Slight Gardening Disaster

Dissapointing

Unfortunately, during the change in the weather a couple of weeks ago where it went from being quite warm and sunny to cold and rainy, most of my sunflower seedlings have been eaten by slugs. I do have one sunflower seedling left that is doing well though.
I did replant the sunflower seeds but somehow they ended up on top of the soil (again?!) and I think they have gone rotten. They must have floated to the top when I watered them or something, what a disaster. Anyway, I replanted them again.

Also the wind blew my tray of kale off the garden table and the soil went all over the ground. I managed to save some of the seedlings that had started growing but I seem to have lost a some.
Since the disaster I have now put stones and some old kitchen tiles that were lying around on top of all the trays to stop them blowing off the table. Actually most of them are on a garden chair. Another reason to clear out the garden and make some space.

Today I put in a bit of extra soil in the kale tray and put some more seeds in. I do seem to have some tomato seedlings growing and also that other plant I can't remember the name of (see previous post) seems to have a couple of seedlings that are ok. I will have to keep a closer eye on it all.

My tayberry does seem to be growing, I can see a purple leafy shoot coming from the bottom. At least I hope that's what it is, and not some sort of weed.

Bank Holiday

Today with it being a bank holiday, I didn't quite know what to do with myself. The weather was nice, I decided to try and clear out the garden. There is a lot of honeysuckle growing at the top of the garden and it is everywhere. It is annoying because once there used to be a grassy hill in that spot. It got made into a pond that didn't really work. I am not sure what happend to the water but at some point it just became a hole filled with honeysuckle. Here it is before I started to try and get rid of it with a pair or secateurs:

Before

And here it is after:

After

I know it doesn't look much different but I did manage to clear a fair amount of it, although there is still loads left.
The cat from over the road was having a nose at what I was doing. She got in the way and poked her head in a hole which had been revealed after I had cleared some of the honeysuckle. I think there are mice down there, she likes to sit on the edge next to the bushes waiting to catch one.

Tayberry

Here is my tayberry. When I first planted it, it looked like a stick. That was roughly a month ago. Here it is: As you can see, it still looks like a stick. The fork is there to remind me and my mum that the tayberry is there, and that it is not just a stick.

Good news though, my sunflowers have started growing. Three of them are growing, the other two had a bit of an accident, I noticed that somehow the seeds had ended up on top of the soil. I don't quite know how that happened. I pressed them in the soil a bit and also planted and extra seed in each pot just in case the uncovered ones were ruined.

Sunflower Seedling

Gardening

I haven't planted much for a while but this year I got given a tayberry plant and some other seeds for my birthday. A few weeks ago, when it seemed to be a bit less cold than it had been, I planted the tayberry at the top of the garden. It hasn't done much so far it just looks like a stick poking out of the lawn but I suppose it needs more time (and warmth for that matter).

I also planted some sunflower seeds and some tomatoes (four different types) in some pots. The cat from over the road came along and helped me, well she sort of got in the way really and sat on everything. I was aiming to only plant a few things so I could keep on top of everything but I seem to have planted a lot more than I intended. I do have a big bag of compost that I carried all the way home from the shop though so I may as well use it, it made my arms ache carrying it, in fact they still ached the next day.

I had some time off work this week and one day I was bored and went up the road and bought a magazine which had two packets of seeds on the front (kale and a plant named Cerinthe major 'Purpurascens') so yesterday I also planted those seeds in a couple of trays. I expect I will be overrun with plants, unless the slugs get them.

New Website

Well it has been ages since I last posted, but I decided to add a new post if anyone is still reading (seeing as I haven't written anything for four years, it seems unlikely). I have redone my website, Cat In Hell. It took me a while as I did one redesign last year (which I took ages to get round to) but decided to change it as it was a bit dark and not very jolly so I made a brighter more spacious version. I have also actually got round to adding some content. I should continue to update it over time. I hope you like it.

One of the things I am quite pleased with is the Android App I made, which you can read about and download on the Games page.

I just changed this blog's template too, just now as I was looking at the the blogger settings. I like the new templates that are available. I think my old blog template (the one I made myself) needed updating really, this free blogger template is quite nice. I have added my own header image of course, the same one from the old template, except with a different background colour.

Here is a picture I have found while going through my old files. I recently upgraded my computer and was looking through my backup drive trying to find some old stuff, don't know if I have posted this before but I thought it was quite good. I did it a while ago. Thanks for reading.

Somehow this has turned into some sort of a review

I bought a new thing for recording my guitar, a Line 6 POD Studio UX1. Here's my first recording:

“Squeaky Ants” Comment & more at RiffWorld.com

It plugs into a USB port and comes with some recording software called Riffworks T4 which is really good and it even has a feature that makes drum loops.

