August Project

Some commonsensical practices we've learnt the roundabout way through the years hereforth laid out in short for those adventurous hackers among you. Take it or leave it:

If you are drilling anything larger than a 5mm hole in metal it is better to drill a succession of pilot holes using a range of drill bits that increase in size until you reach the required diameter.

These holes were started at 3.5mm as the 18v cordless drill is unwieldy (read "ergonomically designed for an adult male's grip and strength"). The 3.5mm drill creates less friction making it easier to keep the drill upright at 90° to the surface of the metal. Once the initial pilot hole is drilled perpendicular it is easier to keep the drill upright for all subsequent holes. We used candle wax for drilling the first hole only to reduce friction. After that, to prevent a drill from blunting you want it to cut through the metal efficiently so do not use a lubricant. The friction creates heat, a gob of spit will go a long way to cooling the drill bit and keeping the cutting edges sharp (water runs away too fast).

Sod's law your drill will snap if firstly you don't keep it perpendicular to the surface of the work and secondly you apply too much pressure on the drill - easy does it, you are a lot stronger than you think you are. Investing in cramps will pay out in savings on replacing broken drill bits. Murphy's law, you will snap more than the occasional drill bit until you develop the feel for drilling, don't be hard on yourself (it's not coincidence 3.5mm drill bits are sold in multi-packs).

Choose a higher speed setting when using a smaller diameter drill bit and a slower speed setting for a larger one.

The swarf is sharp so wear eye protection.

Wire-brushed and painted with direct-to-rust paint.

Shout out to our local ironmongers ♥ W.P Wakefield Ltd.♥ 682 Lea Bridge Rd, London, E10 6AP. Where, unlike Big DIY, there is no packaging and you can buy the exact number of fixings you require, reducing waste.

Holes are pre-drilled before screwing in the coach screws to prevent the plank from splitting. A rule of thumb to find out which drill bit diameter to use for pre-drilling hold the length of the drill bit to the length of the screw. If you are able to see the entirety of the width of the screw's thread on either side of the drill bit, the drill bit is of a suitable size. If the drill bit obscures the screw's threads it is too wide in diameter. Apply candle wax to the screw threads to reduce the effort of driving in the screws.

Since we upcycled the parts of a couple of old pews, the ergonomics of the assembly was optimised by lashing the pieces together, sitting back and adjusting for comfort before fixing them together (the devil is in the detail).

We'd had an idea to use U-bolts, to attach the backrest planks to the back supports, but couldn't find any of convenient dimensions. John Bayley, the owner of W.P. Wakefield, helped us find an alternative solution, of a plate nut drilled with two threaded holes that could be bolted through to clamp the planks to the supports, which worked a treat.

Ta-da, here's the one we made earlier by our own fair hands. Kitteh-approved despite it looking a little like a strandbeest.

Blue Berries

Rainy bank holiday blues - we've been blowing the berries on brunches.

Plum Job

The soggy bank holiday weather saw us indoors stirring a boiling cauldron of greengage, plum and allotment pickings jam.

259 counted in, 259 counted out.

All good things lead to better things.

Lovely jam. Thanks J.

Bunga Bangkai

We had been avidly following the @kewgardens tweets about the imminent blooming of a Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) of theirs as we had long wanted to see the world's largest flower and of course were intrigued by the repute of it's funky odour. It is native to western Sumatra where the Indonesians named it bunga bangkai, the corpse(carrion)flower.

We visited it just in time! After a hard day in yesterday's high temperatures the spathe was still standing and though a tad wilted towered above us. The flower was still exuding wafts reminiscent of the gutters of Petaling Street which may or may not have whelmed our synapses but we are now die-hard fans of this unconventional beauty (even more so when we discovered that when it is not flowering it is freckled). Sadly another rare spirit threatened by the palm oil industry and illegal logging.

   

We were also fortunate to witness the flowering of this curious Pachypodium and the Dasylirion wheeleri which had breached the conservatory glass.

These exotic marvels rent the stormy grey day and it was possible to step through space and time and experience wonder such like that of the 1700's when Peter Collinson et al had the world brought to London and curiosity and the curious prevailed.

On our way out the pelting rain drove us into a corner of Kew gardens we'd not visited before, the kitchen gardens and then the small physick garden behind Kew Palace.

Cockle Shells and Pretty Maids all in a Row.

And so we found ourselves in Margate and our heads turned by Mrs Booth's cockle shell bustle.

We had gone to see Grayson Perry's explicate 'Urban Punk', neatly labelled, annotated, and mapped, at the Turner Contemporary (@TCMargate). We admit that our local pride (adoptive and therefore not born-and-bred authentic) swells a little in knowing Walthamstow and Epping Forest are systematically jumbled amongst other familiar oddities in the quaint cabinet of curiosities that is Grayson's world view. Retrospective life sign-posted in pictogram through retro hand-thrown ceramic and tapestry.

Afterwards, we were lead on a merry dance to trace Anne Carrington's shell ladies of Margate.

We found ourselves exploring the "subterranical", "conchological", "shelimosaical" wonder that is the Shell Grotto which proved to be a worthwhile foray into the unexplained.

