I've just come in from watering the garden. We've hit a real hot spot with the weather and it is scheduled to continue for a little while yet.
I'm really pleased with the way that the garden has developed in this my first year of tending it.
To the left is a photo taken last year when
Ross and I first visited this house
together. It shows the back garden in its untended state with the lovely estate
agent, Phil, in mid shot to give a sense of scale and perspective - honest.
To the right
is the garden this year, much cut back and more cultivated. I think it looks
much better and my Rossi is cuter than Phil also.
In the new photo you can just make out how some of my crops are getting on.
To the left of the path, you can just make out the lettuces and up where Ross's
feet are you can see the feathery foliage of the carrots. To Ross's right is
where the second crop of onions is and then by the wall on the right is where
the tomatoes are growing. It should all make a nice fresh salad at some point.
I did a bit of thinning with the carrots on Sunday and pulled my first crop. To call them baby carrots would probably be a bit of an exaggeration but they did taste of carrot.
The hot weather has produced a number of other effects. The most obvious one here is the emergence of the flying ants. Many of the pavements have little raised piles of soil between the flagstones where the ants have borrowed out and then flown away.
A couple of thoughts about media events. Who really won Big Brother? And
I'm not actually thinking of Brian here even though some newspapers are tipping
him as Channel Four's daytime answer to Graham Norton.
No, I think the real winner is all of the new digital services. Use of interactive digital TV has grown enormously because of it. Text messaging. SMS. All these things were fringe or social. Big Brother has shown there are other channels for media corporations to make money out of it.
The other big media story is a Brass Eye special on pædophiles.
Brass Eye is a satirical programme about the media. It spoofs the way that the media deals with emotive issues. It is and always has been over the top. It needs to be if it's going to be more excessive that the media it lampoons.
Over 2,000 people complained about the programme. That's 2,000 people who didn't get the joke. Or rather, it's 2,000 people who didn't want to understand the joke. I didn't see the programme so I can't comment on it. I've only seen selected excerpts quoted on various Web sites. The bits quoted seemed hilarious out of context. Much less offensive that some of the stuff on Graham Norton's programme so Brian had better be careful.
Brass Eye is scheduled for late at night. It's format is reasonably well known. The subject was trailed in advance. If you didn't want to watch, there were plenty of alternatives - including an early night. So, that's 2,000 people who went out of their way to be offended.
Since there's a band waggon, a number of politicians have jumped on. I would love to know how many of these moral guardians spoke out when The News of the World was promoting its naming and shaming campaign last year.
Finally, I'm aware that the line of the way the sun sets is moving to the left as I look down my back garden. For the past two months, that area has been bathed in late evening light. Gradually, now, the sun is moving behind the row of houses to the left. This is not surprising. We already have nearly 90 minutes less sunlight in a day than we did at midsummer night. Funny I don't miss the loss as much as I appreciate the gain at the other swing of the year in January. Maybe it's because I'm asleep for a lot of the changes that happen at this time of the year in the early morning.