Yoghurt lid day

Merlyn loves yoghurt*. He cannot hear us call out to him to come in at night, but can hear a yoghurt pot opening from a mile off.

Of course, you are not really supposed to give cats dairy, even though they really love it. So what we do is just give him the yoghurt lid. About once a week, when I've finished my breakfast yoghurt pot, rather than scraping the yoghurt off the lid for me, I give it to Merlyn. Merlyn loves yoghurt lid day.

 Mmmm, yummy yoghurt

Hey - it's trying to get away and there is still some yoghurt left!

Get that damn camera out of my face and give me more yoghurt!!!

*which for some bizarre reason, English people call "yog-it".

Garden visit: Savill Garden

For my birthday this year Kevin and I took the day off and visited the Savill Garden down on the Surrey-Berkshire border. As my birthday in England corresponds with autumn, it's become a 'tradition' to visit autumn gardens as my treat for the day.

Savill Garden is purely an ornamental garden, i.e. no kitchen gardens or veg patches. Autumn seems to have only just arrived from a tree point of view in the last week or so, somehow seems later than previous years. We had a cold snap early-mid October, maybe that slowed the trees down. However, plenty of the Savill Garden trees did put on quite a show. Here's my favourite, a composition of the different colours of autumn in southern England.

It is so rich and warm, it takes the chill out of the approaching winter air.

Next to the Rose Garden was beds of Molina caerulea 'Heidebraut' which I found especially beautiful.

My garden isn't big enough for a whole beds of the grass, but I'm sure I'll be able to fit in a clump or two. Kevin took a 'Gwenfar in her natural habitat' pic...

The biggest surprise for me, and my favourite area of the garden, was the rose garden. I'm not keen on roses or rose gardens. Don't get me wrong, scented roses can be beautiful, but on the whole, they require way too much attention. Between black spot and aphids, and the fact they often only look good for a few weeks in a year, I consider them more effort than they are worth. I love flowers, but I want them to largely look after themselves whilst I focus most of my energies on growing veg. Roses don't really meet that criteria. The Savill Garden have done something interesting though. They have mixed the roses with grasses, such as the Molina, and Miscanthus sinensis 'ferner osten' and with great effect.

I'm curious about what they have done, in that the roses are quite bushy, instead of the usual sticks with lots of soil showing, and they are still flowering even though we have had some hard frosts. Though maybe they didn't have the hard frosts in Surrey that we had in Oxfordshire in October?

They also had this wonderful viewing platform, which gave great vistas over the garden, as above, and looked great from the paths looking back at it.

Kevin and I had a bit of a Titanic moment when on the platform. Minus the iceberg.

As well as foliage, autumn tends to bring the bark of many trees to the fore. I was rather taken with the bark on this Arbutus x andrachnoides.

Although Savill Garden doesn't have a veg garden, they had a great display of pumpkins and squashes, some of which were grown by local children. After having such a poor pumpkin harvest myself (a total of one medium and one small pumpkin), I was in a fit of jealously about this bunch!

The Savill Garden is a good autumn garden to visit if you are in the area, and I really recommend it just on the rose/grass garden itself. It was relaxing, I enjoyed turning 42 again, and we had some fun with the grasses.

October round-up

October was rather busy with work, and my back continued to give me problems, hence the lack of blogging. Here is a round-up on a couple of things that I/we got up to.

Earlier in the month Kevin, Jackie and I went to Waterperry Garden's Apple day. Apart from taking one of their tours around the orchard and learning about the process of making apple juice, we (Jackie & I) also bumped into an ex-Fam (ex-Oxfam) friend, Alison. Alison has set up her own small business, Felt Special, and she makes rugs from the fleece of rare breed sheep and lovely hand-felted wool and silk scarves.

I bought a scarf not dissmilar to the one showing here, only mine is more teal/purple. It looks smashing on me!

Kevin and I were delighted to catch up with our friend Suad, who was over from Santa Fe. Kevin originally worked with Suad's partner, Scott, at CSIRO in Melbourne. We've all moved on, us to the UK and Suad & Scott, first to San Antonio and now to Santa Fe, but managed to stay in touch and manage to catch up once every few years.

Scott's schedule meant we couldn't catch up this time, he had various scientific conferences to attend, but it was great to see Suad again. Just as cheery and lovely as always, and doesn't she complement my garden!

My reading group was at our place this month, and it was interesting seeing 11 people plus cat squeeze into our lounge room.

Merlyn was quite determined to sit in his usual place despite the number of people trying to crowd him out.

It was my birthday on 28th October, and I turned 42 again. Again?! Yes. I've decided to stay 42 until I get to 50, because 42 is the answer to life, universe and everything it means I'M THE ANSWER to life, universe and everything. Cannot fault that logic, right?!

Kevin and I took the day off and we visited the Savill Garden. It's becoming a bit of a tradition that for my birthday we go and visit a garden. Last year it was Painshill and Westonbirt.

I'll write a separate blog about the garden visit itself, but I can say we had a lovely day and suitably celebrated being 42 again.

Food Speculation and Worst Lobby Awards

Back in June I mentioned WDM's new campaign on food speculation, Stop Betting on Hunger. I've been meaning to write more about it, but have been so busy with work and my naughty back playing up, that I've not had a chance to blog much recently, let alone about this campaign. Anyway, now I don't have to, because Kevin has blogged about it, and as he has covered it so well, I figure it's better to direct you to his blog about Goldman Sachs and food speculation.

His blog conveniently links to the EU Worst Lobby Awards, where you can vote for the worst lobbyist in the EU. And rather unsurprisingly, who turns up on the list of Worst EU Lobbyists, but Goldman Sachs. I urge you to vote because by being part of the Worst Lobby Awards, you are helping to highlight the issue of the behind-the-scenes lobbying by corporations and their industry bodies in the EU. And how fun would it be to see Goldman Sachs trying to avoid being given an award for worst lobbyist!

West Papua - Cameron replies

Back in July I blogged about the West Papuan's who hoped that David Cameron might be the hero they were looking for. Cameron let the West Papuan independence movement believe he supported their aims. I finally received a response from Cameron's Foreign Office*, via my MP Andrew Smith, a copy of which I'm inserting here.

Sadly, though as I expected, Cameron and his government have no intention of supporting the West Papuan's in their call for independence. The letter makes it clear:

"The UK supports the territorial integrity of Indonesia and does not support the calls for independence of the provinces of Papua and West Papua. This has been the policy of successive governments and it remains unchanged by the current Government."

So no, Cameron isn't going to do anything about the terrible situation in West Papua. And Indonesia can continue to attack and destroy West Papuan's and their homes, or just outright murder them.


*The letter comes from Jeremy Brown, Minister of State, on behalf of Cameron and his dodgy government.