Then, the urban punks we are, we rode off into the [Turner] sunset ...life is but a dream

P.S. It IS worth the walk up towards the Lido to take brunch at Fort's Cafe.

Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life

It is only August but by the time we’d read Chapter 6 we knew this was our best read of 2015.

George Monbiot, @GeorgeMonbiot, describes wild Britain through the urgency of his own “wild-yearning”. He transcribes his observations with enthusiasm and a raw immediacy: “The berries of the hawthorn exuded from the woods like specks of blood.” Neither of us grew up in the UK, we were beyond lucky to experience living with access to wild, biodiverse landscapes. The book reiterated our perceptions of how tamed, clipped and subdued British flora and fauna is – Monbiot does not beat about the bush, he declares our landscape sheep-wrecked, in which we are all implicit through our tax payments redistributed as subsidies and our atrophied and limited expectations of what a wild Britain should be. His book holds a stethoscope up for us indoor types to perceive the waning ebb of the wilderness that would and could burgeon again if given the chance. He challenges our compartmentalised perception, as weekend eco-tourists, of the other-worldliness of wilderness and shows us it is our arena, yours and your childrens'.

We were aware of the lost woodlands and megafauna of London, our adopted home city. We remember seeing models showing the prehistoric/pre-industrial deforestation of the area and exhibits such as the 60 000 year old tooth of the Old Baily rhino* on visits to the Museum of London in the early 1990s. We’d seen for ourselves the wolf head on the Aldgate Pump, supposedly marking the last wolf slain in the City of London. However we were intrigued to learn about trophic cascades, where the life cycles of animals at the top of the trophic pyramid can have deep reaching implications in the composition and chemistry of soil, the atmosphere and oceans. We were intrigued to learn of the vestigial adaptations of Britain’s trees to prehistoric megafauna. We learnt that the actions of megafauna impact the distribution of vegetation and thereby rivers and watershed systems – the science is easy to comprehend, it is common sense and should be common knowledge.

Monbiot calls for the rewilding of Britain, he proposes an inclusive model where the minority echelon of landowners should be held more accountable for their stewardship and management of land that is essentially the nation’s natural heritage and future security against climate change and loss of biodiversity. He suggests changes be made to the criteria of farm subsidies so our money can be used to future-proof our nation's ecology. He advocates a forward-looking, effective plan for the reforestation of uplands, the reintroduction of megafauna such as boar, lynx, wolf and badger (we’d like to see more raptors please) to allow ecological processes to do their own thing. He advocates that the conservation of some protected natural areas be less managed to facilitate the reintroduction of megafauna. We cannot agree more, after all how can we expect other developing nations to safeguard their megafauna and biodiverse habitats from man-made eco-disasters such as palm oil farming when we’ve eradicated our own and won’t make restorations?

We’ve not stopped talking about the book nor thinking about Rewilding since we turned the last page. We have started by re-evaluating the ways we manage our own tiny scrap of garden as fragment of a wider ecosystem. We have put more effort into being more informed about the way our local green spaces are managed and take a wider interest in national issues.

Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life
George Monbiot
ISBN-13: 978-0141975580
Publisher: Penguin (5 Jun. 2014)

Trees For Life

In addendum:
Wild Beasts of Prehistoric London , james read, guest Museum of London Blog author, 24 Sep 2015

♥ Cat Naps ♥

It being World Cat Day, here is a tribute to the feisty rescue feline who adopted us as her world domain. We've learnt to love her quaint ways. Her tail is conveniently marked with gradations of annoyance - from peeved through pissed to spitting to drawing blood with intent - so that everybody knows where they stand depending on the degree to which she flicks the end of her tail. Here Tubby Tabby is in all her glory: self-appointed keeper of the "Best Seat", fair-weather garden companion and right-hand ham and humbug.

"Will you walk with me, Grasshopper?"

The Big #ButterflyCount

Comma Polygonia c-album (Linnaeus, 1758)

We were hoping for the Red Admiral that has been visiting to turn up to be counted, but it was a no show.

The final tally of our Big #ButterflyCount 2015:

• 3 Large White
• 1 Small White
• 2 Holly Blue
• 1 Comma
• 1 Gate Keeper
• 4 Speckled Wood
• 1 Large Yellow Underwing Moth(?)

Gatekeeper Pyronia tithonus

Gatekeeper Pyronia tithonus

Holly Blue Celastrina argiolus

Speckled Wood Pararge aegeria

Large Yellow Underwing Moth(?)Noctua pronuba

Wild Parakeets

We found a ring-necked parakeet feather in the garden and are sending it to Dr Hazel Jackson, @WildParakeetsUK, in the hope that the DNA will contribute to her map of the genetic diversity and UK distribution of these birds.

Wild Walthamstow

Holly Blue Celastrina argiolus on tansy

We spotted these critters on our bike ride around Tottenham Marshes today.

Funnel web of the Giant house spider (?).

♥ Pickles ♥

This is the first time we've grown shallots and we were overcome with wonder as the the sets cleaved into curious claws of bulbs. A eureka moment of knowing one's world like knowing for the first time that the pod of the peanut forms underground and that Brussels sprouts bud in multiples on a single stalk.

We used Pam Corbin's recipe from the 'River Cottage Handbook No 2: Preserves'.