The problem I used to have with other recording programs was that it would take ages for me to record something and I'd have to make some sort of drum loop and it would take forever to mess around with the thing, trying to get what I had recorded to fit together and so on, but with this program I actually recorded a whole song in a few hours and it doesn't sound bad considering I had only just started using it. I suppose it's just better because it's tailored to guitar recording and not over complicated, there is enough there to record good tunes but not too much going on that you get lost and take forever and then wonder why it's 11:35 pm and what you have been doing with the weekend and why you have only recorded about two chords which sound like rubbish. Instead you still spend all night on it, but it's a lot more fun and you end up managing to actually finish a bit of music for a change and probably be quite pleased with the result.

The only thing is as far as I can work out, it looks like you can only use the set drum loops (which are still good because you can adjust them, make them faster and change how varied you want them to be and although you can also buy different loops on the company's website) but it would be better if there was some sort of option where you could put together your own loop with different individual drum samples (eg individual hi hats, snare drums and all those other sorts of drums... just goes to show how little I know about drums) if you wanted to make your own loop. (Maybe you can do this? I haven't been able to so far, I'm assuming you can't).

Otherwise though it is pretty good. Miles better than what I used to do years ago which involved plugging in a crap microphone into a crap sound card and recording a crappy noise which didn't even sound like a guitar. So yes, I'm quite impressed I suppose. Review over.

Anyway, you can expect me to start posting loads of tunes I have made now. I think I will also have to find a way to record my banjo onto the computer so I can add some banjo sounds to my tunes.

There is a microphone hole in this Line 6 UX1 thing which is probably meant for singing (yeah that's not going to happen) so I think maybe I could get a good mic and try recording the banjo with that. The only thing is, as I mentioned above, I've had problems with trying to record with a microphone before and I don't know if I can record well without getting the sound of the computer in the background (and my computer is really noisy, it sounds like either some sort of generator, or something that is about to take off, probably because it has loads of cooling fans inside).

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the tune. It's sort of a rock song but with a strange bit in the middle with some diminished chords and minor 7 and 7b5 chords.
I've also been learning a bit more music theory and was trying out a few different chords and modes and things, so being able to record ideas easily is going to make it a lot more fun.

Return

Well it's been a while, but I feel in the mood for a posting, well it has only been almost 10 months now...
Some things which have happened:
I did a lot of gardening this year. This came from being quite fed up in around January and suddenly becoming addicted to buying seeds in Homebase on my way home from work. It was in an attempt to not hate the coming year and maybe look forward to something. It was all quite rubbish at the beginning of the year but I have to say things are a lot better now (I don't like to speak too soon, but various much better things have happened, and some unsavoury people have moved along out of my life and far away which has been a huge relief.)

I grew a lot of things, potatoes, beans, tomatoes (I grew a variety called Hundreds and Thousands and there really were loads of them, they were nice, very small and sweet). The tomatoes got blight in the end but even so I still had loads, in fact there were too many.

I gave one plant to my grandparents, just the one plant, and they said they had hundreds of tomatoes from it too. I had about 6 or so plants, so you can imagine the number of tomatoes I ended up with, I was practically swimming in them, they were coming out of my ears. Well alright, not out of my ears, just off the plants.

I also still have a lot of peppers growing. Mum grew a weird spiky cucumber, which freaked me out. I also grew a plant called Weretors of Elgebar (which is the purple flower in that *fantastic* montagé (ooh big word, I even managed to find the e with the accent on top for that one) I have made above, which took me all of 1.3 seconds) and also a plant called Neural Miner, from which I have a gourd (that big green thing at the bottom of the montage. Ooops look at that, I forgot the accent there) which is inedible but really weird, which is always good.

I also bought a great pair of socks last week. They are made from one of those soft fabrics, you know, like chenille or something, actually, yes, exactly chenille. They are very soft. I wore them today and spent most of the morning walking around in them because it felt like I was walking on a new carpet, except I wasn't, it was just the socks.

I also have a master plan for avoiding colds and flu. I am really busy at work at the moment and can't afford to be off sick, and let's face it, I'm not one of those people that really enjoys being ill. But it's that time of year again. So I bought a bag of onions and have put one in my coat pocket in the hope it will stop me getting a cold. I heard once that years ago people used to do this and have always wanted to try it. The only thing is I am using a shallot and I don't know if that will work as well as a normal sized onion.

Ah I just found a fantastic website: www.shallot.com
Can't see anything about putting them in coat pockets though. In fact I can't find anything anywhere about putting onions of any sort in pockets on the entire internet.

New year

I hope everyone has had a good Christmas and New Year.
I don't know if anyone else feels the same way but it all seems a bit peculiar at the moment, life in general I mean. There is a weird atmosphere or something and everything seems to hae slowed down, it's like being in hibernation.

It's a a shame about Woolworths, I took a picture of it just before it closed down:

It's cleared out and empty now, I keep meaning to take another photo of it.

Here's another photo of nothing in particular, just because I thought it was funny:


Also it seems to be one of those periods where everthing you own starts breaking. It's not enough for one thing to break, there seems to be a rule of three.

First the kettle broke, then the washing machine, and now the vacuum cleaner. Not only that, but the new kettle broke too. Luckily dad fixed the washing machine but the future of the vacuum cleaner is under discussion at this very moment.

I have to say the third kettle is a lot better than the second one, it looks a lot nicer.