Here’s some music for you that I recorded on my week off last week. It’s called Wild Mountain Thyme (or sometimes Will Ye Go Lassie, Go) and is a modern variation of a traditional Scottish folk tune called The Braes of Balquidder.

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Meadow

The lyrics are:

Oh the summer time is coming,
and the trees are sweetly blooming
and the wild mountain thyme
grows around the purple heather

Will ye go, Lassie, go
and we’ll all go together
to pluck wild mountain thyme
from around the purple heather.
Will ye go, Lassie, go.

I will build my love a bower
near yon pure crystal fountain
and on it I will pile
all the flowers of the mountain

Chorus

If my love she were gone
I would surely find no other
where the wild mountain thyme
grows around the purple heather

Chorus

I recorded it using my cheap Wesley guitar that I’ve tuned down to DADGAD tuning so that I can learn that tuning. The chords are pretty simple; mainly D5, Gadd9 and Bm7. These are pretty easy chords on DADGAD (I might do a future post about DADGAD), but here’s the chords:

My Roland Juno 106 provides a pad backing, and my Ozark bouzouki provides an counterpoint melody as well a duet with my Scandalli accordion during the middle break. It’s all recorded and mixed in Cakewalk Sonar and was picked up mainly with my Zoom H4, although the accordion was recorded with a Microvox pickup.

On Friday, Caroline had a day off and I was still on my week off. The weather was forecast good and so we headed down to the sailing club and out to the boat with Dad. It was calm, sunny and beautiful.

We motored out to the North Channel in Poole Harbour and sailed round, past the Sandbanks’ Ferry and out into Poole Bay. The wind was directly from behind, although barely strong enough, which allowed us to goosewing down towards Studland.

We tacked East and sailed towards Boscombe. The wind began to pick up a little and made for nice sailing. The odd passing cloud gave an indication of things to come, giving us a push of wind.

We tacked back towards Bournemouth as it clouded over more and the wind began to really pick up. We had to reef in the Genoa and main sail. The direction of the wind had changed a bit meaning we were sailing hard into the wind. We tacked inland a little so that we weren’t sailing so close to the wind. However, even reefed in, we were right over, probably flying one of the bilge keels.

At the entrance to Poole Harbour we started the motor so that we could avoid tacking through the busiest part of the area. The sails came down and we motored back to the mooring.

It was a nice sail which got increasingly frantic! Dad was tired at the end, as he is pretty much always in charge of sail trim.

I put a video together of the day:

Puffy (RIP)

Yesterday morning Puffy was put to sleep on the recommendation of the vet. She had developed sour crop and we took her to the vet expecting to get her put on antibiotics and anti-fungal medicines, but the vet had a feel around and said that she wasn’t in good condition and had probably been ill for some time. He said the sour crop was probably a symptom of another more serious disease and he recommended putting her to sleep.

I felt bad the rest of the day as I felt I’d been a little rushed into the decision. However, she’s at rest now, buried next to Blondie and Vicious.

That leaves Stumpy all on her own. I hope she doesn’t get too lonely before we can go and get some more chickens.

I’ve been meaning to get out into the garden and dig up the potatoes that went over about 2 weeks ago. They were planted in the veg patch up the top and, like both veg patches, require an effort of unclipping all the butterfly netting before you can even get in.

However, the weather’s turned out nice tonight so that’s what I did and I was pleasantly surprised by the potatoes up there. The plants themselves had withered to nothing and were barely discernible amongst the weeds that were already growing in their place, but the potatoes were large and juicy looking, filling to the brim one of the empty potato bags from our regular veg box.

I also picked the first of some of the many Hungarian wax peppers that are growing in our greenhouse. They look absolutely gorgeous and I’m probably going to make some fajitas with some chicken marinated in some organic barbecue sauce. Our little Tumbling Tom tomatoes are still going strong and they’ll make a nice addition to the fajita filling.

In this picture below you can also see a great big haul of Nectar Gold French beans at the back, along with the potatoes, peppers and tomatoes.

Vegetable Haul, 14th August 2008

Yesterday we went out to the Kinson Common Open Day. It would have been nice to help out, but with all the things we have to do sometimes it’s not so easy to know if we’ll be available on the day.

After getting more chicken food we headed over there and ate some lunch and wandered around the stalls. Had some an interesting chat with a man from the Bournemouth Natural Science Society, who had some preserved moth and butterfly displays. There were some lovely displays in the Friends of Kinson Common tent, including some very interesting insects caught in a moth trap the night before.

At 3 o’clock we went off on a nature and poem walk with Richard Hesketh. We wandered around the common and saw a Sparrowhawk, a hawker (that wouldn’t land) and various other wildflowers and insects.

Here’s some photos of the event:

Kinson Common Open Day

Can you see it? Grayling (Hipparchia semele)

Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeria)

Rosy Footman (Miltochrista miniata)

Maiden's Blush (Cyclophonra punctaria)

One of the ways I try to cut down my carbon footprint (and my monthly costs) is to use my bike when I can. Perhaps the most often I use it is to nip down the shops and do a bit of shopping. Often my panniers are enough to get by with, but sometimes you just need more space.

A couple of years ago I bought a bike trailer. It was about £40 off eBay and has done it’s duty well. But it has a serious drawback and that’s that the wheels are so small that getting the pump into the valve to inflate them is almost impossible. This has annoyed me for ages. It’s also quite small. Going to music sessions with a violin and a mandolin is impossible with just panniers and difficult with my old trailer.

So, up steps my latest trailer. It’s big. And it can hold 100kg (although I doubt I could pull 100 kgs very easily). The size means I could fit in a violin and a mandolin quite easily and the larger wheels are as easy to inflate as a normal bicycle tyre. Best of all, though, is that the frame has attachment points all around for the canvas sides. This means that in the future I might be able to customise it to have different tops for different trips; for example, high sides for taking voluminous but light objects down the dump (like garden waste) or possibly a better way of attaching a guitar.

Here’s some pictures of it attached to my bike.

New Bike Trailer

New Bike Trailer from back

Since I’ve taken these photos I’ve added rear lights for towing in the dark. It’s very solidly made and yet dismantles easily. I’ve managed to store it almost flat in the garage.

I have one thing I must remember: my old trailer attached near the underside of the seat post which gave it all-round manoeuvrability, but the new trailer attaches at the centre of the rear wheel and the tail angles out and around the wheel. This it means it’s not possible to do sharp right-hand turns because the rear wheel hits the trailer’s tail. Hopefully it won’t be a problem but I must try to remember that! The advantage is that the centre of gravity is lower (so heavy loads don’t affect the bike’s balance) and it frees up the top of the bike rack again.

I haven’t used it yet, though. I’m looking forward to its first outing. That might well be on Friday when I go to my next session.