Lockdown Day 19 - cycling again, future directions

Well, with today being a sunny and warm day, it was time to get some decent exercise again. We are lucky in that pretty much whichever direction you head from our house you can get out into the countryside and quiet roads very quickly although quite a lot of other cyclists had the same idea today, but it is easy to keep distance on roads with virtually zero traffic.

There was plenty to look at and hear as we went along. A good number of skylarks and chiffchaffs, linnets and other finches, as well as a single tree sparrow.

The hawthorn blossom is coming out as well as bluebells, buttercups and wild garlic in the woods and verges. We came across what looked like a fairly recently excavated entrance to a badger sett into a banking at the side of the road too.

My thoughts at the moment are turning to how and when things might return to some sense of normal. Even to the point of wondering whether they will. With no real prospect of a Covid-19 vaccine for 12-18 months for everyone, and with what will be a cycle of lockdown and periods of less stringent measures, the sense of what will survive this dislocation in terms of business, food production, educational methods, and environmental impacts is unclear. This is without even going into the human cost of all of this both on those that have and will sadly perish and those left behind, and indeed the impact on those that care for the sick and dying, those who stand to lose everything they have worked for and that they hold dear.

Without fundamental changes, our society is very fragile. Many political elites only serve themselves and those who fund them, the excessively rich hide their wealth. Many people are unquestioning of a diet of self-reinforcement of prejudices and hate and don't think beyond easy slogans and empty promises made at election time, and, to them, the vacuous stream of reality TV and celebrity gossip is often more important than the real issues in our society. Supply chains break easily, what is in good times almost taken for granted, the ease with which consumer goods, food and other commodities can arrive at their destination just in time or within a day of clicking a mouse button. Those who struggle to feed themselves or can't find work, or have disabilities that hamper their lives are demonised as a whole based on a few rogue examples splashed across tabloid pages, and their lives are made harder and hungrier by a system that just ticks boxes and creates more hoops no matter how many times one jumps.

Can we build a better system, a more caring society, a more equal, tolerant one where all are valued and rewarded for the essential nature of their role to others, rather than one where going to a particular school, knowing the right people in the establishment, pushing the right buttons on a keyboard in front of a trading screen gets you ahead no matter what the cost to others?

Can we capitalise on the benefits of a low car use economy, where remote working is the norm and pollution and emissions stay low? Can we remodel our consumption into only buying what we need rather than what we want and producing those items in an environmentally friendly and low emissions manner? Can we keep the customers using the local businesses, those with connection from farm to fork, those that serve customers not shareholders?

We have an opportunity here to remove the obstacles to that better future. The way is hard. The cost is great and much suffering is yet to come.

If you have read this far you probably have some affinity with the sorts of future systems and practices and political structures I am talking about. These things are possible and we need to mobilise whatever connections and outlets we can to bring this better future about. Don't be afraid to write to your elected representatives, join campaigns, get involved in community and environmental projects, raise concerns and work with others. Look at what you consume, evaluate what you need, what matters most in your life, what you can grow and provide for yourself and re-use and recycle. Support those in need how you can, with what you can. Use social media for good and drown out, block and report the nastiness and hate on and off line, call out the micro-targeting and misinformation. Invest wisely in those companies that seek to mitigate climate change, produce environmentally friendly products, support local communities and treat workers ethically. Don't be afraid to question, to challenge, to correct with facts.

It is do-able. Vested interests will seek to block, to delay, to water down, to silence and slander those who put themselves forward to make a better, fairer, more environmentally friendly future, but there are successes, there are positive changes that have happened that never seemed possible ten or twenty years ago.

We have this opportunity for change, not a situation you would wish on anyone, but there's hope too that it can be the catalyst for a better future for all of us.

Michelle

Lockdown Day 18 - Remembering the Camargue

Back in 2016, we took a holiday in the south of France. I am not one for hot weather, in fact I really quite struggle with it, and so we chose to visit the south coast in the Easter holidays when it was around 20 deg C (68F). Although we have travelled extensively in northern Europe this was the first time we have visited the Mediterranean, and we spent a few days in Marseille and also stayed in Arles. Arles is famous for the amazing Roman amphitheatre in the middle of the town which is still used for events and the Camargue form of bullfighting where the bullfighter picks a ribbon      from the bull's head and no harm is done to the bull. The fighters appear to be local celebrities, and one restaurant we went to (Le Tambourin) has the costumes of local bullfighters as well as trophies and memorabilia as well as very nice local food!

Whilst in Arles, we hired a car and went out for the day to the Camargue, the world famous wetlands and nature reserve around the salt pans on the coast. The main attraction here is the Greater Flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber) and they are all over the place around the reserve! In fact by the end of the day they were, well, almost quite unremarkable - we'd seen so many!

