This is how the monkey nuts look this morning: as if they’d like to be repotted. But repotting involves going outside (which is something I managed to avoid completely between Boxing Day and Suzy’s birthday on 16th January) and getting cold and grubby. So you see why I didn’t repot them last weekend as planned. And why I changed my blog approach today and decided to show you a “hey, they need repotting!” update, rather than a “hey, I repotted them!” update. What are the odds that the next photo will be of two dead monkey nut plants in a pot?

On the left, one of the levers on my £100 new office chair broke my thumb nail. As evidenced on the right though, I have no need to pay such sums for injury. Earlier in the day the front door that came free with my parents smashed my thumb, bending the nail back far too far for, well, I should think anyone’s liking. I sucked it hard, (hi Googlers) as it seemed the only thing to do, but I don’t think it helped, it just made my mouth hurt as well. The nail now has this lovely purple stripe and any pressure at all hurts, but of course I’m finding that I need to use my poor thumb in anything I do. Stupid fine motor skills.

The second peanut made an appearance as soon as I shamed it on the electric internet. It’s like I Maytagged it or something.

Though the first plant is growing so fast that I suppose that there’s always the possibility it’s going to grow teeth and eat its neighbour. And then me.

One monkey nut continues apace. The other, not so much. I guess we’ll call that one compost.

Hold the ball high above your head, putting the fear of God into those behind you, before throwing it down the lane with great venom. The ball should make a satisfying, loud SMACK as it hits the floor with force, so as to underscore your great might.

Approach 2:

At the urging of your (cowering) friends, try releasing the ball from your grasp much closer to the ground. Rather than being one step away from throwing the ball overarm, try a gentle underarm roll.

Ensure your friend is there behind you, looking through the viewfinder, ready to document this new approach.

Then throw the ball at her.

“Accidentally”.

Click for the whole set

One of the peanuts I planted has now germinated, pinging above the soil, split nut and all. I spent the first day or two trying to cover it up again with the compost, before finally confirming that it was ok, it was meant to do that. Like all patient gardeners, I’ve also dug about in the soil to see what the other seed is playing at. It’s still down there, not apparently rotting, but not really doing anything. Meanwhile the first one is forming its green leaves. And I’m trying to resist the urge to pick up the nut and eat it.

But talking of edible nuts: you will remember that the delightful Bethany sent me a bag of candied nuts at Christmas. And the postman, fearing I may have a nut allergy, did the festive, kind-hearted thing and ate them for me.

Not to be out-manoeuvred though, Bethany sent me another big bag of (yummy!) candied nuts, this time done up in a small cardboard safe. Sure, they print instructions on the box telling the sender how to construct and seal it, but no guidance is given to the recipient as to how they should get into the box, losing as few fingers as possible. But at least it meant that the postman couldn’t get in either. And the nuts, they are mine!

For my last birthday, the one where I became I-don’t-always-remember-how-old, Lauren gave me The Hummingbird Bakery recipe book. Suzy came to tea last night and so I thought it was about time I delved into the fattening pages of the book and made brownies for our dessert. As they’re somewhat too squodgy to put in an envelope and post, Lauren and the rest of you will have to be satisfied with either licking your computer screens, or making your own from the recipe below. I hope you all like chocolate and sugar, because they’re pretty much the only ingredients.

You will need:

200g dark chocolate
175g unsalted butter
325g caster sugar
130g plain flour
3 eggs

Preheat the oven to 170ºC / 325ºF / Gas 3.

Weigh and roughly chop the chocolate. Though now in handy bite-size pieces, do not eat it.
 

Weigh the butter or margarine. Definitely don’t eat it if it’s margarine.
 

Put the chocolate and butter in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water …
 

… and melt together until smooth.
 

Remove the chocolate from the heat.
 

Weigh the sugar, knock out the big lumps and …
 

… stir into the chocolate until well combined.
 

Weigh the flour. Hope that you have enough, because it’s been snowing for a few days now, which means that people have turned into survivalists and are emptying supermarket shelves of every product as fast as they can.
 

Add the flour to the chocolate mixture and stir until well incorporated.
 

Finally, stir in the eggs …
 

… and transfer it all to a bigger bowl in order to be able to stir the mixture until it is thick and smooth with enough venom without throwing it across the counter.
 

Pour the mixture into a 33 x 23x 5 cm baking tray, lined with greaseproof paper. I used magic Cake Release instead of lining the tray, because it’s magic.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 30-35 minutes, or until flaky on the top, but still soft in the centre. Be careful not to overcook, otherwise the edges will become hard and crunchy.
 

Leave to cool completely before slicing. Take great care to eat all the rubble that is inevitably created in the slicing process. Share some with others for manners, but not too much.
 

Eat.

Just as I was bemoaning the lack of anything blogworthy and the fact I’d not yet written anything in the new year, another pile of snow came to town. Not as much as before, but enough to keep Mum off school and my head turned to the window, seriously impeding any progress I may have been trying to make with, well, anything.

I put my big 70-200mm f2.8 lens onto the camera and stood by the window to photograph the birds that came to feed – a handy side effect being that I could warm my freezing legs against the radiator at the same time. There’s a coconut half, filled with my lard and seed mixture, hanging from the laburnum outside my office window, as well as a seed feeder.

The pretty robin was more suited to the coconut, scrambling somewhat at the seed feeder, but ultimately managing to grab a seed to munch.

