Virtual home for Cliff Jenkins
Is it damson or blackcurrant jam?
Raspberry or strawberry?
Yellow Plum or Rhubarb?
With caffeine or is it decaf?
I am actually using the DYMO label printer to do my own labels for my seed trays e.g, beetroot, spinach, Cha Cha squash and lots more.
I produce the label, suing an “ABC” keyboard and press two buttons (one to print it and the other to cut it off)
Now I can re-use all my seed tags… AND
I can read every one.
What a wonderful and challenging experience
When I started the Classical Music group I realised that I didn’t know enough.
One of our group is a clarinetist so as a courtesy I looked into that.
Then I started thinking about violinists and this has been, and still is, a real joy, finding and listening to six violinists, and finding more Vivaldi and others. Hours of beautiful listening..
Wonderful.
At last the beans are thriving and the tomatoes look good.
All the spare flowers are also making the allotment look good.
So now we start next year.
We have ordered the overwintering onions and shallots. We have been given some local heritage strawberries.
Also we are trailing “Strulch” for keeping slugs at bay.
It’s amazing, it’s wonderful. At last all the work we have putin is worthwhile.
OK, the broad beans have been coming for some time. Now we also have th dwarf french beans, the runner beans and the butter beans all looking goo.
Similarly the Charlotte potatoes are looking though the Jazzy and Orla have not produced large crops, tasty though they are.
Whilst the tomatoes have hardly started, the cucumbers are prolific.
AND there’s the strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants.
in my battle, “winning against AMD”
A merest whim of an idea, could it become a sentence, or even a paragraph let alone a possibility of a new chapter in my battle with AMD.
I have noticed that as I can’t read a word then I can’t spell it so I can’t pronounce it properly.
So can I teach myself to read again?
So how to do it?
I have been getting closer for some time. I can read what I’m typing in Google Docs. AND on my Google Pixel 7 smartphone I can listen to it.
As I have a Gmail account I get all the standard software email, contacts, calendar/diary, word docs, spreadsheet, maps, Earth, Google 1 remote back-up, Google Search AND what is more All my files are instantly synchronised across all platforms namely laptop and smartphone.
And then Google launched the Pixel Tablet . The screen is three times the size of the phone, a higher quality, a faster processor and the software is identical.
When reading the line needs to be (say) twelve words so that there is a natural one.
Obviously I need to choose a font suitable for a computer screen e.g. Ubuntu or Verdana.
Then to experiment with Font size and Bold.
Other than the title this is Ubuntu, 22 listen, Bold
Now all I have to do is to update all my documents to Ubuntu, 11 Bold.
It started with the word “processional”.
Yes I remembered The Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco, The Triumphal March from Aida and then there was the March of Torreadores from Carmen.
Of course, I must not forget Vidor’s Toccata.
But finally I remembered the word Tannhauser,
That was it. Wagner wasn’t it.
And finally “The Pilgrims’ Chorus. What a magnificent sound when played on the church organ further helped with the sonorous base notes from the pedals.
OK it was only for one day but we did get the chance to replant some of our losses. We can still applaud our good fortune with the plants that have done well.
In particular our tomatoes and (after a battle) the runner beans, may be a little early. so we are calling any success.
AND just like farmers we now sit and wait.
11 May 2024 on the Allotment
As with the farmers and all other allotmenteers, we suffered a pretty appalling winter, too wet, too cold, no warmth. Just picture s field of mud.
We have resown all the failures and so start the spring with new hopes.
The prime performers so far are beetroot and celeriac, but none of the Mediterranean stuff.
Our polytunel we hope will be our saviour for the tomatoes and peppers are doing well as are cucumbers. Outdoors our beans may be OK.
Colleagues are experimenting with small Growhouses in their greenhouses so we will soon be trying one.
T‘was a cold and bitter spring
April 20th 2024.
We hope we’ve survived and that will all be due to the polytunnel.
We had to plant broad beans there because it has been so wet and cold.
Now we have sown runner beans in trays but then will move them to a cold frame in due course.
Meanwhile the tomatoes seem to be doing well.
To give us more space in the polytunnel the potato bags have been moved out.
We planted outdoors, a bed of leeks and onions and a bed of courgettes, plus six squash (3 Cha Cha, 3 Hokkido.
Next we need to plant out all the companion plants like marigolds and snapdragons, plus flowers such as s zinnias, cosmos, sweet williams. (Dahlias and Gladioli are already done and the first of the snapdragons are clumped in their pots.
Time to check?
Each one either makes life easier or means more money.
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