Nous somme arrive a Montreal!

Hello!

Well here we are on the first trip of our combined 30/40 celebratory year and we arrived safely in Montreal on Thursday night. We both had trips of about 6 hours flying time so quite equally in the middle of London / Vancouver.

After doing the obligatory dash round the hotel room to see what you get for your money there were no major surprises. I had foolishly given up trying to open up the louver doors which appeared to be stuck, but a sharp kick from Sarah flung them open to reveal our luxury kitchenette gin preparation area!

Its pretty cold and French here! Much colder, and much more French than I had ever imagined it to be! Currently temps are -6 degrees but the "feel like" temp is -15...

Doorways are a great place to shelter from the biting wind and check the directions to the pub.

View from our hotel window this morning... hills in the background up to Mont Royal and snow in the city below.. pretty huh?

More sightseeing tour info soon

T & S x x x

Brilliant Bokashi Bran!

Well this is the latest craze in composting from Japan called Bokashi, and you guessed it, I'm straight in there with them to try this out. Bokashi means fermented organic matter, and is a miracle of very old technology that will allow ALL kitchen food waste to be recycled and also produce liquid plant food and compost as a byproduct.

So basically you can start a typical compost heap with a few basics from the kitchen, add some grass cuttings and a good place to dump it all in the garden and after a while it will all rot down. Well hopefully!... However, there are some definite no - nos about what is not allowed to go in there including all processed foods, dairy, eggs, meat, bones etc etc as this will upset the nitrogen balance, attract pests and make the compost yukky.

However, with the help of a few helpful microorganisms and some powdered bran, all sealed up in a special air tight container known as a Bokashi bin, nothing is off limits as to what goes inside that bin! Having heard about this online and done my research there are loads of places to buy this from but none of them are cheap! Luckily many councils are now seeing the potential benefits of many composting practices and Southampton are able to provide subsidised composting materials , including bokashi! Cool! (Check out if you can get them at this recycle-now website)!

So basic principals... add food waste to bin; add handful of bokashi bran mix; squash down to squeeze out all the air; replace air-tight lid; repeat until full up then leave to ferment for 4 weeks. Periodically drain off the super bokashi juice from the tap at the bottom and feed it to the garden or house plants. After the bin is fermented, then chuck all the lovely fermented contents on the normal compost heap and it will quickly help speed up the normal composting process and break down into rich compost.More photos of contents and results soon!
T x

More from the Conibear archive...

Following the success of recent postings of archive photos, I have decided to run a special feature with the help of my chief archive technician working furiously away in the background providing me with amazing quality material. Of course the world of photography was not the digital wonder we know today, so shots of Matty circa 1973 are a little thin on the ground. However I think we have compiled a good selection of shots for comparison of Maud and Matty's hair and cheeky little smile... ahh cute!

Sorry Sarah and Matt but this one was too cute to miss out.

Haha! More "Stand there and smile" shots that Matt was relishing with Maud.... Oh, and Sarah, is that a football under your dress?

Ah Little Matty with his pencil legs and trademark whispy curls.

More of those killer curls at the beach... and Dad with a mullet hairdo!?

Perhaps this can be linked into Matts TFW blog to show where his love of cars started... although I'm pretty sure he hasn't owned a car with dinner plate wheels like these since at least his student days!