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New Year, New Content!

10/01/2010 15:23:00

Hi everyone and a very happy 2010 to you all. It has been an odd start as I got back into the office on Monday and then have had children (and teacher husband) at home again all week - like the Christmas holidays never finished! Hope all is well with you all in the cold.

As I wrote in a previous piece, last year I spent a large part of the year on a big building project, which consumed a lot of my time. It is now complete (apart from an unfeasibly large heap of decorating) so I can get back on the case with your site.

So I wanted to ask you - what are you looking for on this site? If you could leave comments with your ideas I would be very grateful and it will help me shape the site more effectively. For example:

- what did you come here looking for / hoping to find?

- what could I add more of?

- what would be the most useful?

- have you found anything useful elsewhere that I could chase up and add?

I look for

ward to your ideas and thanks for bearing with me. On an average day I don't know who I am more like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Joe Swift, or indeed Handy Andy! But I will certainly try my best to meet your needs!

Happy 2010!

(24 Comments)

Keeping my fingers crossed

05/06/2009 22:54:00

Keeping My Fingers Crossed

I don't know about you, but I'm quietly allowing myself to begin to get excited about the prospect of a Good Summer.

People who grow their own are obsessed with the weather. I'm not just talking about the way British people in general like talking about weather. I do reckon you could hypnotise 100 British people, convince them that they're spies and then set them a task of spending a whole evening together without revealing ANY personal information and they would probably manage fine - as long as they were allowed to discuss the floods of 2007, hosepipe bans and the relative merits of the route they took to get to the hypnotist in the first place (and whether there were any roadworks). There's a reason it's a cliche, there's a shedload (excuse the pun) of truth in it.

But start growing your own food and your preoccupation with the weather takes on a whole new significance. Maybe it's because for many of us who are lucky enough to have a quarter century buffer zone between our lives and wartime deprivation, we like to secretly fantasise that if our parsnips don't germinate, the nation might starve. We might not be digging for victory in real life but when we're out there by ourselves with a garden fork, it feels like it.

Growing food gives you a free pass to a club where membership allows you to feel a special degree of entitlement to a moan about the weather. People need to understand that you're NOT moaning just because you're fed up of drying your clothes indoors, or having to wear a jacket on the beach or any of that "trivial" stuff which "ordinary" people complain about. Not you. You're simply expressing a "scientific" concern about potato blight, or that your sweetcorn will miss their pollination window. Honest.

So that's my excuse for being a tad obsessed with the weather. After two summers of almost no tomatoes, no damson jam and not a parsnip in sight, I am silently crossing my fingers at the Met Office's tentative predictions of a barbecue summer.

So how about you? Gardener or not, what are your hopes for this summer?

Stay well

Joanne

PS The Met Office's summer forecast can be checked here if you're just too anxious to wait! http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/science/creating/monthsahead/seasonal/2009/summer.html

(0 Comments)

Now you're all here!

30/05/2009 21:50:00

Now You're All Here!

Hi again,

You may have noticed that I have left the introductory blog up for a few weeks. That's because the site was so new and I have been spending the last few weeks getting people to find the new site and sign up. There are now a whole bunch of you on here, so it's time to start using it!

I'll be posting a blog every week from now on. I would welcome comments or feedback and any ideas you have I will try to incorporate into future blogs.

A few intrepid members have posted queries in the forum, so if you get chance to get in there and see if you know any answers, that would be great. And don't forget to submit your ideas or examples of good practice to us to include on the site. This site is here to make your life easier, so you need to be telling me what to include and what's not working.

Did you all get your free report? As it's a new system, please let me know if there are any of the usual teething problems, so I can iron them out.

Anyway, as I said, I'll be posting something here every week from now on, so keep your eyes peeled for some tips and ideas.

Best wishes