Green in Snow

I’ve been helping out at a super project - FRESH is part of EcoWorks in the St. Ann’s Allotments. It’s a social enterprise, one arm of which supplies fresh vegetables to discriminating cafés in the city. So what can FRESH provide fresh in winter?

Claytonia (Claytonia perfoliata) (above) is a plant originally from the west coast of North America where the miners used it to prevent scurvy. It’s got lots of vitamin C and is also known as Miner’s Lettuce. It was introduced to Britain and grows wild where it is known as Spring Beauty. It takes to polytunnel life very well, popping up all over the place. I’ve noticed that some has started flowering, despite the cold.

Cornsalad (Valeriana locusta, also known as Lamb’s Lettuce) is also found wild, but with much smaller leaves than the salad variety. Also like Claytonia, it has high vitamin C levels and can even be grown outdoors. It's the dark green rosettes in the middle of the photo (taken before the snow meant more urgent tasks were impossible and we did a lot of weeding!)

American Land Cress (Barbarea verna) tastes like watercress but is easier to grow. Apparently it’ll even grow under Jerusalem artichokes, runner beans, corn, etc. Like the above, it has naturalised in Britain.

You know that mustard you grow to put with cress in an egg sandwich? This is what it looks like if you let it grow:

Each leaf is about 30cm long and wonderfully hot. It’s called ‘Giant Red’, and is a form of Mustard Greens (Brassica juncea). Its Wikipedia entry has interesting information about its role in Soul Food and remediation of contaminated soil. Also nice in salad, and I believe that mustard greens are the ‘methi’ in Indian food and appear in far eastern dishes too.

Green in Snow is Giant Red’s less powerful brother but still packs a punch. We've a whole greenhouse full of it!

FRESH also have Pak Choi, Tatsoi, Mizuna, Mibuna and various other tasty leaves.

Seeds and more info from the nice people at RealSeeds. Cultivation info on all these on the RHS website or BBC Gardening.

I'm sno' angel

Pictures from my local park. Not quite as many as there might have been, as the camera batteries kept packing up and I had to keep warming them in my hand. It's to do with the slowing of the rate of reaction in the batteries in the cold (said in a science-teacher voice...)



Dog was very unsure about this strange creature!

The snowman had disappeared by the time I walked back: a bunch of teenagers had dismantled it and were trying to make even huger snowballs. It's been nice today to see kids like them have a great time sledging - they've mostly never had a chance to do it before, at least not in their local park. Whereas back in the day it snowed EVERY CHRISTMAS.

New bike!

It's been getting more and more obvious that my current bikes are both too big. The tourer, a rather nice Raleigh Touriste, is much better now I've got flat bars, but the mountain bike (Hawk Trakatak) which I use around town is very heavy, and my knees have been creaking a bit... So, time for a new bike. I had fun looking at bike websites and getting a bit cross about the lack of decent budget bikes in a small size and not pink!!

I'd got my eye on an Edinburgh Cycle Co-op bike as I like the bikes and their outlook, and a few weeks ago saw that they had Revolution Trailfinders reduced by a nice amount. So I ordered one - my first new (really new) bike for nearly 20 years! It arrived all nicely packaged and nearly ready to ride, with some extra goodies with 'Revolution' and a big red star on them which was all good. But doh! I'd ordered a size too big... even I cannot get used to how short my legs are! Anyway, the really nice chaps at ECC sorted out collecting it and sending another one. Hardly cost anything extra. Lovely Scottish accents too.

Here it is:


I think you'll agree that it is a nice sensible commuting/canal towpath/days out bike. And it's not pink.

El Gordo

One compensation for not having a cat anymore is that we get lots more birds in the garden. However, lots of the tasty titbits which we put out for them are snaffled by this character:


We wouldn't mind if he just ate a bit, but he hoggs the lot - then chews the food container too. Probably why he's got such a large backside (see below), which resulted in a nickname which was rather vulgar. Since the Spanish Lottery was in the news just before Christmas, though, we've been calling him 'El Gordo' - The Fat One.

However, 'Gordo' is going to have to find easy pickings somewhere else. I have created The Squirrel Baffle and it has actually baffled him!

Recipe for a Squirrel Baffle:

• Take one large Wilco's mixing bowl (79p)
• Cut off the rim so squirrelly hands can't pull themselves over.
• Cut a hole in the centre of the base, just a tad smaller than the bird-feeder pole so it can be slid up but doesn't slip down.
• Spend a lot of time unscrewing rusted-up bird-feeder pole (I recommend WD40, some wood and a sharp tap with a large hammer).
• Push squirrel baffle onto pole, return pole to garden (away from any trees or washing lines which squirrel could use to launch himself onto the feeders.
• Reinstate feeders and watch little birdies feed themselves. Laugh when squirrel tries to climb up pole and bumps his head on the baffle.

