Nature Counts

Todays walk was near Ashton, starting at Park Bridge heritage centre.

We found lots of interesting flowers and bugs!

First we looked at the daisy flower under a hand lens and learned that it is a composite flower made up of many tiny flowers - you can just see some of the yellow ones are opened while others aren't

You can't see the sculpture of a kestrel very well on this photo, but what was interesting was the noise coming from a hole near the top of this tree stump. A little patience revealed a greater spotted woodpecker visiting to feed its youngster in the hole. No reprieve from the noise though - this was one hungry baby!

Flowers spotted - who likes butter! Meadow buttercups are tall and have deeply lobed leaves wheras the creeping buttercup is much lower growing and has 3 segments to the leaf.

Can't remember what this one was called!

 Jack by the hedge

Red Campion - 5 lobed petals, leaves in pairs on the stem

Bistort

On the Bistort we found these very bright froghoppers

Other bugs found

 May fly - had 2 incredibly long tails!

Unidentified fly

Luke found a great dandelion trumpet and the boys learned to play the grass pipes!

Foraging walk

Today we went on one of the Manchester festival walks along the Rochdale canal in Newton Heath.
It was a foraging walk led by Jesper Launder, a very knowledgeable herbalist.

The first plant we saw was Ribwort plantain, the brown tops before they flower taste nutty and the leaves are said to be good as a tea to help cure hayfever.

Ox eye daisy - unopened flowers are tasty

Ground elder - young shoots

Meadowsweet

Common/Tufted vetch - like pea shoots

We found many other edible plants, many i can't remember now but some we discussed were:

Japenese knotweed - not as deadly as is made out. (Can be kept under control by nettles)
Rosebay Willow herb
Hawthorn - flowers smell rather fishy but apparently berries make delicious ketchup
Sorrel

 Some goslings on the canal

An interesting walk and lots of new tastes to be tried!

Rochdale Way 4

Week 4

We set off from Bowlee along the sculpture trail

Lovely view heading down the hill

Alkrington woods

We came out into Middleton

St Leaonard church , Middleton

Finished by the canal

Wedding Crochet

Over the last couple of months I have been busy helping my friend with some wedding crochet invitations for her wedding in August. I have completed 10 hearts but fortunately she crochets faster than me and has more crochet time so between us and another crocheting friend we have finally managed to make enough to send the invitations out.

Here is one I've crocheted - it was an interesting pattern to follow, but needed some concentration as every row was different

and here is my invitation to the wedding ;)

More crocheted decorations planned - watch this space!

The Rochdale Way 3

Part 3 of the Rochdale Way began at our local park Queens Park in Heywood. We set off at quite a pace this week so I didn't take any photos for the first couple of miles! The park is a regular haunt of ours and today we headed down to the lake and then round past the BMX track before taking a route out to the left of the park and towards Crimble Mill and then across the Rochdale - Heywood Rd, near Chamber house farm.

The next section took us on through the Castlemere Golf course where we were greeted by 2 very noisy dogs! In fact we saw a lot of animals on this walk including a young foal and some very unusual birds in an aviary.

Over the golf course we went, trying to observe the correct etiquette of walking over a golf course with players everywhere. We crossed a railway line and then had a section along the road from Heywood to cross the M62 at J19. just past here we took a drink stop.

Lots of bluebells lined the path and some forget me nots. However as we carried on we came to a problem. Someone had decided that this path was not a right of way and had blocked it off and used anti-vandal to deter people from obtaining access. There was no other way to where we were going so we climbed a fence to the right and soldiered on! It's a shame that a publicised route like this has been spoiled.

This was definitely a walk of climbing stiles, gates and fences!

Still the sun had come out for us again, despite a windy day and awful rain the previous day.

 We came out onto Langley Lane and completed this leg of the walk at The White Hart pub in Middleton, certainly feeling that we had had a good workout.

The Rochdale Way 2

Tonight was the second leg of The Rochdale Way walk and after the awful rain yesterday it was lovely to see the sun shining as we set off from Owd Betts, down hill this time.

We could see right over Rochdale and Oldham it was a lovely clear evening. We dropped down into Naden valley and followed Naden brook. Spotted lots of wild garlic near Millcroft tea gardens - will have to remember that!

 

Over the Paper mill bridge and down the familiar path on the far side. After crossing the road we followed the brook all the way down to Bury and Rochdale Old Rd. Lots of bluebells out on this section and Wood Sorrel too.

A lovely walk - completely different terrain from last weeks walk. Not many of the Rochdale Way signs though - good job we were familiar with these paths.

Naden Brook joined the River Roch. Approx 5.75miles in all, finishing at Queens park.

Experience of living below the line 2015

Well for the last 5 days we have been living on £1 a day each and it has been an interesting experience. Here is our shopping - we shopped at Aldi and Tesco and as you can see made good use of all the value range!

It was interesting to do this as a family: we had to do some compromising as we all had different priorities. Paul wanted meat in the equation, I wanted to make sure we were having some fruit and veg everyday(can't get away from the dietitian in me!) and the children wanted some sweet treats!

We supplemented our supermarket shop with some rhubarb form the garden and some foraging goodies - wild garlic and nettles!

We had to plan our budget carefully to make sure we had enough for the 5 days. I emptied one cupboard of our usual food and filled it with this weeks rations.

Breakfast
Toast with jam,
Porridge
Treat of pancakes for 1 day.

Lunch
Beans/spaghetti hoops on toast
Chicken and wild garlic sandwich/instant noodles
Omelette/Tin minestrone soup
Nettle soup and home made bread with garlic butter
Leftovers

Main meal
Chicken with mashed potato and carrots
Chicken and veg curry and rice
Chilli and rice
Macaroni cheese with cauliflower
Home made pizza

Puddings
Rhubarb crumble
Chocolate mousse
Choc ices (70p for 8!)
Yoghurt
Poached pears

A lot of these meals are things we would normally eat but we would probably have had some little extras with it e.g. salad with the pizza, a few different veg with the chicken, chutney, raita and poppadoms with the curry.

As you can see we have had good meals and I think that is where doing this as a family made it easier. We spent £3 on a chicken but it did us 2 meals plus sandwiches, whereas a single person could not have spent 3/5 of their budget on a chicken or would have certainly been fed up of chicken by the end of the week if they had!

I was glad that we could fit teabags in the budget (20p for 40 teabags) but we couldn't afford coffee which my husband usually drinks. We did buy a bottle of value cordial so he and the children have been drinking that or water.

The things I missed this week were:

• having choice of what I fancied to eat
• being able to take a piece of fresh fruit from the fruit bowl whenever I felt like it
• snacking, especially in the evening

Normally I don't have a strict budget for our weekly shop and if we run out of something before the week is over I'll just call in and buy it or there's something else in the cupboard we can have instead.

So our time on our budget has ended and today I can enjoy whatever foods I choose, but for 1.2 million people in the world these limitations are always with them and often times they may have to choose between food or medicines or other such impossible choices.

I am grateful for the things I have that I don't always think about ;

• a bowlful of fresh fruit, 
• being able to afford to buy fair trade/organic foods,
• being able to nip to the shop if we run out of milk,
• being able to invite others round to share meals with us as we have plenty
• Knowing Jesus who declares"I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty"