Pig Sty Avenue

Fig seedlings are incredibly slow-growing. The seedlings I reported a month ago are still tiny. But I've brought a couple of module trays up from the allotment to prick them out some time in the next week. The fact is, they're growing on vermiculite and water alone, and any feeding from their wee seeds must surely be spent. There are 80 modules between the two trays, and I've counted approximately 100 seedlings, so that should be about right. I'll keep the module trays on the windowsill at home until the shed's ready with heating, and maybe get them into the hedgerow about a year from now, depending on how they're doing.

As you can probably see, my horticultural skills exceed my Paint2 ones. I hope. That's the hedge in 2 shades of green. The section at the bottom of the picture is the Middle East bed, and is now a straggly hedge-line consisting of 12 or so gorse, brambles, suckers from the roots of the cherry trees, and the cherry trees themselves. On the bottom right of the picture is represented a double row, berries and currants in the front, and some proper "hedgerow" plants I was given : hazel, blackthorn, crab apple, dog rose and elder. West of the path, a row of gorse by the fence, fattening up to a double row in the corner, (likely to be a ned entry point), all fronted by berries and currants, which continue round along the West boundary for a way, again backed by gorse at the fence. The fruit runs out 1/3 along that line, and thereafter it's a double row of gorse.

Nearly there. The problem is lack of time to practice. I'm probably up to 20 hours or so on 2H now, though I stopped looking at the clock some time ago: left to my own devices with no domestic distractions, I just keep going - until life intervenes, usually in the shape of the dogs wanting my attention. I've been through the process before with Lilliburlero and Imagine, so I know how this goes. I'm not sure if I can get 2 more pieces under the belt before the 1st possible exam date, which is 7th November, so I have to make a big decision before the end of September whether to enter (or wait until the new year, the last opportunity with the current syllabus). Well, if I've got 2 pieces learned by end of next month, I'm going to go for it. I'm hoping the learning process is exponential, that is, less time to learn each piece. One day, I want to be able to learn an average popular or folk tune in a few hours. When I can do that, I'm done.

Tell you what, working full time, teaching, marking essays, on top of all one's usual domestic arrangements, doesn't half interfere with the allotment and the piano. However, I managed a few hours this weekend at the plot. The boundary along the mid and north west beds was thick with weeds: some of this was clover and phacelia I'd planted myself, but there was also ground-elder, nettles and grass invading from the next plot. I was 2 hours clearing a few yards of an area less than a yard wide. But I got there eventually. One thing to note: phacelia has extremely shallow roots, and can be pulled up just raking it. Clover's another story, it roots like field beans, and can't be pulled up by hand, but needs a trowel or even a spade. Anyway, I planted a row of gorse behind the currants and berries on the NW corner, filling in gaps in the front row where the transplanted fruit hadn't taken. And then the whole of the midwest bed's boundary was a double row of g...

Tell you what, working full time, teaching, marking essays, on top of all one's usual domestic arrangements, doesn't half interfere with the allotment and the piano. However, I managed a few hours this weekend at the plot. The boundary along the mid and north west beds was thick with weeds: some of this was clover and phacelia I'd planted myself, but there was also ground-elder, nettles and grass invading from the next plot. I was 2 hours clearing a few yards of an area less than a yard wide. But I got there eventually. One thing to note: phacelia has extremely shallow roots, and can be pulled up just raking it. Clover's another story, it roots like field beans, and can't be pulled up by hand, but needs a trowel or even a spade. Anyway, I planted a row of gorse behind the currants and berries on the NW corner, filling in gaps in the front row where the transplanted fruit hadn't taken. And then the whole of the midwest bed's boundary was a double row of g...

Still playing catch up at the allotment, after those 6 weeks away. I cropped the 2nd earlies, and got 1 1/2 coffee sacks full. Which is satisfying, from 2kg of spuds from Lidl, costing less than £1 in total. But, I must say, maris peer are not-bad salad potatoes, but somewhat bland in flavour. The main crop desiree are still in the ground, some of the foliage showing signs of yellowing, so ready to crop in a few weeks perhaps. And the last couple of evenings, I've gone back to the Northern boundary. On the east side, the hedge is pretty much planted, but badly needed weeding, which I did. On the west side, near the path are a couple of gooseberries and bramble plants which I had to cut back when I was doing some emergency weeding during a visit home a few weeks ago. They've took that treatment well, and are flourishing better than ever. On that part, there's only the front row of the hedge planted; the back row will be all gorse. I planted 4 of them tonight. I was tempt...

Job, family, household, dogs, allotment: there are an awful lot of other calls on a piano learner's time. One day this week I only got a few minutes practice, mostly I've been getting the "academic hour". It's coming together, anyhow, and I've almost got it memorized now. I've almost tracked down a piano at the University. I recall last year seeing a room with pianos in, from the corridor when I was on my way somewhere else. I'd almost begun to wonder if I'd dreamt that, but one of the porter's confirmed that there are such rooms with at least one grand and one upright, and he told me which building they're in. So I'm getting closer. The Poacher should be in the bag by month's end, inshallah. Memorization is the point where I can get it up to speed and musical.

