3-Bay Compost Bin

compost bin plan
drawing board

I need to work out exactly how much timber I’ll need for my 3-bay compost bins and I’m struggling to do a back-of-an-envelope type sketch with ruler and pencil in my sketchbook. So why am I struggling? – I’ve got a drawing board with parallel motion and drafting head stowed away in the corner at the other end of my studio. I’ve enjoyed the excuse to get it out again to draw an orthographic plan and elevations.

My old compost bin was made from recycled timber from next door’s summer house (which itself had been recycled from a previous existence as a lean-to conservatory) but after ten or fifteen years that was ready for replacement and this time I’m going to use FSC-certified decking boards with 3×2 inch uprights.

Turning the Heap

compost bin
We won’t be going for lids on the bins this time, an offcut of carpet will have suffice to stop the compost getting waterlogged in the rain.
Previous twin bins: the lids proved awkward.

I’m keen to have a better arrangement for the front panels, so that will be slats which will drop into grooves. The idea of having three smaller bins in place of the larger twin bins I had before, is that it should be easier to get a system going of turning the heap. The garden waste will start off on the left in bin number one, then I’ll fork it over into bin number two in the middle ending up with one final turning into number three on the right. Composting is an aerobic process, so that will be two opportunities to let the air get to the compost and also to mix soft green waste, which on its own can become claggy and anaerobic, with dry fibrous brown waste.

The Arborist, the Shetland and the Speckleface

pine
arborist

The man with stylus and tablet isn’t drawing, he tells us, he’s surveying trees and vegetation impinging on the power lines. The pole that he’s looking at is so swathed in ivy that it almost looks like a tree.

“Do you have to go to species level?” I ask him.

When he explains that he’s a trained arborist, I can’t resist asking if he can tell what species of pine I’ve just photographed. Is it Corsican? Or Scots Pine?

As the tree is 50 yards down the lane, I’m expecting a lot, especially, as he points out, if it has been pruned that can change the silhouette, but he suggests that it might be black pine.

Ash Die-back

Milestone
This old milestone from the Wakefield to Huddersfield Turnpike was catching the sun this morning.

Opposite the pine, an old ash tree was pollarded a few months ago, following hints of die-back on some of its boughs.

A report on BBC Leeds Look North this week showed the efforts that the National Trust are going to in the Yorkshire Dales to deal with the 80% of ash trees in their woodland that have been infected.

The surveyor tells us that local authorities have been surveying their ash trees because an infected tree can shed a large bough.

We tell him of a couple of near misses that we’ve had with the sweet chestnuts shedding branches in the woods at Nostell, where in recent years they’ve lost some centuries-old beech trees.

The trees around here are either 200 years old or saplings, he suggests; there hasn’t been any consistent replanting.

Beet Eaters

sheep

The sheep in the beet field look like Beulah Speckleface, or a similar-looking hybrid, a breed that combines the hardiness of hill sheep with the growth and reproduction rates of lowland varieties. For the last few weeks, these sheep have been enjoying a more high-energy, sugar-rich food than they’d get out on the moors, eating first the tops of the beet, then the beets themselves, although I can’t help thinking that they must be looking longingly at the grass in the next field as a change from gnawing the beets.

Shetland Pony

Shetland pony

I’m trying to photograph three ponies feeding together at a hay bale but I don’t have much luck with the Shetland. All I can see are the tops of its ears at the far side but then it spots me and wanders over to the wall to say hello. Some day I might get a group portrait.

The Mob

birds

“As we head down the track we spot a buzzard being mobbed by a magpie and kestrel. As it dips and soars fending off the two birds another buzzard soars carefree over the ridge.”

