out in the garden...a proud parent

a few weeks ago i took delivery of some teeny tiny plants from the kind folks, gwen and ian, at riverford organics. here's a terrible photo of them...

and then what happened?! we had sun, sun and more sun, very uncharacteristic for my part of the world, a veritable rainforest-worth of growth, as you can see...

charlotte potatoes...peaking through the soil

courgettes...before they get mahassive
(planted two to a pot to keep them down a little)
the little plastic bee is keeping an eye on them, not sure it will work

pak choi (giant variety, clearly) and spinach
hiding in the background

red cabbage...how beautiful is the leaf?

red lettuce...i don't think i'll need to buy lettuce again

kohl rabi (not sure...) and beetroot (yum!)

a spot of culture...a late one at the late shows?

for the last five years in newcastle we've had an annual culture crawl around some of the museums, galleries and other arty venues after hours when they're usually all shut. this year's late shows is tonight and tomorrow (13 and 14 may). i'm not there tonight as i'm terribly busy catching up on this here blog but am going tomorrow, how very exciting.

so tomorrow's programme will hopefully feature
* a fashion parade with an afternoon tea twist complete with games, a photo booth and lots of tea and cakes (thank heavens) at the shipley art gallery
* a guided tour of newcastle's contemporary and historic architecture from northern architecture
* an audio-visual installation called sentinel in one of the tyne bridge towers
* a nose around the new highbridge studios and gallery before it opens
* an 'off the wall' (never really sure whether things are actually are that off the wall if they need to be labelled up like this) performance, a spot of paper engineering (whatever that is) and hands-on activities at the laing

i'll let you know how it goes...!

blogging...the creativity:stress theorem

so, after extensive empirical research over many weeks, i have developed a new theorem to explain my attorcious blogging performance this year. here it is...

high workload + stress = low creativity

anyway, i've been digging around in the depths and i think i've managed to find some of that elusive creativity, not a lot, but just enough to get started again, a little bit...