I believe this to be a Hairy Hawker dragonfly (Brachytron pratense) 

We came across this lovely creature when walking through the nature reserve from the visitors centre. I think you can just make out on the photo that it is just finishing up eating a fly while we were watching it.

This species also occurs in the UK and is on the wing from April to June.
https://british-dragonflies.org.uk/species/hairy-dragonfly/

 When we stopped at the visitors centre we were watching these Common Wall Lizards (Podarcis Muralis   Lézard des Murailles) scurrying about or sunning themselves on the walls. 

During our time in the Camargue there were many species of bird that were new to us, the first birds we saw were a tree full of Night Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) , Great White Egrets, a Cattle Egret, several species of Warbler, a Great Grey Skrike, an Osprey and Caspian Terns on migration, and a local rarity being a Slender-Billed Gull which only breed in limited numbers in this part of the world. 

Another surprise was a Coypu that we saw diving off a bank into a water filled channel. Once introduced to various parts of Europe or escapees from fur farms, they have become established in the Camargue but are really quite destructive to vegetation and bankings and efforts are made to eradicate them due to their effect on the wider ecosystem.

http://www.planetepassion.eu/WILDLIFE-IN-FRANCE/Coypu-Myocastor-coypus-Ragondin-in-France.html

Lockdown Day 17 - Wine Making - next stage

Today it was time for the next stage in the wine making, started on day 10

http://www.cashandcarrots.com/2020/04/lockdown-day-10-wine-making.html

The above article links back to previous blog posts on the method and equipment needed.

 This is the "must", the fermenting mixture of parsnips, raisins, yeast, lemon juice and sugar.

There has been a definite alcoholic smell in the kitchen when I have taken the lid off to stir the mixture during the past few days!

Once drained, the remaining contents go onto the compost heap.

Here I have two demijohns (turned out I only needed one but better to be over prepared.

Also needed is a funnel with three layers of muslin cloth to filter out bits of parsnip and raisins.

Also ready were the airlocks for the top of the demijohns. All equipment was sterilised with boiling water before use.

With the help of one of my daughters - holding the funnel steady - I then gradually drained the contents of the bucket through the muslin in the funnel into the demijohn. Mashing the must a bit does also extract some more liquid.

The liquid looks very cloudy at this stage but over the course of a few weeks gradually clears.

Once full, I fitted the airlock with a little bit of water in (to show whether fermentation is going on - once the water is level in the airlock fermentation has ceased, although I always leave it a little while after to be on the safe side as I once found a wine cork pop back out of a bottle!)

Now the demijohn is near the downstairs radiator for a bit - I will put it into one of the bedrooms out of the way eventually but I don't put the demijohn in a bedroom for a couple of weeks until the fermentation has slowed otherwise I get kept awake by bubbles popping as they pass through the water into the air!

Lockdown Day 16 - Open spaces

Just a brief log this evening. We are very lucky where we live in that you can quite easily go for a walk or cycle ride in various directions and hardly meet anyone, even in normal times.

There's several places where I like to go and experience solitude and wide open spaces, the countryside and nature. 

This is one of them. I regularly see skylarks near here, there's chaffinches and other hedgerow birds along the lane, and yellowhammers on wires and posts. Red Kites sometimes glide overhead and there's often a Kestrel hunting for a snack. 

Lockdown Day 15 - Remembering the Blue Whale

For today's blog I have decided to do another flashback, this time to one of our holidays in Iceland back in 2010. We've had two holidays up there, the first - in 2009 - was preceded by the bank crash in Iceland on the day I went to pick up the Icelandic Krona I had ordered from the bank! 2010 was the year Eyjafjallajökull erupted and we spent quite a few worrying evenings checking the ash cloud forecast and airline websites. Luckily we managed to get up there and indeed back again although while we were in the north of Iceland the ash cloud covered Rekjavik again and flights were cancelled for a couple of days, although again we missed out on the disruption. 

We had already had distant views of Minke whales and a Humpback whale when we took a boat trip to Grímsey which is an island just off the north coast of Iceland where you can cross the Arctic Circle (and get attacked by Arctic Terns and get a lifetime's supply of Puffins!) but we had also booked a whale watching trip from Húsavík . After getting all kitted out in waterproofs and lifejackets provided by the boat crew we set off out to sea. 

We stopped just off the coast as the crew had detected a Blue Whale on the sonar and you could see the shadow of it down beneath the water. 

After a few minutes it surfaced and we had good views of the animal as it came up for air and then dived down again. 

