Compost Victory in Sight

Yesterday was a much better day, for I kept off the sugar and pressed on with work, cranking out four articles and passing along an additional quote to be added to a previously published one. Also, our Veg Trug arrived, both weeks later and weeks earlier than I expected. Beautifully designed in the West, it was shoddily manufactured in China, but B.A. wielded the wood glue, and all will be well. By the time it falls apart, the quarantine will be over and I can hire a lovely local to make me a proper raised bed out of good British oak.

After B.A. and I had built as much of the Veg Trug as we could without the gluing part, I went to Tesco in search of compost. All soil and compost had disappeared the day before, so I was not too hopeful. However, to my joy there was a full pallet of Miracle Grow All-Purpose compost, so I put it in my Ikea bag and lugged it home. 

This morning B.A. and I went back to Tesco with two Ikea bags before the NHS-and-Elderly Hour and each carried a 40 L bag of compost home. I feel that this is a great victory over the Vile Germ, the suspension of our civil liberties, and a car-centred society.  Only 140 L to go!

I also amused myself, yesterday evening and this morning, by conversing on Twitter with a gay Muslim You-Clap-For-Me-Now fan in Qatar and a White Nationalist from who-knows-where. I'm quite pleased that I didn't ask the Qatar chap how he treats his mother's maid and that I haven't pointed out to the White Nationalist lady  that the biggest enemy to ethnic homogeneity in European nations is the birth control pill. The first reply would have been cheap and the second  probably pointless, as White Nationalist lady might fervently agree with me and want to know how many children I have. 

The Qatari was slightly amazed I'm talking to the White Nationalist at all, but I'm always intrigued by people who stick by incredibly unpopular views. What lies beneath them? Do they have coherent arguments or just strong emotion caused by--what?  

(I do draw the line, however, at her idea that Canada and the USA have been "white countries." Not only have there been black people in North America since 1619, there have always been millions of First Nations people. Meanwhile, it seems inevitable that Latin America will spread upward into the USA, and if I were American, I would learn Spanish and get with the historical program.) 

I'm also glad I looked up the biography of Baroness Warsi before publicly suggesting she has more privilege in her little finger than the drunken young Scot who told me and a Polish shopkeeper to speak English. In fact, Baroness Warsi clearly worked hard to get where she is now, so mad props to Baroness Warsi. Meanwhile, the Polish shop has gone out of business, weep weep, so the shopkeeper may be as much a victim of history as the Scot.

Right-o. I was going to give up politics on my blog for the duration of the lockdown, and now look. The pull of ethnic politics is just too strong for me; I blame my elementary school's International Nights and Italy's World Cup victory in 1982.  

In gardening news, I also bought a strawberry plant, and it is sitting happily out-of-doors. And if all goes well, the Veg Trug will be finished today and filled with compost tomorrow. I will be able to plant my precious broad bean babies in it, a much richer environment than the old raised bed the radishes and lettuce are growing so slowly in.

Update: It did not end well with the Irish White Nationalist. He (turns out it was a he) She seems to lack intellectual integrity. But although pointing out that a vast number of disparate peoples fall under the category "white," I forbore from observing that at certain times in history, some unpleasant white people have regarded the Irish as subhuman. Of course, she could have replied that as she is dedicated to "White Togetherness", she objects to any European ethnic group labelling another subhuman. But ultimately she has decided that I have dismissed the apparent sufferings of white children in London, so no more interesting conversation.

Update 2: Actually we chatted some more, so I think it has ended pretty well.  

Eco-trad Husband Says Wife Must Freeze

On Monday I had the heat on in my office so that the apple juice would be nice and not-cold for the cider yeast. I enjoyed the cocoon of warmth so much, I put the heat on on Tuesday, too. But as soon as Benedict Ambrose came home, he turned it off and said this was worse for the planet than plastic-wrapped vegetables.

This is actually true according to the scary books I am reading, for although plastic is terrible, fossil fuels are responsible for all the carbon in the atmosphere. So even though I knew B.A. was really worried about the fuel bill, I had no reply except that I was cold. 

He then told me to put on a jumper but I don't have a jumper (long story), so I eventually put on my 100% cotton bathrobe. But I am still cold and worried about my apple cider. Apple Cider 2018 spent October in a toasty warm cupboard in the bathroom and turned out beautifully. What will happen to Apple Cider 2019, I wonder. 