Well kind of day 12, ish. I don't think I practiced Thursday & Friday, but did two hours on Saturday, first time I've ever practiced that long. Nothing Sunday, but got an hour tonight - I would happily have gone on, except that it was causing some domestic disharmony. I think I might have reached a plateau, so tonight I slowed down and tried to concentrate on memorization and not making mistakes, rather than picking up speed, which I had been doing in the previous couple of hours. So I was slowly puzzling out the hands together at each note, and each bar, and I can understand how that would become tedious to a listener. Especially as the piano is now slightly out of tune, according to the app I've used - everything a semi-tone higher than it ought to be. But I'm going to soldier on with Poacher now, before I get the tuner in. Want to be able to play something to check it out whilst he's packing the tuning forks away. On my self imposed Grade 1 exam prepar...

No practice Saturday, Sunday, Monday, but got an hour last night, and another 40 mins tonight. Two hands coming together sufficiently for me to be able to step back from it as I'm playing and working out their relationships. Slow, and an occasional pause for thought. It's gone from painful, to difficult, to hard work, to enjoyable in less than a fortnight. Maybe another 10 hours to get it "passable"? Which would mean 26 academic hours (including 3 hours for each hand separate) in total. Which, in turn, means I can get a 20 bar, grade 1 piece in a month, and am therefore on course for the exam in November/December.

What's an "academic hour" when it's at home? It depends on what academic institution's representative you ask. And some places, Universities, mostly, have longer periods of tuition than an hour, often 90 minutes. But in a 90 minute lesson, most teachers would break it down with changes of pace and activity after an "academic hour", doing something else. Which lasts between 40 and 50 minutes, but sometimes it's an actual hour. One of the reasons we have this is that after an academic hour, students need to get to another classroom, or the teacher does, and you give them 10-20 mins to do so, (5 minutes in some places, regarded as stingy). Also, attention spans for learners tend to be a few minutes either side of three quarters of an hour. So when I say "Day 9" on the Lincolnshire Poacher, I mean I've done an academic hour of practice, warming up with scales, probably, so say 15 mins of that, 30 with The Poacher. But because I am my ow...

Early June this was taken, I'm estimating, from the banked up rows of spuds in the ME bed, (bottom centre-ish). Wildflowers/weeds blooming round the pond in the bottom right corner, but the phacelia not quite showing in the Mid and NW beds. That phacelia is in bloom now, and mad with bees & hoverflies. It also shows you how late I was, how unprepared for planting, with a lot of bare earth still in June. Next year, next year...

Lovely big poppy, apologies for misframing. Six weeks of work in London came at just the wrong time of year for the allotment. I managed to get back for just one weekend, and spent a few hours of emergency weeding, which just about kept it from going to jungle on me. Been home three days now, and spent everyone of them, a few hours, at the plot. It wasn't as bad as it first looked. The whole SE bed, formerly known as the midden and the East side of the old-greenhouse-foundations is choked with weeds. Which is an improvement, actually, it covers up the rubble and the rubbish that has been there in ever so slowly decreasing quantities since I moved in. When I get this corner sorted, particularly the old shed, a last piece of the puzzle will slip into place. And that old shed, oh my goodness me, is sliding blissfully westward, at the rate of maybe a millimeter a day.  It means the new shed is becoming a priority now, I doubt the old shed will see the other side of the approac...

Another hour; actually, 2 half hours. Getting closer, but still very slow and miles away... Thinking about concentrating on memorization as a technique to learning to play it. But, maybe that's what's happening anyway. Mostly, just now, it seems to be a question of speed, I'm extremely slow. But slow isn't a bad thing: I can hear the structure of it, and like the tune more.

So that's 5 hours now. A bit better in some parts, but reached a plateau, it feels like. Or maybe not. A time measure came out at 3.40something minutes, so that's 7x slower than it's going to be, which means there's a long way to go. Ugh. Still a struggle.

And Day 4 means 4 hours. I'm really surprised at how well it's going. There's a long way to go, mind: I timed one of the play throughs, and it was more than 4 minutes; 8 times longer than it will be. But I've got the feel for it, it's recognisable to my ear, and I can almost understand the relationship between the RH melody and LH harmonies. AND I've almost memorized it as a two handed piece. The shape of learning so far has been: 3 hours RH, (though frankly I'm assuming that, it was ages ago). Ditto LH, (really). About 3 hours of painful neurological shenanigans, with 2H, a real bloomin' slog. Now around 4 hours and it's still difficult, but I'm engaging with it, "Oh yes, that's why that LH thing happens here." "Oh I've read that wrong, it must be... ah yes;" (my knowledge of notation being imperfect but improving). I'm blogging about this in such detail so that I can compare notes on the next piece I ...

Well, looks like I only started 2H on Saturday, so I'm now 3 hours into that - practice sessions are almost 100% Poacher, this weather, maybe a few runs up and down the F scale to warm up. Still a long way to go, but could feel it coming together today. I mean, a sympathetic listener might have thought, "Hmm, that sounds like the Lincolnshire Poacher he's murdering there, very slowly..." I mean, it's becoming itself. Kind of, maybe, passing the pain barrier, or about to.