This particular whale was about 18 metres long and actually a young whale, the adults can grow to approximately 30 metres long (we have seen the world's only stuffed blue whale in Gothenburg and they are big!)

Blue whales are quite rare sights on whale watching trips from Húsavík, in fact only a small number of the tours see a blue whale although most tours do see at least one species of whale, so we consider ourselves very lucky. As this one was a young one, it needed to come to the surface more frequently and so we got quite a lot of time watching this amazing creature. 

Lockdown Day 14 - Wild flowers and Oystercatchers

After some welcome overnight rain, the weather quickly cleared up this morning and so it was time for another cycle ride while I still can - due to some irresponsible behaviour by some there are warnings by the Government about tightening up the lockdown. Where I cycle, on minor country lanes, I see very few people and the lanes are wide enough to pass any that I do see with two metres or more separation. Getting out into the countryside and seeing wildlife and other nature is something that I find relaxing and enjoyable and coupling that with some exercise on my bicycle is an healthy way to spend some free time.

In the two weeks since the lockdown started, Spring is really become apparent, with blossom in the trees and hedgerows, birds displaying and making nests and flowers coming into bloom. The weather has warmed up a bit, but coming back to the house today was very hard going in the strong wind.

Not too far from where I live is Askham Bog. Whilst today I didn't venture into the reserve, as the paths are really too narrow to have safe separation, across the other side of the A64 from the reserve is an area of wildflowers, gorse and ponds.

In the space of a week since I last cycled past the cowslips (Primula veris) have come into flower. There are a number of locations in my area that have verges filled with cowslips

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/plants/wild-flowers/cowslip/

Also flowering now are Primroses (Primula vulgaris). Less common round my area but there were many groups of these lovely yellow flowers in this area.

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/plants/wild-flowers/primrose/

This one took me a little while to identify as I am not sure it is natural to this part of the UK. It is a Grape Hyacinth and I suspect it is one of the introduced species that has escaped a garden at some point (Muscari armeniacum) rather than the native (Muscari neglectum) which I think is only found in East Anglia. Though I could be wrong and I am happy to be corrected by any botanist reading this!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscari_neglectum

And finally, the Oystercatchers! (Haematopus ostralegus) As I was cycling up Catterton Lane again today, this pair flew over and landed in the next field. They are skittish birds so I used the zoom lens on the camera to avoid getting too close. They started feeding in the ploughed field, probing the dirt with their long beaks for worms and other food. They breed in moorland areas of the UK, so they will have been using the Wharfe Valley as a migration route to the Pennines. While I was watching these birds, two lapwings starting displaying over the same field. Half a mile further on, two Skylarks were doing the same.

Lockdown Day 13 - Allotment

The weather was a lot warmer today and it really felt like Spring in the sunshine. So, it was back to the allotment to catch up on a few jobs.

First task was to plant out some early peas that have been growing first indoors and then in the lean-to greenhouse in the garden.

We have some very inquisitive house sparrows around the allotment who are very keen to take beak-sized chunks out of the leaves of pea plants so mesh netting is necessary to protect them until they are tall enough to withstand a few nibbles!

Though, with a sparrowhawk flying around this morning, I think they spent some time hiding in the hedge....

As the peas grow, we'll add taller sticks (leftover hedge and hawthorn clippings) to support the peas as they grow.

Our Meyer Lemon tree used to live in the house during the winter but was very prone to scale insect and even when in the yard in the summer, it had aphids and ants that would "farm" them.

So, last summer we took it up to the allotment and within weeks it was clear and looking very healthy. Always good to have natural pest control!

Of course, it needed protecting in the winter and it was wrapped in plastic to create a mini-greenhouse. Luckily the winter was mild but I do wonder how it would have fared in a colder one.

Now the weather is warmer, we have taken the cover off a bit but it will go on again if there's a late frost forecast, we have had frosts in early May here before now which have damaged potato leaves and damson blossom.

Last year we had a huge number of damsons, the most we have ever had from this tree. This is, although it has grand ambitions, a minarette damson and most years we will get damsons from it, apart from occasionally when there has been a late, damaging, frost.

There is some kind of moth that lays eggs on the fruit, a kind of sticky egg sack with pupae that burrow into the fruit causing it to shrivel and then drop off. This is easily rubbed off the fruit and it is a daily task in summer to keep them free of these.

There is also blossom on the Conference pear tree. Again this is a minarette tree and there is a Comice pear next to it. The Conference pears are much longer storing whereas the Comice ones are better eaten quickly or peeled and stored in sugar solution.

Jobs also done in the allotment today were chopping up hedge clippings into small pieces to form the base composting of the carrot tyre stacks and also digging over the area where the parsnips were now that they have all been harvested.