I love Scotland and I very much love Scottish architecture, but one very big problem in British life--in my experience, anyway--is that buildings are cold and damp instead of warm and dry like Canadian ones. My theory is that Canadians acknowledge and understand the cold, whereas Scots pretend it isn't there or that there is nothing they can do about it, save airing comedy episodes featuring Glasgow pensioners freezing to death. 

Alongside being very cold instead of turning on the heat in mid-September, I have helped the environment by making low-sugar chocolate cookies instead of buying anything in a packet. I would feel more of a virtuous glow if I hadn't already eaten so many of them. 

Yoga Pants are Killing the Planet

Bad news for the wee lassies who love comfort above all---their yoga pants (or leggings as we say in the UK) are made of plastic and are therefore bad for the environment. 

In fact, they are inflicting violence upon the oceans, which means that the are violating the yogic principle of "ahimsa" (non-violence).

Thus, yoga pants are a contradiction in themselves. Bad, bad yoga pants.

Also, they cost $90 or more at Lululemon, so come on. 

In fact, we have enough made-made clothes to last us several lifetimes*, and there is no point to the fashion trade anymore except in natural textiles like cotton, wool and silk even then I'd want to know about the factory run-off.

Yes, I am becoming an eco-warrior this week, but that's partly because I don't think the environmental movement should be left to the Malthusians.  When someone sneers at Traditional Catholics for having "so many children," it would be great to say, "Actually, there's a very strong interest in ecology among Traditional Catholics. For one thing, we are very disturbed about the effects of pollution on fertility, and for another, our children take a keen interest in the sciences that will save the planet, not useless degrees in Gender Neutral Basketweaving. "

I must talk to the Notre Dame mother about this. She took a kicking because she politely asked the young ladies women of Notre Dame to stop wearing yoga pants at Mass, etc., out of modesty. If she had written harshly to them about the cost of the environment, they might have signed a pledge never to buy another pair.

*Although as washing them sends thousands of plastic microfibres into the sea, maybe it's best just to be rid of them (how?) and wear and wash 100% cotton, wool, etc. Meanwhile you can wash them less and also use a Guppyfriend bag, apparently. It too is made of plastic, but is apparently "recyclable".

The Excellence of Chickens

It is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone in Britain who can afford it should buy a little place in the country for the weekend repose and relaxation of his or her friends. Fortunately for us, we have such dutiful friends, and on Saturday after B.A. went to work, I went to the railway station where I missed my train by approximately 15 seconds.

Fortunately there was another train, so after a noisy cry (during which a foreign young man tried to comfort me, thus underscoring how very foreign he must have been), I got on it and went to my friend's little place in the country, which is half farmhouse and half Georgian grandeur.

To be precise, I went to the railway station nearest this Eden, and after my friend took me to her house, she remembered the dog food she had bought near the station, so she drove back to get it, leaving me in the chicken shed.

The chicken shed is a kind of large wooden box, about 7 feet high and 14 feet long and wide, with a plank outer door to the world and a chicken-wire inner door to the chickens, who live in one of two pens. Despite all this glorious space, there are only three of them. They are Rhode Island Reds and beautiful.

It was sunny, and as I stood among the chickens, who clucked and scratched away at the straw around my Wellington boots, I looked out through the open outer door at my friend's black lab sitting in the grass and beyond him (and a little to the left) at my friend's black-and-white cat sitting under a bush.

It was very, very peaceful.

After I fed the chickens, I went out both doors and around to their run and took the rock and the screen away from their pop-hole so they could enjoy grubbing around their orchard. They are enormously lucky hens in that their run contains at least one apple tree, so they can peck at apples or apple-eating bugs all they like. They also enjoy scratching at the earth while chuckling in a manner very soothing to the human ear.

And I thought that if you spend hours and hours every day in such worldly toils and cares as (for example) writing your 15th article about the McCarrick scandal, one excellent antidote is to spend some time with chickens, watching them peck and scratch in their tiny-brained way.  Minus chickens, it might be almost as relaxing as to play with blocks with toddlers. Watching chickens all day might become as boring as I'm told it is to play with toddlers all day, but as a change from brainwork both are excellent.

Another excellent thing to do is go on long walks through the Scottish countryside with the hospitable friend, who is wearing bright rain jacket so neither of you is mistaken for a duck/grouse/deer and shot. You walk over hill and under dale and climb over fallen trees (or crawl under fallen trees) and fall in the mud and get deliciously tired before dark and sitting down to a splendid supper. Naturally before eating you put the screen and the rock in front of the pop-hole after having checked that the chickens are all now companionably roosting together in a great feathery squash.

Hens

"Hen" is an old-fashioned term of endearment in Scotland whose usage is falling off as it is now considered insensitive to women's new place in society, blah blah.

That's a great pity, for I much prefer being called "hen" to being called "pal", which used to be reserved for men. Democratic Scotland doesn't care for "sir" or "ma'am" although I suppose we would all "sir" and "ma'am" to the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay, were they to toddle by our places of work to open a new wing, etc.  Maybe when I'm older more bus drivers will call me "hen" instead of "pal" because I remind them of their grannies; something nice to look forward to.

"Hen" is also not used overmuch by people who went to university or by foreigners like me, as it sounds funny in our non-Scots accents. B.A. some times calls me "hen" which leaves me in a bind as it sounds wrong to call him "pal" in return. I'm not sure what Scotswomen call their "partners" (another awful word) because the only Scotswomen I know either do not have partners or abstain from endearments in public.

Meanwhile, I have been reading all about hens because I am hoping to buy some in the spring and ensconce them in a hideously expensive but easily cleaned chicken coop under the apple tree.

Hens are the tentative solution to my need to mother somebody or something. B.A. does not want pets in the house, so hens are our compromise. Unfortunately, hens are a lot more work than cats and dogs, and you have to have two or three of them at once, as they hate living alone. But they do lay eggs, and they can be taught to love you through food-bribery, and they even enjoy a bit of a cuddle, so they may be worth all the attention, cleaning, worming, and tremendous chain and padlock I will have to buy.

The most depressing thing I read in the chicken books--and if you want to keep chickens the first thing you must do is read all about them--is that in urban settings you need to worry about humans even more than foxes because humans will steal eggs, chickens, coop and all. That was almost a deal breaker for me, for the last thing I want to worry about is serious sin. I write about serious sin all day long, and I do not want to tempt serious sinners into our garden with chickens.

Although chickens seem to pay their way through egg-production, they are not very economical pets, even if you buy or build a cheap chicken-coop yourself.  You have to buy chicken feed, grit, bedding, disinfectant, biannual de-wormer powder, a feeder and a drinker, and the occasional cabbage or head of broccoli so they get their greens. This seems more involved than being a cat-mother, who has  fewer things to buy: a comb, a collar, Meow Mix, Whiskas, a litter box, litter, and scoop. Being a chicken-mother is certainly more expensive than popping into Tesco for eggs.

Thus, poultry-keeping comes down firmly under the heading of "HOBBY", and as I already have a hobby--learning Polish--I have to ponder if I really have the time and money to invest in it. It would be easier to get a cat, but B.A. is adamantly against cats and my brother Nulli is deathly allergic to them, so he'd never be able to visit.

In case I haven't mentions, B.A. is adamantly against cats because he firmly believes that they creep into your bed at the crack of dawn and wake you up, and if you prevent them from doing this by firmly shutting the bedroom door, they avenge themselves by scratching the furniture.

I complained to cat-adoring pals about B.A.'s intransigence, but when I explained his reasons, they notably did not say that these reasons were unfounded.

B.A. is also against owning dogs, in part because of the terrible environmental damage to urban and semi-urban parkland caused by dogs and their owners. There are approximately 640,000 dogs in Scotland, and their urine is murder on trees and other plants. What their droppings can do to human beings is no joke. After twelve years at the Historical House, B.A. has seen just too much dog-damage to the precious Historical Landscape.

Chicken droppings, however, make a good fertiliser. So, now that I think about it, although chickens might not make strictly economical pets, they are environmentally friendly.

Gardening Tools

Happy birthday, honey!

I am fascinated by "Early Retirement" blogs although it really is too late for me to retire by 40, let alone 30. Why people are writing about this only now (or, to be honest, from around ten years ago--I am always late to trends) is beyond me. I seem to recall pondering how much money people make in their lifetime but not that they could SAVE most of it.

