Christmas Steps

I was in Bristol recently and took a walk down St. Michael's Hill. Having driven up and down the hill several times before, I hadn't realised quite how steep it was until I walked it.

After reaching the bottom of the hill, I saw this across the road...

Naturally I was intrigued and had to see more, so on the way back, I had a closer look.

These two pictures were taken looking up, and then down, from the bottom of the first flight of steps.

Of course I had to Google it, and there's a nice article on the BBC Bristol website. According to the plaque on the right hand side of the street above "This streete was steppered done and finished 1669". You can see some close-ups and the full wording here .

Incidentally, I didn't walk back up St. Michael's Hill - I took a taxi. It just looked too much like hard work.

More weeds...

I have too many dandelions in my garden, and they're not easy to pull out. They have such long twisty roots, which invariably break and regenerate. But according to various books and websites it seems that every part of this plant is edible and very nutritious.

The leaves and roots can be made into a gentle diuretic tea. The leaves can also be used in salad, fried, boiled or even wrapped around cheese. The roots can be eaten raw or cooked, or can be roasted and ground and used as a coffee substitute. The flowers can be added to salad, fried in batter, or made into wine. Even the seeds can be sprouted and eaten.

So why do we pull them up and mutter and curse about them? I guess it's because we can't control where they grow.

I took pictures of the seed head just for the fun of it. Here is a sample of three photos....

I hope it's given the impression of the seeds with their parachutes blowing away from the main plant.

Time to confess: I cheated and placed the seed head on a glass table top, and then knocked a few seeds off and spread them around to look as if they'd blown away. Did my trick work?

By the way, Dandelion is from the french dent de lion which means lion's tooth, because the leaves have a ragged tooth shape.

Vicious Stinging Nettles

It's that time of year when I do battle with stinging nettles. They creep into my garden, hiding among the flowers and fruit, and seem to suddenly appear out of nowhere, fully grown, and towering over everything else.

The other day I set to work pulling up a couple of clumps that had grown out of their hiding place in two quince bushes that grow against a fence in my garden. Being an old hand at dealing with this perrenial weed, I wore long thick gardening gloves and started pulling. As well as the danger of being stung, the quince bushes are quite thorny, so I was very careful.


You can see above that they've just popped up through the quince, but by the time I see them they're pretty big and very vicious.

Here is a closeup of one of the leaves. Those fine hairs on the leaves and on the stems are what cause all the pain.

Despite taking very good care, I still got an extremely nasty sting on my arm just above the edge of the gardening gloves. I pulled too hard, too fast and too low down the stem, and the top of the plant whiplashed onto my bare arm. Ouch!

I may have been wounded, but look where the nettles ended up. Score so far: 1-1

Apparently they make a good and nourishing soup, but it would take a huge leap of faith for me to even try it.

Scented breeze

The village smells lovely today. I can't exactly identify the scents, but I would guess at blossoms and wildflowers and green growing things. Every now and then there's a change in the wind and it carries a hint of woodsmoke. It isn't a sunny day, but it's light and it's breezy. Really nice if you're out walking.

La Gomera again

I've just spent another week in La Gomera. I enjoyed it so much in November, that I took my kids with me this time. None of us were disappointed. It's such a lovely island. I've uploaded some pictures, and they're not quite in the right order, but if I move them about I'm afraid that they'll lose the ability to be enlarged by clicking on them.

The picture below was taken near the pool where we were staying. We went to a barbeque and there was a Gomeran band and dancers that came along to entertain us. If you go to the bottom of this post, you'll find a video of the band playing. I took this on my camera so it's quite short.


This picture was taken from the footpath that took when we walked down to the village of Playa Santiago. It was a very steep path, and took us about 20 minutes downhill. My kids nearly always insisted on walking back up, which they did, but I always took a taxi. We found an amazing tapas place right on the beach close to where the road seems to curve around to the left in the picture, so we ate lunch there on our last two days. It was wonderful. They do these delicious sauces called mojo. There's a red (hot) mojo, and a green (not so hot) mojo. Most restaurants give you bowls of mojo to dip bread into while you're waiting for your meal to arrive.

At last the video has been uploaded, and now I can publish this post. I will write another post with pictures of our dolphin watching day later.

A treat for Hooli

Here's a picture of Hooli getting ready to catch and swallow a treat. You can just see the treat in the top right hand corner of the picture. It looks like a little brown nut flying towards his waiting mouth.

He's so easy to please.

This little lamb was lost and crying for its mother.

Easter Wishes

A friend sent me this in an e-mail, so I simply had to pass it along.....

A lady opened her refrigerator and saw a rabbit sitting on one of the shelves.

"What are you doing in there?"

She asked.

The rabbit replied:

"This is a Westinghouse, isn't it?", To which the lady replied

"Yes."

"Well," the rabbit said,
"I'm westing."


Sorry.... I couldn't stop myself.
Have a Wonderful Easter...