The sparrows are much more able at the feeder and a whole crowd of them often queue up on the branches of the tree. Either waiting patiently, or divebombing whoever’s currently in their way, depending on their level of hunger, I suppose.

Unable to think of a better retort, this sparrow simply resorts to sticking his tongue out at his mate.

This chaffinch – in need of a comb – was another regular visitor in the cold today, clearing up the seeds on the ground that the picky sparrows throw disdainfully out of the feeder.

And then there’s the blue tit. There are two of them who bounce around the laburnum, picking up invisible insects from the branches, swinging from the coconut as they feed and taking seeds from the feeder. But mostly they just flit from branch to branch so damn fast that you haven’t got much of a hope of focussing on them before they disappear from your viewfinder again.

I’m not sure I’ve ever done one of those retrospective posts. Not because I’m all for looking forward, or any of that arse, but because it seemed too much like hard work. But it turns out that if you can blog a fair amount during the year – bam! – it’s half-written for you by the time you get to New Year’s Eve.

So what have I done? I’ve done a bit of travelling of course. I never thought I’d be one for needing annual travel insurance, but thanks to a job that leads me to the continent and the UK’s handy-dandy proximity to, well, all of Europe, I’ve turned into a bit of an itchy-footed one. Lauren and I took the Eurostar to Lille for a day in March, where we photographed everything they have and then just two days later I flew to Salzburg for 30 hours to attend a book launch. In April Suzy and I went to see Hubert’s concert in Saarbrücken and then at the beginning of July we headed to Austria for the finale festival of Hubert’s three year project. We flew to Salzburg and then went to Gmunden. We met up with the band and went to Hallstatt. Where they heartlessly abandoned us. Then we were rescued. And then mildly abandoned again in Ischl. Finally we made it to Linz in one piece for the next three days of music from around Europe rocking Linz harbour. Not content with that much travelling though I trotted off to Salzburg again at the end of November, where I brewed the most awful cough I’ve ever had.

The Austrian part of my world also had a few nicely head-swelling things for me this year: my photos being used for concert posters, getting my name in CD liner notes and being up on stage with the rest of the team on the last evening in Linz.

Of course 7 Days was there every season to glue me – and so many of you across the world – in front of the computer, admiring photos and commenting. There were 72 people for one season, which nearly did us all in and so now the group is closed to new members except those related to or friends with current members. One photo I took in the summer was also somewhat poignant as it was of me on my way to say goodbye to my  Granpop in Northamptonshire. He died a couple of weeks later from lung cancer and is much missed. I thought it would be the fact that I now have no grandparents that would feel strange, but it’s more that I hadn’t realised how often I thought to myself “next time I write to Granpop, I’ll tell him that”. Then again, if it turns out that Granpop was right about the ways of the universe after all, he already knows.

The vegetable patch at the top of the garden has been busy again this year, providing me with kilos of tomatoes, runner beans, beetroot, carrots and cucumbers. Now I’m even trying to be clever by growing forage rye over the winter to catch nitrogen and – possibly – magic gardening fairies in the soil. Success in the patch has certainly outweighed interest in knitting this year. The two needled-mojo just didn’t turn up this winter, though I did have fun making some salt dough decorations and people’s Christmas wrapping and handmade gifts this year have really got me thinking about what I could do to win along the same sort of lines.

My friends and I did well keeping our stomachs full and our minds interested in suitably cultural things through the year: butterflies, Ross Noble, dinosaurs, Shakespeare, The Nutcracker, posh afternoon tea, curry, Mexican, Italian and of course our traditional indoor picnics on a rug on the floor. The latest one was the Christmas picnic in front of our tree, just a week before we had another big snowfall like the one in February. This pile stuck around much longer than usual though, with a few flakes still in the garden on Christmas Day. Not exactly a white Christmas, but close enough. And now, I’m in for the night, the year, the decade, pretty much ready to see what 2010 will bring.

Happy new year, guys and girls. You’re all coming over to help me dig in the forage rye in the spring, right?

The kit consisted of just three parts: a disc of eco peat made from coconut shell, a terracotta pot and seeds. The peat disc needed to soak for 2 hours in 150ml water, so I used my cup measure. A cup measure? What is a cup measure doing in your British kitchen? I KNOW. I’m just that cosmopolitan. My scale even does both ounces and grams.

I plonked the disc into the water, expecting to have to swill it about a bit and to have time to arse about getting a nice shot of it gradually doing whatever it was about to do. But apparently the peat didn’t know about the requirements of a blogger and thus exploded into a pile of wet peat in just a few seconds while I clicked away and hoped for the best.

By the way, anyone thinking they might comment on how extraordinary it is that our countertop changes colour so quickly can instead either buy me this, or go back in time and remind me beforehand that I have a fancy flash I could use. Or they can just be quiet and go and photograph something very dark against something light.

I carried on with the planting the next morning, as I’d started this Christmas evening and clearly got distracted by festivities. No problem though, as the peat was still very moist. I filled the pot most of the way with the peat and then opened up the seed packet.

Perhaps someone can explain to me why I was surprised to see two peanuts in the packet? What exactly was I expecting? (Intentions for 2010 so far: 1. get light unit 2. be clever)

So I covered the nuts and now we wait.

We wait to see if one morning I’ll come downstairs to find that a squirrel found the seed packet in the bin and broke in and stole my peanuts while I slept.