While thinking about what careers would best fund a writer, it never occurred to me to work like a slave for 10 years, save at least 65% of the money and shove it all into index funds that eventually make me $20,000 a year. Then I could quit and write all day long. 

If I wrote advice for teenagers, that would be my advice. Get trained in something highly valuable, work like a slave for 10 years while saving as much as possible, and only THEN go to Paris to sit around writing/painting about Le Beau Homme Sans Merci or whomever.  

This rather flies in the face of my advice to have children as soon as you graduate from university, so either marry a young man who is eager to retire in ten years, and do the hard graft of scrimping and saving from the distaff side, or start work at 16, doing your pre-university courses at night school. 

Dear heavens, I have just looked up the UK wages for apprentices. Never mind starting work at 16. Finish high school, do a 3 to 4 year uni course in something useful, work like a slave for a decade/get married to willing-worker-like-slave (if can find), have babies (if applic.), then work part-time for fun when can. Do not read Vogue, Elle or Marie Claire.

I do not know about you, but I think if I were a man I would find it very thrilling if I took a woman out to dinner and she told me her life goal was to be financially independent by 32 so she could retire and have babies and fun forever more. I imagine this person having one tube of lipstick--a Christmas present from her mother--and one date dress--ditto--carefully preserved in a cloth garment bag when not in service.  

I have wandered far from my chosen topic, which purports to be garden tools. Well, the one extravagance allowed by my Early Retirement gurus is high-end tools, possibly because they are men and really like high-end tools, but also because such things retain their resale value and last decades. Now that B.A. and I have a garden, and we need tools, I did some research to determine which garden tools count as high-end and went out this morning to buy some. 

It is a bit odd, after buying supermarket own-brand pizza on the grounds that it is £1 cheaper than our favourite, to spend £132.95 on garden tools, but that is what I have done. The big expense was the Fiskars hedge shears, which cost so much that they will live indoors, not in the tool shed. 

"Happy birthday," said I to Benedict Ambrose upon mentioning the price of these hedge shears. 

For I correctly intuited that BA would enjoy the thought of cutting the hedge with such a righteous piece of kit, and the pruning shears alone inspired him at once to cut up the embarrassing sapling sprouting over our rose bushes towards the neighbour's garden. 

Mr Money Moustache says that when you go shopping you should have a hot shower afterwards to wash off the shopping juice. I am both horrified that I have spent £132.95 all at once and deeply desirous of adding grass shears and secateurs to my arsenal in the tool shed (and spare room).  

Over supper I casually mentioned to B.A. that I might dig up part of the lawn to make a vegetable bed, and he thought this a good idea as long as I pick a spot not under the clothes lines.  I am pleased by this although, speaking as a North American, it seems slightly heretical to dig up part of the lawn. I mean, the  LAWN! 

Splash!

Water, water everywhere...

Last night B.A. and I were congratulating each other on our first weekend as homeowners. We celebrated with pizza and wine. Afterwards we noticed that the hall carpet was a bit wet. The radiator didn't seem to be leaking, so we assumed the water had come from the food-scraps pail, which I had rinsed outside with rain water.

This morning the hall carpet was sodden, and we realised it HAD to be the radiator. To add insult to injury, water was coming in through the roof into the crawlspace in the spare room, thanks to hours of rain.

A phone call to the roofer who had given the seller's solicitor an estimate back in July revealed that he was booked up until October.

Fortunately, a phone call to the plumber who fixed our boiler last week brought him by 3 PM, so that's the damp carpet sorted. So far we have the red plastic basin under the leak in the roof.

I am adding "Home Repairs" as an item in the monthly household accounts. Home repairs counts as an investment, not as consumer spending---or so goes my soothing mantra.

Composting tip. B.A. looked it up: coconut oil can summon rats. No coconut oil is going in the compost heap.

Root by Root

Today I buried more vegetable scraps and dug a few more weeds out of our lawn. My plan is to root out a few dandelions every day, and thus one day they will all be gone. Slow and steady wins the race, as they say.

I also called a tax accountant. Tax forms terrify me more any part of ordinary modern life. Lucky me: I now have to pay taxes in TWO countries. The fact that I actually got around to calling the accountant is something to be proud of, but actually I burst into tears afterwards, thinking about the lack of any acknowledgement from Canada that I sent them THEIR tax forms in April. 