(Actually not as funny as watching him slide down when I sprayed the pole with WD40 the other week - but I was a bit concerned that licking WD40 of his tummy fur would poison him so I decided to try to make a baffle. I do have a heart really).

NB: the milk container hanging off the bird-feeder pole is another of my creations. It's got vegetable fat and seeds in it which as anybody knows is a really super Blue Peter type home made bird food. Except the birds won't touch it. I may have to put it out for El Gordo to eat...

Lost canal

I really like canals. One of my ancestors was known as 'The Standedge Admiral' and was the traffic regulator on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal from 1811 to 1848. His father - and mother - helped to dig the canal. So perhaps it's in my blood.

Canal towpaths were my route to exploring Birmingham and Coventry, and now I'm rediscovering Nottingham.

The other day I decided to try to trace the route of the Nottingham Canal through the outskirts of the city. Most of the canal was either closed or incorporated into other waterways by WWII. Several miles are now a nature reserve which make a pleasant country walk. I headed the other way.

The end of the canal at SK503395.

Heading East, the route goes through an area known as Balloon Woods, once the site of some of Nottingham's possibly undeservedly notorious high-rise slum clearance housing, which were in their turn demolished some years ago. Balloon Woods were also a location in the film 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' It all seems very innocuous now, but there is little sign of the canal through a weedy sycamore woodland.

Just a puddle underneath the railway line.

Then it - sort of - appears again.

This path through an estate goes exactly where the canal was. (Haven't I got long legs!) Then it disappears again, possibly incorporated into the backgardens of Yalding Drive. No sign of it for nearly a mile, despite the roads apparently following the route it took. Over the Trowell Road and onto Torville Drive with its' accompanying Dean and Bolero Closes. That dates the estate neatly to the mid-eighties! Torville Drives' elegant curves could be following the old canal route, or equally a tribute to the road's name.

If this is the canal then it's a shame - just a rubbishy channel behind the gardens. What a wasted opportunity.

Then I go round a corner and find this:

An old 'winding hole'. Or two, even: there is what looks like another through the trees, connected by the remains of a lock.

This seemed like a good point to stop exploring and head off for the bus home. It was getting even more chilly and dusk isn't the time for even an innocuous-looking person like myself to start looking into people's back-gardens. The canal route seems to carry on between back gardens. It turns south and goes through what was factories and is now the University of Nottingham's Jubilee Campus where I spent a lot of time last year. The Campus is based on a long, wide water feature... I wonder where they got that idea... Finally the canal reappears, as part of the River Leen.

Winter walks

With the continued good weather (yes, it's a bit chilly!) and volunteering not re-started yet, I've been doing some local walks. This is the view north-west from Big Wood, part of Bestwood Country Park. The building in the mid-distance is the Winding House, part of the old Bestwood Pit. Like many of Nottinghamshire's country parks, this one is partly based on an old colliery site and pit tip. And part of Sherwood Forest.
The chimneys in the background are at an old brickworks over near the M1. I fancy a walk over there to have a look at them close up.
Had a good sighting of a female Goldcrest picking over dead Willowherbs near Mill Lakes, and saw what I think were a crowd of Siskins in Alder trees, and a group of Linnets in a field near Bestwood Village. Then walked back to Sherwood via the Colliery Path into Arnold.

Chilly Happy New Year

Went armed with soup to Attenborough Nature Reserve and saw:

Mallard

Pochard

Tufted Duck

Goosander

Mute Swan

Egyptian Goose

Canada Goose

Heron

Cormorant

Great Crested Grebe

Moorhen

Coot

Black-headed Gull

Lesser black-backed Gull

Woodpigeon

Blackbird

Great tit

Blue tit

Robin

Sparrow

Crow

Magpie

And a family of rats who live underneath a bird-feeder.

There had been recent sightings of Bittern, Little Egret and even the fabulously-named Bohemian Waxwing but they were not evident to bad birdwatchers today. Actually I don't care, I'm generally very happy to see the 'usual suspects' as listed above. I visited Attenborough a few weeks ago and identified Wigeon for the first time which was satisfying.

All the best for 2009. I'm making no resolutions and no predictions - well, just one - it's going to be an interesting year!