Cycles: 20250113-20250119

Natural cycles

This week saw the last of the snow melting. Aside from the frozen core of a few defiant snowmen, the blanket of white has now gone. I hope next time it snows, I remember to build a few snowmen of my own and position them on the grass verge outside my home, as nature’s temporary protectors of green space.

Gardening

Organic

I managed to find an hour or so to get out in the garden and start to imagine how this year might shape its design. I started by cleaning up some of the degraded and shattered plastic remains of tubs and containers that were burned by the summer and winter. I’m determined to minimise plastic use in general but especially in the garden.

We had a bizarre industrial contraption visit our neighbour’s garden which we discovered was being used to make an initial survey of the plot. All evidence seems to signify a green light for their building work so we’re planning for mass disruption. I’m secretly hoping a building survey finds roosting bats and the whole thing gets put on hold.

My two batches of first-ferment kombucha are almost ready to bottle up. The first a second batch of genmaicha (Japanese brown rice tea) and the second a black tea. The plan is to second-ferment the former with lychee. The last batch of plum and lemongrass was delicious but I think lychee will be a great paring with genmaicha’s delicate flavour. The latter will be used to make make another batch using tea infused with lion’s mane mushroom. I’ll hopefully have enough left to leave to turn to kombucha vinegar which I’m planning on using to make fire kombucha.

Digital

Similar to last week, I’ve enjoyed making intentional entries to my Obsidian vault. I’ve started to think more about a consistent file structure to produce better results from search queries. I’ve built a good habit of adding to the vault but there’s areas I could do better in; regularly backing up, processing existing notes to trim or link to other notes.

I’ve somehow broken automatic outgoing webmentions on my website and as yet haven’t worked out how to fix it. I’m using Remy Sharp’s webmention.app which is a awesome little tool for anyone using a static site. My markup doesn’t appear to be the issue as I can send them from the test url just fine. Netlify webhooks seem to be working okay too, so I’m wondering whether my token is the problem. Something to poke about with next week.

Talking of webhooks, I found a terrifically simple tutorial for using Netlify webhooks with a Telegram bot to receive build notifications. It was surprisingly straight forward and has made me wonder how else you could use them: possibly to bridge physical inputs to trigger digital actions and visa versa.

Work cycles

It’s been a unexpectedly busy and interesting week for work too! A chance message on LinkedIn led to a small piece of freelance work. The client and team seem lovely and an interesting topic that sits well with my values. It’s likely to gain a bit more momentum next week. It turns out the LinkedIn algorithm can work afterall.

I was very busy prepping for an important couple of conversations on Thursday morning. They seem to go well but at the time it was difficult to really know for sure. I then received a phone call on Friday afternoon which I wrongly assumed was bad news. I’m one last conversation away from a final decision. Whatever the outcome, I’ve found the process of reflecting on my work practice to be hugely valuable and it’s only strengthen my belief that working somewhere that aligns to your values is so important. It’s also been lovely to meet people who share those values too!

As I was so busy this week I couldn’t join the new year People’s Park for Nature meeting. Dylan shared some good news with me and I’ll hopefully join then this Thursday to do some planning for this year. Exciting times!

Louise and I caught up about Research by the Sea at our fortnightly catch-up. Everyone’s talk titles and outlines are on the website, I got goosebumps reading through the days content. I’m so grateful to the speakers for each of their responses to the brief. With only a matter of weeks away, I’m a mix of excitement with a little bit of nerves.

(Bi)cycles

With so much going on and wrestling with another cold, it’s been had to get out on my bike this week. Determined to get out before the week was through, I went for a short spin to Ringer and back on the local bike path. Nothing special but I took in the undulating Malling Downs and the absolutely huge wind generator. Both of which bring me joy.