Catching up

The location scout job finished today, in theory, although I owe a day so will be going in to the office next week to do the uploading and boarding that's still outstanding, and hopefully manage to save a few of my photos to my own datastick for a flickr folder. As far as the research job is concerned, I reached my target for number of interviewees, so "all" I have to do now is transcribe the interview tapes, get the analytical framework set up, and do the analysis. At least I have some interviews to transcribe - for a long time, this project felt like it was never going to get off the ground, so hitting the target is a huge relief.

In other news, I got something together for Spark, and await the outcome with interest. Previous experience suggests that the things I want to write about aren't the things that Screen Yorkshire is interested in seeing, so we'll see what happens this time.

As promised, a garden update. This is what the far end of the garden looked like before Handyman Steve came:

This is the Weedy Bit, which I never quite managed to get sorted out - I'd dig and clear a couple of square yards then not be able to get back out there for a few days, by which time the weeds would have returned. But now it looks like this:

No more nettles, no more weeds - unfortunately, no more Clematis Montana either, which covered the trellis in pink flowers in the spring and green foliage the rest of the time - we think it drowned in the floods. But at last, a vegetable patch. The railway sleeper and the bricks will be edges of a raised bed, in due course. I just have to dig it over and get rid of all the rubble that's in there.

There were some benefits to clearing the Weedy Bit:

4lb of blackberries, which have now been turned into:

7 jars and a couple of tastelings of bramble jelly, which I prefer to blackberry jam because it has all the taste but no pips or bugs. The jars (here seen cooling on a rather sticky wooden bread board) came from Wares Of Knutsford, a fabulous online household emporium selling everything you would need for preserving, plus all sorts of wonderfully old-fashioned kitchen stuff - bit of a nostalgia kick for me to find them, as I used to go into Knutsford when I was little, spending my summer holidays on my Grandparents' farm at Plumley.

And this was Sunday lunch:

The first of the Italin mini plum tomatoes, plus a solo Gardener's Delight, some spring onions and some basil, which swiftly turned into the topping for bruschetta, with the addition of some olive oil and black pepper. The tomatoes were still warm from the sun when I was chopping them, and they smelt amazing. Home grown food - can't beat it.