Buy Nothing Day 2008?

Tumble Dryer

My broken tumble dryer has been repaired. Hurrah! I think it did me no harm at all to do without it for a while. It's good to have a reminder that the old ways of doing things still work. And certainly I got lazy and used the dryer when I could really have hung things on the line instead. But by golly, it's good to have it back.

Sunday Funnies

Buy Nothing Day 2008 is coming soon. If you're not sure what BND is all about or whether you want to participate, watch this short animation by Friends of the Earth

Cartoon strip by Throbgoblins. Click the panel to read the whole strip.