Anticipating the Yule Log

The Backyard Pizza Oven with its timber door

Since the pizza oven has been insulated, it has been operating at +500 degrees C which makes for 'fine' pizza but has played havoc with the oven and firebox doors.  The timber doors were protected with fire bricks and vermiculite panels but even so on the last firing the the back of the doors nearest the heat were carbonized and required replacement. This week, thermally insulated double skin mild steel doors have been fabricated in the Cabine and installed. Hopefully, these will not require replacement any time soon!

 

The carbonized rear of the old oven door looking like furniture reclaim from Herculaneum

The oven firebox with new thermally insulated twin walled mild steel door

The oven with new thermally insulated twin walled mild steel door

The oven with door removed showing the vermiculite hot tiles and trivet

When we travel to the Berlin Christmas Markets, Toot and I really enjoy eating the flat breads, raclette and fire roast salmon. Of course, if you want to keep the cold out, it pays to accept a glass or two of mulled wine - well it would be rude not to! 

Thanks to 'Covid19' and bloody 'Brexit' the chances of visiting brilliant Berlin this or even next Christmas appear remote. So not to be down hearted, we will reenact the Berlin experience in our backyard. We have raclette cheese in the freezer, plenty of flour and yeast in the pantry, loads of wine courtesy of Aldi, Iceland and Asda, spices from the Orient via Southend and World of Fish Lowestoft will no doubt provide top rate Yuletide salmon.

We have already reinforced the garden 'Chinese twinkly light panorama' - tastefully arranged and RIBA approved. The fire-pit 'roaster toaster' is ready to go for roasting the salmon and the 'pizza oven' is now operational for baking the flat breads. We only need Barry to rock up and take pride of place in his garden office and then Christmas 2020 can commence.

We hate you Covid19 virus but you wont stop us eating molten cheese until we become spleeny and  drinking spicy wine until our baubles drop off. So there you little sub microscopic bugger!

A little bit of rock a long way away - the planet Mars tonight

 

Mars a bright star amongst many stars shining overhead

Mars a tiny speck of rock lost in the vastness of space 

Mars a small world and fellow planet orbiting the Sun.

Mars is a small planet with a diameter approximately twice that of our Moon. It looks so much smaller than the Moon because it is 143 times further away. Conversely, Mars looks much brighter than the stars because it is so much closer than they are. Even small stars are enormous when compared with even the largest of planets. Space is truly vast and much of it is empty perhaps that is why it is called space? If you want to see some more images of Mars follow the link to the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Credit: All images courtesy of Kurt Thrust at the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Roaster Toaster going viral

 

We have always enjoyed the Berlin Christmas Markets and in particular the delicious salmon roast over an open fire. Thanks to the rapacious virus Covid 19 we will be unable to visit Germany this Christmas but we are determined to have roast salmon in our garden instead. To this purpose I have been busy at work in the 'Cabine' constructing our own salmon 'Roaster Toaster' to use in concert with a 'Fire pit' newly purchased from China via the 'Bay'. Needless to say, Toot and I are very excited about this Yuletide project but which way should our Christmas Lunch go? - Hot salmon in a bun with dill sauce or hot salmon on a potato rosti ? Either way, I am thinking some raclette cheese, fondue or tartiflette washed down with a glass of mulled wine should have a place in our celebrations. Screw you Covid 19, Johnson and Hancock and your humbug ways.

Conjunction

'Conjunction' digital media George Roberts October 2020

A 'photo mash' of a number of images I have taken this autumn. The planets Saturn and Jupiter were close to the crescent Moon this week, so I took a number of photos out of our bedroom window. I then combined these with an image I captured of the breakwater at Southwold Harbour during 'rough weather'. It has all come together to make a rather dramatic composition!

Something in the air

 

The 'Travellin' Madge' tableau in a jar has had to come out for a 'breath of fresh air' to prevent mould spores spreading across the cactus and succulents. So we decided to repot Madge and then recycle the jar as a home for air plants.

Madge and cactii in their new low humidity home

Air plant is the common name for Tillandsia – a genus of 650 species of perennial flowering plants and evergreens. They belong to the Bromeliaceae family and are mostly found in Mexico and South-Eastern America. Tillandsia gets its common name “air plants” because they do not need soil to grow. They cling on trees, rocks, telephone lines, etc., absorbing nutrients from the air.

"I could get quite 'obsessed ' by collecting and keeping Tillandsia - there are lots of different kinds to acquire, they are inexpensive to buy and can be arranged with and attached to 'objet trouve' including shells and fossils" 

My first three air plants have been 'glue-gunned' to driftwood found and collected on holiday this summer in Northumberland. If you look closely you can also see a pine-cone from the Berlin Botanic Gardens and a fossil coral from Holy Island. I really like collecting and arranging interesting stuff. 

Maybe that's why our house is full of crap!?

My 'Lock down' Brooklyn Sketchbook. - "Memoirs of a curious butterfly."

 

My 'Brooklyn Sketchbook' 2020 is dedicated to the late Travellin' Madge a very fine and eccentric lady - a one off!

On my 70th Birthday in 2019, my lovely girl Lulu gave me a Brooklyn Sketchbook to complete and send  off to the Big Apple. Little did I know that a virulent virus would require 'Lock down' and provide me with time and opportunity to get the job done! Thank you Lulu for a great present and to all my children, gotten children, grand children, family and friends for quite honestly providing everything in our lives that is good and wonderful. The Brooklyn Sketchbook project is both interesting and sort of bonkers all in one 7x5 inch full colour format. My little book now sits on the shelf of a library of sketchbooks somewhere in Brooklyn. It also includes for the 'Sketchbook' touring the United States in a 3 wheeler vehicle, a journey that 'Travelin' Madge would very much have approved of!

            " Some like to watch the horses go around - I like to make marks"

Mars Tonight