This reminds me that my biggest enemy in life has always been procrastination. And thus I try to create unbreakable daily habits to save me from the horrors of the inevitable consequences of inaction. 

A friend once told me she was in church one day and heard a voice tell her that if she continued to live the way she was living, she would go to hell. That frightened her very much. 

My biggest earthly fear is that I will become dependent on the state. I once worked in a government office that dealt with people dependent on the state, and although people from multi-generational welfare families didn't mind battling with us, or--if streetpeople--passing the time of day with people who spoke pleasantly to them,  the formerly independent suffered agonies of humiliation.  

My biggest earthly fears for the future are 1. that free, independent peoples will find themselves enslaved by ideological tyrants with no respect for national customs, nature, or common sense; and 2. that future generations will be poisoned by the results of our consumerism. 

I am not actually worried anymore about the implosion of the Roman Catholic Church because, to get political for a moment although I said I wouldn't, the sooner we find out all the bad stuff AND SCRUB IT OUT, the sooner we can rebuild. I'm hoping and praying, not for Vatican III, of course, but for Trent II. 

Assumption Day

It's the Feast of the Assumption, and we celebrated at home after 6 PM Mass with wine and cake.

Originally I was going to bake this cake, but then I couldn't find an oven thermometer at Tesco. All the markings on our new-to-us oven have worn away, which makes baking cakes unwontedly difficult. Not finding a thermometer, I put the butter, self-raising flour and vanilla back on their shelves. The eggs I retained for future omelettes, and we ate Tesco Luxury Victoria Sponge instead.

As I transform into Crunchy Trad or, more euphoniously, Eco-Trad, I am determined not to waste any food and to save as many applicable kitchen scraps for my new compost heap. Benedict Ambrose is curious about my desire to be both frugal and non-wasting and wonders which characteristic will win.

I am not so certain that frugality and non-wasting are opposed. This morning I was going to go to B&Q to buy a compost bin for £25, but then I bethought me that £25 was a lot of money to spend all at once on a piece of moulded plastic. Presumably my ancestors had compost heaps before the advent of plastic, so I went online to see what they might have done. And lo, they might have made their own compost bin out of stakes and wire mesh.

But not having stakes and wire mesh, I went outside with the kitchen scraps, dug a shallow hole in a corner of the garden, and filled it with scraps. Then I put some dirt over it, and voilà: the beginnings of my compost heap. Tomorrow I will turn it over, throw in today's scraps, and send B.A. to the Historical House to beg some wooden pallets from the Historical Gardener. Then we will make a wooden compost bin, and all for free.

I also enjoyed myself by sweeping up the leaves and bug-chewed windfalls under the apple tree, pulling out a few weeds, and cleaning our recycling box, which a neighbourhood cat had mistaken for its litter tray. That last was not terribly enjoyable, but when the task was over, I could dump the recycling into the box and put it in the garden shed for later.

All Scots with gardens seem to have a garden shed. One of the nicest characteristics of the Scots is their obsession with gardening. I believe they share this mania with the English. Every dwelling in Edinburgh, no matter how poor and mean, seems to have a well-tended garden in front of it, even if that means a vast lawn of pebbles and one cherished rosebush. I have never, ever seen a rusted vehicle on a Scottish front lawn.

I thought that when B.A. got older, he would revert to type and start gardening away like 99.99% of Scotsmen with gardens. What I did not imagine was that after we put a bid on a property with a garden, I would begin to moon over horticultural books and look for advice on the care and feeding of apple trees.

All day I have been wondering if there is a connection between Our Lady and an apple tree. (I do not, by the way, associate the homely apple with Eden. I am sure the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a lot more exotic and fiddly, like a pomegranate.)  But B.A. said just now that there is a Protestant poem called "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree", and I see that it is a carol, too.

JESUS CHRIST THE APPLE TREE

From Divine Hymns or Spiritual Songs,
compiled by Joshua Smith, New Hampshire, 1784

Tune by Elizabeth Poston, 1905-1987

1. The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.

2. His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne'er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.

3. For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
I missed of all; but now I see
'Tis found in Christ the apple tree.

4. I'm weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest awhile:
Under the shadow I will be,
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

5. This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive;
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.

From The Hymns and Carols of Christmas