listening to Monteverdi

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Rather than my normal practice of writing this blog in the weekend morning before everyone else wakes up, I was pottering about with some other stuff on the computer this morning and never got round to writing this.

So I am writing this on Sunday evening, plugged into iTunes listening to some Monteverdi.

The benefit of writing this in the morning is that you have the sense of huge significance, that your every thought is of the greatest of moment, and infinitely deserving of being read by all and sundry, and preserved for posterity. By evening, some sense of perspective has returned and my meanderings seems less crucial.

So in the usual fashion, some random jottings.

I like to set my daughters a task to complete, today I had them out trying to find as many wild flowers as they can, with a promise of a small reward for every one that they can identify. Much scouring of a book of wildflowers, and they seemed to enjoy it, so a useful little challenge, with a pretty posy to finish with.

The weather has been a bit iffy this weekend, so I have had a chance for some gardening, mowing the lawn yesterday, and emptying out my home made big red composter, and putting in the slighty slimy contents from the usual municipal green composter. The good compost was taken and dug in, the soil is old clay, heavy and grey. I think I will be working to improve my soil here for years.

I have been out gathering pine needle mulch in the local woods, our soil is bound to be reasonably acid, but I am trying to grow some real acid lovers, cranberrys and blueberrys, so I am keen to give them even more acidity, with a mulch of pine needles. By the by, elsewhere in the garden I have found leaf mould tremendous stuff, I can't believe that some enterprising council does not sell it, simply gather up leaves in a chicken wire cage, leave for a year, and then you have a fine rotted mulch, and keeps the soild moist and amply boosts the organic content of the soil. I reckon on gathering ten sacks of leaves for my chicken wire cage each autumn, and this gives me a decent amount of mulch each early autumn when I empty out the cage.