Happy Solstice

Happy Solstice Everyone

Its down hill all the way now into spring!!
Thinking about –
Days getting longer - lighter later.
Sowing Seeds
Outdoor fires
Full moons
Clear nights, crisp days, calm seas
Garden plans
2010 calendars full of exciting events.

Have a great Solstice and New Year.

Fleecing cold

Minus 3.5 overnight last night!  I am waiting anxiously to see if my attempts to protect my more vulnerable vegetable has been successful.  I fleeced the carrots, beetroots, peas, celery, broccoli, but not the spinach & rocket.  The temperature in the greenhouse got down to + 7 last night so I am not concerned about the tomato plants yet, have yet to see what the temperature was in the Polly tunnel.  Inside the house our wood stoves are keeping us cosy!

Snow (not sea!) Dog

Merri's sculpture of Zero our dog.  About 10cm of snow yesterday and the scool closed for the last day of term - much to Merri's relief (she had been hassleing us mercilessly!

Its up to us now!

As predicted the Copenhagen summit seems lokely to fail to deliver the action on climate change we need.. On the positive side there is a rapidly growing grass roots movement to tacckle th problem ourselves.  It has always been true that the way humans use the earth and her resources is a matter for personal responsibility.  There are now lots of groups such as the Transition Movement and loads of information on the web. Changeing our life to be less damageing to the world and our future has never been more satisfying.  http://www.transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/12Steps

Rainforest for christmas

I have found a great site for giving rain forest for Christmas presents! www.coolearth.org  Give your friends a present with real meaning this year (with a clear concience!)
http://www.coolearth.org/

Solstice or Christmas

Hi,
In common with many other people I guess I find this a difficult time of year.  It seems to have become a time dedicated to consumerism instead of what is to me a turning of the year when the night start to become shorter and the days longer.  I know we have the coldest time of the year to come but somehow I feel more optimistic and start to think about the spring instead of the winter.  My favorite way of marking the season is round an outdoor log fire, not something that is easy to do in a town!  I also like to think abnout the seeds I want to plant in the new year and to sort through the seed boxes.  Anyway, wether you are thinking about Christmas or the Winter Solstice have a good celebration.

On the Radio!!

Just had an interview on BBC Essex about EcoDIY.  The Copenheigan talks are raising interest about saving CO2 etc so a good bandwagon to jump on I recon!  Graham Bannerman who was a sympathetic interviewer though I am always kicking myself after these interviews about the things I didnt say such as plugging the ever growing numbers of people involved in sustainable living through Transition Towns and other networks. Still it all helps and many drips wear away the stone etc etc.

Our abortive trip to westminster

Our trip to the climate change wave was scuppered by national rails's chaos. We got as far as Colchester (with 6 other people an there we stayed for two hours till we gave up and came home!  We videoed a 'wave' on colchester station in solidarity (will put it on facebook later) Still we had lots of time to talk with the other 'wavers' which was great and still had time to hang walpaper in the extended bit of the kitchen (a cloud with a silver lining)

Seeing the light!

We just received two LED light bulbs bought from the internet. These bulbs are ultra low power consumption but in the past haven't been able to produce as much light as we needed and the light was quite a cold white. I am happy to report we are very pleased with the new bulbs, they give a nice warm light and enough of it to light the spaces we are using them in. The bulbs have a GU10 fitting so they replace halogen bulbs in the GU10 fittings. We bought two cheaper bulbs at £5 these are about 2watt and rated to give the light equivalent of a 25 to 30 watt halogen bulb and one
4w GU10 Maxilux Zenigata LED at £23 rated to give equivalent or 50watt halogen. The bulbs came from http://www.yourwelcome.co.uk/ These LEDs are expensive at the moment but we will be investing in more of them and watching out for developments as the price (hopefully) comes down in the future.

A (Tail) Tale of a fish

  The  tale of the fish and the ducks.   A sad end to the experiment of the ducks and the fishpond this morning; I hoped that the ducks would confine themselves to eating greens, invertebrates and small fry when I gave them access to our pond. This morning I had the sad sight of two of the larger fish that the ducks had mauled to death in the effort to eat them (they were to big for them to eat). So the ducks are banned from the pond. I am starting to think that the ducks won’t fit easily into the ecology we are trying to balance here in our small (half acre) space!

Good news on co2 emissions.

 Now for some good news - A report from the United Nations show a fall in CO2 emissions due to recession and energy efficiency measures see -http://en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=2146  A respite we must take advantage of before growth becomes rampant again!

Bad news for Clacton and Jaywick

The BBC is reporting today that a group of prominent polar scientists are saying that the Antarctic ice is melting fasster than expected, they are predicting a sea level rise of up to one and a half meters (over 4 ft ) by the end of the century -  more than enough to flood Jaywick and large areas of Clacton and the Essex coast.  See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8387137.stm 
Meanwhile our MP is rubbishing climate change on his blog and in a recent Guardian interview,  Help!