The Veg Patch

This is how the veg patch has evolved after some time. Some leaves are appearing on the berry-stick-things and the onions are rearing their heads. Still no sign of the potatoes, they should be on the right. Well, they are on the right, underground. My guess is they've already been eaten by earth worms and ants. A big, short rain and hale storm swept of this part of the country yesterday, so it got a good drenching. All the plants need some massive amounts of water. Some even have drooping leaves.

From studying to soldering

It's back to fixing stuff for the mo. I handed in my paper this morning. Finally done with it. It turned out to be a good 46 pages of full text and I added another 9 or so image mash=ups. My eyes are a little sore from staring at the computer screen.
Ah well. All in a good cause.
Now on to the next ones. I have just under three weeks to write up another two. Wish me luck.

Grassplantation gone wrong

Dr Livingstone's grassplantation has gone awry. It hadn't rained in a fortnight and it has gone all brown. Hopefully it will start to grow again, after the few drops we've had over the last two days. It isn't much, bit it might spark a bit of life into the bits of lawn, now looking very much like crude band aids.

I love the smell of sewage water in the morning

Before Dr Livingstone left to tour he managed to borrow a water pump and pump out all the water that was in a pit in front of the garage. Funny Tragic thing is, the tank has no outlet. Very strange. The water can't sink into the bottom either, as it has a concrete floor. This is puzzling. Luckily it is now nearly empty. It is where the dirty water from the washing machine goes. And possibly even the rainpipes from the car port. But we haven't figured that one out just yet, as it hasn't rained here for weeks. Well, it did very briefly on Friday afternoon, but that barely lasted more than half an hour.
There was also a toilet hooked up to it, but we removed that one. It currently resides in a skip at the container park.
Needles to say the odor coming from the tank was a strange blend of sewage water with a hint of lavender fabric softner.
As I said to Dr Livingstone at quarter to seven in the morning: 'I love the smell of sewage water in the morning'.
We pumped the lot in the adjoining field very early so our nosy neighbours didn't have to inquire in our waste removal activities.
So another job well done! And a big thanks to S. for lending us his pump!

Interesting blooms

With great anticipation I'm watching these flowers at the front door. This week some extra's have popped out and are keeping me interested every time I'm passing. Wonder how high they'll grow before they change colour/open up/do something else to confuse me.

A glass of flowers

I decided to cheer the place up a bit now Dr Livingstone is out on the road again for a three month stint.
Like Mrs Bucket says: 'Bring the outdoors indoors'. So I cut off a whole bunch of lilies, bound them up together with some string and put them in a champagne glass. I'm not the sort of woman to hoard vases in all different kinds of shapes and sizes.
They smell absolutely yummy. I hope they last a good while.
There are enough in the garden anyway, I might as well enjoy them inside as I can't go out in this beautiful hot weather. The sun blinds the computer screen and I need to finish this paper I've been slaving over this week.

From dull things comes beauty

I love all the pretty flowers outside. I made a small round up of the ones emanating their lovely intense colours and smells.
We've got skimmia (bottom right) all around our circle patio and climatis (bottomon left) the car port! Still waiting to find out what kind, I'm not very good at determination by leaves or other stuff. Also, the garden is simply teeming with lily of the valley (centre). I do miss the lovely magnolia we had in our old garden. That smelt terrific too.

We've also got some awesome red flowers (top left) and lovely light pink blossoming trees (I hope their fruit, but that would be a bit too much to hope for). There is a tree that is supposed to be a cherry tree. The neighbours told us it was dead. It isn't it is just bothering them I think. I trimmed some dead branches away, I need to get onto the ladder to do it, but that'll be for another season.

Emmanuelle chair

Mouser giving away an impersonation of Sylvia Kristel.

Under two hours

Not even two hours. That's how long it took.
Yesterday I put some junk at the roadside so passers-by could take it. All I added was a sign: Free lawnmower.
It was an electric mower that the people who we bought the house from left behind. It was junk. The electric leads were bare, the traction was broken. And I have trouble mowing with a cable anyway. It takes way too long to shift it so I don't run over it.
The mower was gone when Dr Livingstone got home. I had only put it there just two hours before.
Looks like people here are pretty desperate to mow their lawns.
I hope the sucker who took the thing home doesn't electrocute himself.

Plans have been found

The plans have been found. They'd gotten buried under tons of other stuff that had nothing to do with my research.
So it was off to the archive again. Took some pictures, put my brain to work. I'm transforming it into text as we speak. Still a long way to go, but we're getting there. I'm on page 13 or so and steadily progressing. I've also done some illustrations and worked out some visual comparisons which I'll shove in somewhere in the back.
I was also working on an interactive website, but I'll see if I still have time to finish that up.
Anyway, must get back to creative writing before my cup of coffee runs out and writer's block sets in again.

