I Think You’re Bonkers

When you’re next in your local library, can you please ask them if they could order The Portal Between into stock?

They should be able to and most libraries don’t charge for this service, or don’t charge much so it’s not like going out to buy a book! Of course, I’d been even more pleased if you all went out to your local WHSmith, or other bookstore, and ordered it there instead, but the library would be fab. You might have to borrow it once but if fantasy isn’t your thing then you don’t have to read it, they’ll never know…

Details for ordering:
Title: The Portal Between
Author: Sarah Barnard
ISBN: 978-0-9556887-0-6

Thanks!

From Here.

Cooking it now, will report back later, just wanted to save the link… 

First update - No mushroom soup so I used cream of chicken, no pimento’s or cayenne so I left them out - we also don’t like things spicy so that’s ok. Added some carrot sticks and chunks of mushroom into the bake as they were handy. It’s sat in the oven waiting to be turned on in a bit. Back later..

Second update - I liked it, Mimi liked it, Dino said he did, then changed his mind and then ate everything on his plate….. Half frozen for another day. 

Dino has spent ages building this and wanted to share…

I’m quite impressed.  

The 4 sweetcorn are doing well, considering the amount of munching they had. All are growing on nicely and being coddled far too much for a plant. We now have 4 of one pumpkin variety and 1 of another, 2 courgettes and 6 celery plants up. Still waiting on the peppers, which are taking their time.

Today we’ve tackled bad behaviour, made bread (discussion on how yeast works), been to the PO - tackled more unwelcome and innappropriate behaviour, and we’ve just tried making a salt solution so we can grow some salt crystals - as Beavers attempt failed. I’m sure we can do better…. Some housework was done too, and Dino has done some reading and identified ant species. He’s doing a sort of survey of invertebrates in the garden - each one has to be identified, he has to find out where it lives and what it eats and then work out if that means it’s good for our garden or a pest. He wants a third option now as a simple good or bad doesn’t really cover some of them. He’s really thinking and exploring things now and it’s lovely to watch.

Mimi has whined, wailed and been a pain. But now she’s playing with her Dora beanie thing and chatting away to it in an odd mix of mostly English, a lot of MimiSpeak and a smattering of Spanish words thrown in.  

There were loads of ‘em, and 2 marching bands - and Dino got a special mention from his Beaver Leader for Helping to Organise Everyone.

I’m very proud! 

It’s time consuming this thriftiness. I’m half way through hand stitching a canvas patch onto the grass bag/box of my mower, after Dino put the rake through part of it. It was mainly canvas on a frame so a patch was in order. But it’s an awkward sod. So half way and I gave up and went to potter in the garden.

After blasting both kids for their appalling behaviour and removing ALL priviledges for the forseeable future (they can earn them back, rather than me getting so annoyed they lose them through the day - I think it’ll work better that way), we sat at the table outside, made paper pots and sowed seeds. So, sitting inside on the windowsill are pots with - Winter spaghetti squash, Winter squash - Crown prince, melon, Rainbow chard, hanging basket tomatoes and more flowers for Mimi - sweet pea, nasturtium and sun flower.  We’ve sowed more than we’ll ever need because Dino has plans to sell some of each. I wonder if I can get him collecting seed from some plants for next year too? Perhaps next year we should be sticking to decent seed rather than f1 hybrids and whatever is cheap in Wilko’s/Lidl?

I have 4 little baby pumpkins just popped up through the compost - Jack O’Lantern, smallish, taste ok and with good skin for carving, apparently. The Atlantic giant’s aren’t through yet but there are cracks in the compost so I suspect a day or so.

Only 4 sweetcorn have survived so far, but I’m looking after them and hope we don’t lose any more. We have romanescue brocolli up, and purple sprouting. There’s a tray of more sweet peas in the cold frame, along with the first lot of chard, some dill and some regular peas.

Must get the cloche set up for the brassicas, as we’re hoping that’ll keep the cabbage whites off it.  

Blimey, The Portal Between has appeared on Tesco.com.

Oooh, and Books-a-Million, and WHSmith, and the Book Depository, and Blackwells.

Not on Asda, Barnes & Noble or Waterstones yet and I haven’t found it anywhere else, but I’ll keep checking and seeing how far it’s got.

If you see it anywhere, can you let me know?  

47.

That’s how many strawberry plants we have. About 5 years or so ago we got 4 plants and at least one died, but each year I left them to spread and now we have 47, having given away around 30 and sold 20. Oh and there’s still about a dozen left to dig out.

So how does that relate to business studies? Dino has been selling the strawberry plants and today we had a chat about profits, costs and reasonable prices. He has plans to sell all sorts of plants as we always have a couple too many and I hate chucking out decent plants, and we usually run out of homes for it all. The same goes for produce in a good year. Although, this year I aim to be freezing a load of stuff. But he has plans.

Granny wants the kids to decorate her a couple of shopping bags - and she says she’ll pay then for the work! So, a chat ensued about how much a plain cotton bag will cost, what to charge for time and materials used, and then how much for profit.

I’m making him keep track of his sales at the moment but the next stage is tracking costs and materials (even free ones).

It’s making me think about my own business plans too!  

Waging war on molluscs and other unwelcome garden fauna - Using soap nut juice.

Slug vs soap nut juice (a light misting) = Slug dies in a puddle of yellow/orange goo.

Greenfly vs soap nut juice (plant drenched) = Greenfly leave, as do black and white fly.  

So, all plants that I have put in and might want to eat or admire at some point this year have had a good dose of soap nut spray. Dino has taken on the job of observing effects on other wildlife after I expressed concern that if it kills slugs, sees off ants and greenfly, then what is it doing to ladybirds, woodlice, butterflies, bees etc. Today we’ve discussed food chains, food pyramids, helpful and harmful wildlife - including some bug identification and the idea that actually they’re only trying to survive, I’d just rather they didn’t eat what I want to eat thank you very much. Ecosystems, crop rotation and business planning (Dino and Mimi are selling strawberry plants again tomorrow and they have ideas about selling other things later in the year, if we can keep the slugs off) It’s all educational.

We dug loads too, more at the back end and more along the fence, and made paper pots with Kris’s Paper Potter. (Must get one of those, they’re ace, actually I wonder if my Dad could make one? He has a lathe still I think and he’s done woodturning.)  So now I hurt.

By the way, don’t ever use the soap nut solution on carnivorous plants, they hate it and get very ill. I have a sundew that hasn’t recovered yet.  

Eaten most of my sweetcorn plantlets (bigger than seedlings but doing ok). Me no happy. I had 10, now I have 4 empty pots and 6 that might live but they’ve been seriously munched.

Playing on a new, just for fun, blog inspired by a series of conversations with an assortment of people since Christmas about what we (the kids and I) want to do if we ever get rich. When, we get rich, When I sell loads of books…. Must be positive about this.  So, In my big house... is the new blog, feel free to drop by and offer suggestions, which we might add in or we might ignore. But it’s fun anyway. I’ll be adding links to things we’d like to add if I can.

In other news -  I’m on Amazon.com but not on .co.uk yet, apparently it’ll be a few days but it’s been a few days for over a week now. If you want to take a peek then The Portal Between can be found here. Search inside is being processed and should appear soon too. It’s all very exciting! Chesterfield Library now have a copy so anyone local should be able to request it now, I think through Derbyshire but I’m not sure. However, if enough people request it they might buy some more, which would be nice.

Kids have been playing chess, reading, keeping their own accounts - Dino is selling my surplus plants at our local HE group.  Oh and Mimi starts at Rainbows next week. It’s all go here, I’m tired.