From Barbara’s nature diary, 30 January 2020

I needed to inject a bit of drama into my next (January 2021) Wild Yorkshire diary for The Dalesman, so I’m illustrating the incident Barbara described, along with a male stonechat perching on a fence post. The pen and watercolour of the reedbed and lagoon will go right across at the foot of the double-page spread. I was busy with Sandal Castle and the Rhubarb Festival last January, so I’m having to recreate what my sketchbook might have looked like if I’d had time to draw on the day.

lagoon

Illingworth Park Woodcuts

For this morning’s stroll around a foggy Illingworth Park, Ossett, I’ve gone for a woodcut effect. These were taken on my iPhone, using an art filter in the Adobe Photoshop Camera app. You get a preview of the effect, so I soon found myself looking at the world through woodcut-tinted glasses. Amongst my favourites are the drystone wall, the fungi and the allotment fence.

Velvet Shank

velvet shank

Another iPhone drawing, this is velvet shank fungus growing on an old stump at Nostell last January. The effect of Adobe Fresco’s natural inker in various opaque colours reminds me of oil pastels, which I briefly experimented with in my student day. I like the out-of-control energy of the swirling line, which was literally out-of-control as I struggled again with my Wacom Bamboo stylus slipping about on the protective glass screen of the phone.

It’s so different to my usual nature diary sketches for The Dalesman but I’ll drop it into the layout and I think that it might work in the context of the article, I’m not producing a field guide and this article is about the way life seems to be waiting to burst forth once we get to January.

Survival Sandwich

On an online course I’m doing, Become a Better Presenter, a free FutureLearn course from The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, we’ve been asked to write a script for an imagined talk about making a sandwich pitched to a specific audience. I’m going for our local naturalists’ society:


So, you’re heading for the Peak District: what are the essentials for fieldwork?

OPENS HAVERSACK

Notebook? yes, got that . . . binoculars? Check! . . . waterproofs . .
And, yes, thought someone would suggest it: lunch! But this is no ordinary packed lunch . . .

OPENS BOX

. . . this sandwich was developed by survival expert Ray Mears, who says he always takes one with him whenever he heads for the hills.

GETS OUT INGREDIENTS

And it’s simple to make:

The bread, I’m going for wholemeal and actually this is homemade and in this case the flour was ground at a centuries-old watermill at Worsborough.

Butter? To give us a protein boost we’re going for peanut butter, organic of course, and – controversially – I’m a chunky man.

Instant energy? This is pure Peak District heather honey from last August, which was exceptional for heather, hope you managed to get out there, it was a sea of purple over The Strines. One teaspoon, so that’s 1,500 bee miles across the moors . . . but it’s going to be a tough hike so let’s make it two: that’s 3,000 miles!

Finally the main event: a superfood developed in the greenhouses at Chatsworth by Joseph Paxton: the Cavendish banana!

Link

Become a Better Presenter : Improve Your Public Speaking Skills, a free FutureLearn course. Learn how to improve your presentation skills and add personality into your presentation style on this three-week course. Learn from The Presenter Network at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

Heron King

heron

You can see that I’ve struggled to draw on of my Dalesman nature diary illustrations in the same grungy style as my first Adobe Fresco drawing on my iPhone, but really that’s the point of it. This heron, which touched down on the greenhouse last January, was probably checking out our garden pond for the first frogs. It looks suitably regal and, for our frogs, dangerous, so I thought of the Aesop’s fable of the frogs who ask Zeus for a king but soon tire of log that he throws down for them and request a more impressive leader. They soon come regret their request.

Fresco for iPhone

man in hat

My first drawing using Adobe Fresco for iPhone, drawn with a Wacom Bamboo stylus.

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Common Puffball

puffball

Common Puffball, Lycoperdon perlatum, is edible when young, as in the one above, growing on grassland near trees on the south bank of Skelton Lake. The pyramidal warts fall away as the puffball changes colour from white to ochre brown, leaving a faint net-like pattern.

These two were growing within a few feet of each other with a third nearby.

Woodland Mushroom

woodland mushroom

The fibrous scales on this small mushroom resemble those of the Blushing Wood Mushroom, Agaricus silvaticus, a common species that some writers say is good to eat, but there are similar-looking species that aren’t, so I won’t be giving it a try.