Mystery Morph

I'm keen to find out what everything will be turning into when it flowers. There's some strange looking leaves shooting up in front of the front door. They're ultra thin. This week something that will become a flower of some kind popped up in between. It's just as flat as the leaves. Strange. I think it could be some kind of gladiolus. But I wouldn't put any money on it just yet.

Gardening schemes (part 3)

We did this about a month or so ago, but due to lack of time I haven't blogged on this part of the garden. We pulled out plants with the car before (read all about in Diggin' in the dirt), but this small adventure kind of got on our nerves. It was car vs plant. Needless to say the plant won. Dr Livingstone put a noose around the thing, hooked it up to the tow and drove off. We only managed to pull off some bark. The rest, annoyingly, stayed in the ground. I did manage to clean some stuff up, but we're far from having accomplished the tabula rasa action.
I trimmed the bush that will sport some pink flowers later this year (yes, I don't know the name of that bush either). The only thing I did was cut away all the dead twigs and the ones growing in the wrong direction. It does look rather unscrupulously done, but it's all for the best.
It looks really neat from the before and after pictures I took.
When term is over and exams are finished I will dig around some more.

Gardening schemes (part 2)

The gardener in Dr Livingstone has awoken. I thought he wasn't serious about wanting a veg garden, but when I got home from the mill he had already prepared a little bed to plant some stuff. I had bought three roots of red gooseberry. I'd like to have fruit I can simply pluck off and eat. [With a good wash of course. That darn black Bonney cat sprays everywhere, I assume these new plants will not escape the obligatory baptism.]
He had preformed a grasplantation and filled up the lawn where the conifer had once stood and its acid in needles eaten away everything.
I also bought some onions to plant, but far too many.
There wasn't anything else to put into the ground, so I got a couple of potatoes and some garlic from the kitchen.
Yeah, that's right. We actually haven't got a clue what we're doing.
I think he even forgot to water everything after he buried the lot.
Lulz.
The veg patch is of a very discreet nature if you can see the scale of (a small part of the garden which goes on and on behind the wall of (yet more) conifer.

Prepare the guest room

Well, they weren't at home to Mr(s) Cockup. I was in front of the building I'm doing a paper on. Neighbour who was getting rid of all the moss on his drive way with a water pressure hose shouted they weren't in. 'Their car isn't there so they must be out'.

Fantastic. They're not in the phone book, there's no name on the letter box. Just my luck they're not in on the day I drive 252 kilometers (with the price of diesel this time of year!).

So no trick or treat. And yes, I guessed correctly, they are old age pensioners, very reclusive. The man across the street doesn't even know them.
Even the woman down the village library Oh, I know everyone in the village except them didn't have the foggiest.

Anyway, I took some pictures from the outside, sat in the pub till the local library opened, rang the bell again (still no one home) and then returned home.

The paper is coming along nicely now though. I've typed up eleven pages and still haven't scratched the surface of it. Ah well.

Plans are missing

I spent all day in the archive yesterday. I was planning on thumbing through some plans of the project I'm currently working on.
I've already waded through some extensively boring administration and letters penned in ink & gruesome 19th century handwriting.
So on to the plans. And I found out they ... weren't there. -_-
Someone had already taken them away to archive heaven. The archivist there yesterday (there's about 5 of them, all working part time or something) didn't know anything about it. So I emailed the archivist archiving the archives I'm working on to see if she could find the plans for me once again.
My paper is due at the end of the month and I'm starting to get a little bit worried now.

Bleh. Today I'm going to visit the little town and the building I've been doing research on.
I'm going to play trick-or-treat. I have to ask the people who live there if I can come in and have a look around.
Wonder how that's going to be.
'Hi there, I'm a student from the x University, currently writing a paper on the architect of your house.
I do not look like a student, as I am already in my thirties. It's ok if you do not trust me to let me in, especially with all the break-ins that have been happening in the area. Yes, I have a camera with me to photograph the building, not to inventorise your belongings to flog them after I've cleaned the place out.'

I wouldn't let me in if I was them.

Business as usual

Went down to Brussels to meet up with some friends on tour with Jamiroquai. Very nice to see them all again. Some of them I haven't seen since touring with that band.

They were all well. Mending and healing from broken bones, limping on busted kneecaps and nursing their hangovers.

Solidarity Button

I bought my solidarity button at the faculty library last week. All proceeds of the sale are going to the Japanese Red Cross.

Here's a link to the Japan Earthquake and tsunami donation page.

Gravity map

ESA presented new results of the GOCE gravity mission. Here's an example of a gravity map. This is what earth looks like if modelled on the strenght of gravity. Blue areas (the flat ones) have less pull on objects, red and orange parts (the bulges) more.