More sculptures from the Savill Gardens - my favourites

I liked the care that had gone into creating this figure.

And I especially like the toes

 

Here is another metal person - interesting because you have a form, you have the view of the garden beyond the form through the gaps, and you also have reflective material. It's very light and whimsical - life size.

 

News from Russia: dissidence and porn

Bad news for the right to express an opinion. There is a law in Russia that you can't protest in public about anything. On the Crossing Continents programme a reporter covered a very brave man who kept getting arrested for marching, on his own, with a placard that wasn't at all outrageous. It was such a waste of police time! and they were driving this poor man mad. One thinks of Winston Smith in 1984. Big Brother was certainly watching this poor bloke. The rest of the Russians didn't seem to care a damn that their fundamental liberties had been taken away. This is a serious programme. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07pj822
However, Putin has found a way to make the Russians cross.

From The Week:

The Russian state has blocked access to free porn websites, amid much outrage. Millennials view the concept of free, readily available porn as a human right, and any attempt to suggest that they shut their eyes and try to imagine rude things with their own brains as Luddite, draconian and plain kinky. One frustrated Russian contacted the state censorship department on Twitter demanding "an alternative", and was advised: Dear Lyola, as an alternative you can meet someone in real life.     There's a kernel of sense here. Turning off internet port might be character-building for our nation's youth. Perhaps experiencing 1980's style arduous sexual yearnings might stop them whining..." Grace Dent, the Independent.

Savill Gardens - Botanical 2

I somehow missed out these pictures but some of them were taken around or in the temperate house. I've never really seen the point of the temperate house but I liked it yesterday.



Gunnera again - they specialise in this

 

Sculpures at the Savill Gardens

I am not a great photographer. I took these pictures with my phone because it has this great property; it stills the image and then takes a photo of it, which helps me because I seem to be very wobbly.

The sculptures were mainly rather twee and whimsical, and they are for sale, so if you like this sort of things you should go to the Savill gardens and go shopping this month. I'm going to post my favourites in another post.

 

I was trying to take a pic of the family reacting to the sculptures

Label for this sculpture

this is meant to be a heron I think

Happy! Saville Gardens - Botanical

Yesterday I decided it was a long time since I had been to the Savill Gardens and I would have a brisk walk around. To my surprise - I enjoyed it enormously and spent a good hour walking all over the place. I think it was due to the autumn morning light. It's subtle and golden. There were sculptures on display and I tried to photograph the best aspect of the ones I liked. There were also some flowers. With inspired planting, Dahlias look great at this time of year. This first picture shows the wonderful light. My next post with be the pictures of the sculptures.

Too much light, from wherever I stood.

Sculpture - belongs in the other post

Can't remember the name of it, but what fascinating forms!

Arranging Care

My mother has fallen over again and arranging post-hospital care is an ongoing nightmare. We have young Hungarian carers who don't speak good English, e.g. they can't form negatives correctly, and they are not trained to deal with dementia. They are not the re-ablement team and so they don't have the remit of getting my mother up and about again. They are fine dealing with a routine of bed care and strip washes. So I will have to be involved in superintending them and this is quite a worry for me because I am not trained either and in fact I am very clumsy with my mother. They are good because they have no issue with her, while feel as though I don't want to let her get away with being such a big, demanding baby - she's continually asking for the curtains and the covers to be arranged and making a fuss if you touch her feet.

Needless to say, the level of care visits she now has, 2 people, four times a day, is extremely expensive, and it was left to me to arrange it and figure out how to pay for it.

Today (Sunday) I got a visit from an NHS OT (yes on a Sunday, quite strange) who gave me some advice about putting mum in a chair sometimes, getting a chiropodist, and a GP visit. She made me feel a lot better and as though I haven't been left with sole responsibility for this troubled woman.

Today (a week later, Monday) we had an unheralded visit from a District Nurse, so it was the sheerest good luck that I was there to let her in.

Green Party Conference

The Green Party Conference was held 2nd - 4th September in Birmingham (my old university) and I was there - it was my first conference. At first it was deeply interesting. I went to a talk on the Green party philosophy which was very inspiring but I was late as I had just arrived. One of the many interesting things he said was that electoral success is not the only way to change policy - lifestyle changes are also really important, and we can persuade people to behave differently. In fact, the influence of the Green movement has been far-reaching.

Our new leaders gave their speeches - Johnathan Bartley and Caroline Lucas taking turns at delivering their message. She talked about the "heartbreak" of 24th June and I thought - that's how I felt, and I was grateful to her for not making light of it. The Greens want another referendum, this time when our government has made terms with the EU for our continued relationship, to vote on the new deal. Don't know if we'll get that but I think it would be far more democratic and meaningful than voting for a pig in a poke (a sack). Caroline reminded us that this year was the hottest ever and it is even more important to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

I then went to a fringe meeting on Further Education and Higher Education. We talked about the new Education bill which seeks to deregulate Further Ed. We are very radical on further ed. we want to end tuition fees and achieve social mobility. We believe that Higher Ed and F. E. are not markets. We believe in evening classes and lifelong learning. We don't believe that employers should dictate the content of education, or that it's all about money. We wondered how we could get the students to take more interest in these matters politically. We wondered if colleges could start by campaigning about young people's living/working conditions - low pay, etc. Area Reviews - mergers - very demoralizing - but Local Councils can reject the Area Review - e.g. Manchester did just that.

