Wulf's Web-den

The Web-den on WordPress

Wednesday 9 May 2012
by wulf
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A Big Move

A Pyracantha bush, laden with berries

Pyracantha

Hopefully our Pyracantha won’t take against us for having been ripped out of the ground yesterday afternoon and moved to the front garden. The picture above was taken on October 2010. Originally the plant would have been visible across the garden but we have put a polytunnel and raised beds in the way and, while beautiful, it is also spiky and not what you want in a tight corner where you need access to get to plants and tools.

In the front garden it will give some useful height against the side fence. If it takes, it will add its colour and zest where we and others can see it more easily. Here’s hoping.

Tuesday 8 May 2012
by wulf
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More Than Zero

A week away and my email inbox at work has lost the svelte appearance it had when I was heading towards zero in mid-April. Ah, well: at least that makes the game of chewing off large chunks each day a little easier for the rest of this week (I had been getting down to the sticky end where each message requires a fairly involved response). I have already trimmed away about half of the content by removing all the merely informational items like notices of meetings and events already past.

Now the harder work begins of dealing with the ones that require some thought!

Sunday 6 May 2012
by wulf
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Healthy Old Seeds

I was pleasantly surprised today to find that the cornflower (Centaurea cyanus) seeds I planted a week or so ago had come up well in the polytunnel. The seeds were old ones that my parents had got years ago and passed onto me last year. They all had little tufts on the end so I thought they had probably spent themselves in the packet but they actually seem abundantly happy. I have now pricked out the seedlings into individual pots (previously I had sown them all together in one small pot) and look forward to observing their future development, including the all important question of what colour they are.

Saturday 5 May 2012
by wulf
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Playing in the Snow

No, the weather hasn’t got that bad (why, we’ve even had some glimpses of the sun this week). Instead I was meeting up with a number of friends, some of whom I’ve not had the pleasure of seeing for several years, to play at the Snowdome in Tamworth. Artificial snow but fun all the same  or perhaps more so in that you can walk away and leave it behind rather than putting up with icy pavements and slush for weeks to come.

Hopefully I won’t find my muscles so stiff tomorrow morning that I struggle to play bass at church!

Tuesday 1 May 2012
by wulf
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Fudge and Patience

Our housegroup was saying goodbye to one of our members last night so threw a little party to mark the occasion. The twist is that she has to avoid cows milk (lactose) and eggs, which puts paid to all sorts of familiar recipes. I decided to break out my lactose-free fudge (using goats milk and butter, which have a different chemical structure and are fine for most lactose-intolerant people).

The trouble was that it has been a long time since I last made it and I seemed to have lost the knack. The first batch didn’t want to fully harden up and so I cut it into squares, coated with icing sugar and tried to pass it off as Lunar Delight (like Turkish Delight but whiter — I don’t think I cooked the sugar enough to get the right colour). More successful was the leftover mixture which I scraped into a ramekin. All the online references said scraping the left overs was a no-no but that actually set to a fudge like consistency. I also tried another batch flavoured with bitter lemon water (created by simmering lemon skins in water); with all the sugar it was a good balance of tastes but it set even less than the first lot and is now sitting in my freezer waiting to be used as an ice-cream sauce.

The Lunar Delight actually went down rather well but the bottom pieces melted together and I brought the leftovers home. This morning I was going to throw it out when I spotted that, overnight, it had crystallised and now formed the fudge texture I had been after. Obviously the missing ingredient was either time, patience or a combination of the two.

Monday 30 April 2012
by wulf
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Almost Blind

On Saturday night I was helping out at the Overflow youth event at our church. This month it was a chocolate party and, in one of the warm up games (chocolate smudge: put a square of chocolate on your forehead and manoeuvre it into your mouth without using your hands) I made the mistake of putting my glasses in my pocket. Trying to accomplish the goal, I managed to twist the frames and pop one of the lenses out. Whoops! (although at least I did get the chocolate).

The glasses are now repaired and seem to be none the worse for wear but it meant I had to spend the rest of the evening keeping an eye on thing and running various challenges without glasses to help me see. I could cope but it was a very different experience to being able to see clearly. It definitely gave me a different perspective on the evening and reminded me not to take my artificially fixed sight for granted.