Favourite Friday

This has been a fun week; started the new job, the garden is beginning to reach good level of production, Twitter freebies arrived, chat at the local school went well and some friends started to tweet, a little more of each below.

I will not be blogging much relating to my new jobs as there are some aspects of confidentiality etc that would make it inappropriate, but from the point of view of a sea change in career it feels good so far. The bike ride of 25 minutes to and from work is basically on the flat with a small stretch of rough track that joins two made-up farm tracks. At most I have seen three vehicles in any one journey; also hares, woodpeckers and squirrels; plus I can review the hedgerows for their current and future potential – urgent need to deal with some elderflowers (cordial, fritters, ice cream, champagne)

The garden is producing plenty of white onions and salad, although too much is bolting in the dry weather. I have resorted to the hose again as the water butts are dry. Rain is promised for the weekend. The strawberry hanging baskets are nearly over and the first of the alpine strawberries are colouring up. Pleased with the site of baby Kohl Rabi which I am tempted to eat small. The beans are climbing the stalks. Took a salad to friend's this weekend which included large quantities of chive flowers, some sorrel and other leaves; seemed to go down well.

Twitter freebies this week have included @paddyandscotts coffee and @ethicalsoap foot scrubby and hand cream. Really pleased with these and will give feedback to the people concerned. The coffee was taken to the friend's house and shared with girl friends, really good coffee their website explains more about how they started in the garage and moved on to processing various different coffees. The foot scrubbie is a slice of loofa impregnated with lemony smelling soap, tried it out in the shower this morning, it tickles! Allyson's website describes her journey into business using excess goat's milk from her smallholding.

This week also saw the 'chat' to the children at the local school. They will be working on posters to form an art wall at the village hall for the Expo on 20^th June. The theme is 'time' and I included pictures of a watch, egg timer, ball bearing clock and the houses of parliament. We then went on a wander through Salvador Dali's melting clock, Monet's wheat stacks, Lowry, Breughel, Hopper and finishing with pictures from The Time Machine and of course the TARDIS. Huge thanks to @nettlecake who through a twitter conversation, helped me develop the ideas. I also explained the background to the logo above, designed by @flashmaggie, which includes the Sciapod, a figure that also appears on their school sweatshirts. It will be interesting to see the results.

Welcome to @cletrac and @LivingInPuglia if you look at my favourites you will find some interesting characters or just things that make me smile

Oh and if this all looks different to previous blogs, my first attempted to write in Word2007 blog template and load direct – wait for the crash when I hit 'Publish'

Please comment – I like to know what you think