I also went to a panel debate on the Progressive Alliances which have been mooted by the people at Westminster. Zoe Williams of the Guardian chaired this debate. Caroline spoke in favour of the alliance. She said that if we had Proportional Rep we wouldn't need to do it and the goal is to get the progressive parties into power so that we can vote in Proportional Rep. She pointed out that when the voters go to the polls the progressive parties are fighting each other over small differences, and where we can co-operate locally, to get a Tory out of an unsafe seat, we should do so. Caroline pointed out that time is short for our planet but progressives are fighting each other over small differences. Fighting over the deckchairs on the Titanic, really. She did say that the Green Party doesn't impose from the centre but the idea is to allow for arrangements to be made locally. However, the view from the floor was against this as there are grass roots activists who do not think strategically. They dream of winning an overall majority!

The next day I went to a talk about creating teams that work at local level. The Snowflake model. They stressed that the Greens should do fun things together. I thought that this was very much what volunteers wanted. When I, with my local party, put forward ideas about catering for an event my ideas were so shot down in flames that I have not yet gone back! I felt that the members were hostile to me because I was new, which of course was probably true and the only solution is to wait for 6 months or so before you offer any opinion whatsoever.

The next thing I went to was in the Great Hall - it was called a plenary, and we discussed motions for changing our policy documents. All motions were followed by amendments to the motions, which were both friendly and unfriendly. We voted firstly on the amendments and then on the motions. I was very interested in the procedure as much as the motions ,and I was also pleased to discover that my ideas are pretty mainstream in the Greens.


I went to a talk by Baroness Jenny Jones on what she has been up to in the House of Lords - this was very interesting. She wants to reform the House of Lords but she also said "It's riven with rules and idiocy but it works" which is what I feel about the H o L, that it is the only effective opposition to the government and therefore we should treasure it! She wrote a paper on her Bill to reform the HoL over 10 years - giving representatives long terms of service in which to gain expertise - trying to keep what she values in the HoL and yet move towards full democracy. I recommend that the noble Lords support it!

A formidable woman

I also went to a talk on the Northern Ireland border Post Brexit which has clearly never been thought through and clearly it will have to be a "hard" border if we are to stop unlimited immigration from Europe and this will be very divisive to the people of Ireland who were beginning to feel like one nation, two governments. Now they will be riven again.

Post Brexit - what now? This was the last thing on which I took notes because I was there for 2 days and a half and I was pretty tired by the end. These are the things which the Greens want:

1. to win the right for EU nationalities to remain here.
2. The Young Greens want freedom of movement (they will get this: if they think they will be able to live and work in Europe that is another matter).
3. We want to keep the Human Rights Act.
4. We want the 16+ age group to have the right to vote.

I also went to 2 more plenaries and at the last I despaired of the Green Party for their pettiness and, in some cases, their desire to be Alternative rather than electable. It's a question of identity. Sadly, identifying yourself as Alternative is unlikely to make a party electable, or even have a coherent sense of what kind of Alternative you are. Are we hippies, punks or radical liberals? One lobby keeps us busy altering the wording of all our literature to make it gender non-binary and when we have done that, that particular ginger group will probably leave, its mission accomplished.

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Allotment Part 8: report on growing season.

Watering the allotment is a real chore but I have done it so nothing has died - although the courgettes got mildew while we were away, and were also almost overwhelmed with weeds, and are just recovering and are just coming back into production again.

Courgette plants having recovered from mildew.

I think we were slow to realise how regularly we had to respond to the plants. That every day something else comes into readiness to eat. And this was particularly the case with the beans. Runner beans need picking every day. They get hard and fibrous if you leave them too long in the sun. Likewise our first courgettes were enormous just because we thought the small ones needed a few more days, when in fact one more day makes all the difference. Respect to the plants, they work hard to produce their fruits in short time.

Only a few more runner beans to come - we have had loads

If you can't water every day then you must come every other day and really soak the earth. With this pattern we have kept everything in production.

The potatoes are over now, and have been beautiful and very productive. I am glad I prepared the soil so well. Where we went wrong was mixing up two kinds of seed potatoes. I am pretty sure that when I asked for Maris Piper and Charlottes I wanted them in two separate bags and I was too inexperienced to insist, so I got them all in one bag and we planted them in three mixed rows. But the Charlottes should have been harvested earlier than the Maris Pipers because they are meant to be earlies. As it was, we let all the potatoes stay in the soil for too long. The haulms have stopped growing and they are now dead so we will have to get the potatoes out soon. You have to be careful when you cook them because overcooking makes them all fall apart. You actually have to stand over them and pull each chunk out when it is cooked through because a moment later the potatoes are all disintegrated. This is true of both kinds of potato. Of the two, the Maris Piper is the better. Some of the Charlottes became too big and are hard inside. The small ones are really tasty though.

The strawberries didn't produce many fruit, and likewise the raspberry canes were hopeless, half of them dead, and they were from the RHS. Nul points for the RHS. Here are some autumn fruiters that did not come from the RHS,

 

Haven't watered these as they were in the ground over winter.

 

Tomato plants - these were all cherry tomatoes and very very productive. You have to pick them as soon as they are turning faintly red. Not the whole truss, just individuals.



Nick gave me a few lettuces to plant amongst the strawberry plants. The netting protects from birds.
 

We have planted three rows of beetroot seedlings, and here they are covered with environmesh to protect them from birds.

Also planted some leeks but I honestly don't think they'll be any good because they are so dry.

This pic shows the lovely red apples on the little tree, and the rows of parsnips behind the courgette plants.

Poor leeks.

The rhubarb has done really well, we have not picked any because it's the first year but next year it should be very productive.