Victoria Park

The thing about Widnes is that for all the miserable and hideous excuses for humanity there is certain gems to be had and the big one for me has to be in the buildings. Widnes has scores (well ok five or six) of listed buildings from 900 year old churches to classic sandstone public buildings. Some of the areas of Widnes are lovely too, Widnes is essentially a conurbation on a tiny scale, several villages all being enveloped into a sizable town. Appleton, Farnworth and Cronton all have there green areas. Cronton having Pex Hill and Appleton having Victoria Park.

And its on Victoria Park that i want to focus, When i was a kid the park was my home away from home, be back from school then straight out to play a game very loosely based on football (all with enough time left over to be a geek, amazing). Its actually a very good park, its a fair size, has tennis and basketball courts and a skatepark. It also for some reason now has a climbing rock (is the council begging for some cocky little shit to fall off inebriated on blue WKD and try to sue for negligence). Now the council and a team of volunteers are putting a lot of effort into introducing wildlife. We have a pond, which already has geese, swans, moor hens and ducks (and duckings) and a nature trial though the wooded area.

welcome and also hi, i'm treebeard

a batcave, but where does the mobile go?

a carved rabbit

woody woodpecker!, i'll just go shall i?

Hidden Gems in forgotten wasteland

I walk past these houses everyday now, and it also strikes me how odd they are when you consider the surrounding area of vauxhall/kirkdale. They really are out of character, its a shame they are so battered up as they are lovely houses. Locally the legend is as follows, they did belong to a property developer who was planning to turn them into flats (rather elegant flats [in a rather inelegant area {i mean vauxy is all well and good but people who afford places like that don’t live here}]), but as they are grade two listed buildings, not sure which grade actually but they are listed, it's pretty tricky to update them as there is a shed full of bureaucracy to navigate.

Anyway, apparently the developer decided to bail and touched them to clean a sizable insurance premium. How true this is i don't know, it's clear that they have suffered some flame damage, but to be fair i wouldn't put it past the locale to torch some thing for the sheer hell of it.

Anyway, regardless of how it happened, it happened and now these buildings are going to waste. That’s the story of Liverpool really, it ruined swathes of the Cheshire country side to build estates when there are miles of neglected brownfield sites cluttering up the place. Hipsta kids would love those dock front warehouses.

Also here is more of the cats

Growing an stuff..

Well after my initial jubilations at the first glimpse of sun have been quashed slightly by a complete lack of any warmth in the slightest, ah the temptation to move to sunnier climes, that said everybody is moving off these days at least 80% of my friends now live in York.

I am actually very tempted to move abroad, I don’t like the UK anymore it's fallen a little too far, I fancy yanksville but the lack of a public health system worries me a lot (knowing my luck I would suffer a terrible accident as soon as I settle), but I should be able to secure a visa quite easy. Europe temps me, particularly France, so much so that I’ve taken to learning to language (badly and self taught of course). 

But anyway, away from pipe dreams and back to my scrap of north England that I can call my own, I do really like my house, it’s a lovely little thing. I just wish it could be in a nicer town.

But back to the green, as spring still hasn’t really kicked in there hasn’t been much gardening to get on with, all I have is a window ledge and that’s a little full at the minute.

 Asparagus babies, sage and thyme and strawberries taking up all the space.. 

 And pride of place my fig tree, a queue is starting to back up a little now with a lot of things needing to be planted, chard and PSB (purple sprouting broccoli) being the big things, I want another crack a chili peppers and I think I’ll grow some cucumbers this year, mainly to pickle for home made summer burgers on the barbeque. I have a few things growing outside, my garlic seems to be doing well, and the blueberries are budding nicely. I’ll have a good crack at the garden this weekend and get some pictures, hmmm I need a container big enough for a plum tree...

And here for no reason is one of my cats enjoy,

Canal life

Took the wrong bus into work today and ended up down a road I don't know, recognised the old heritage market tho and headed out for it. The heritage market is a fantastic old building, I think it used to a US army depot in the second world war. I have also heard tales of Elenor Rooservelt being stationed there for a time.

From the heritage market I knew all I had to do was head north, pointless even deciding that, its not like I had a compass, and soon I would hit Vauxhall Road. What I didn't bank on was bumping into the canal, fantastic as I knew it would snake up to just below the vauxy.
As soon as I happened upon the canal the sun broke and the place brightened up, the canalside side is actually quite clean considering the state of the scotland road area in general. I saw a few maintance workers hard at work and its nice to know that at least some people care about the state of their local area.

Their was also some pretty groovery graffiti on one of the canal walls, as it was a pretty sprawling bit of artwork it was hard to capture, but I gave it ago.

archaic

Today as part of my job i have spent a while scanning in photgraphs from bygone eras, don't know who took these but some of them really are pretty and really rather arty, i thought i'd share a couple with you. Enjoy..

Post one

Gardening I'm afraid,

It's February and its cold, and windy, windy enough to break Liverpool. Until spring hits us, there's not much I can do. We don't have much over winter stock in the ground, well none apart from our 2^nd gen garlic. In a spurt of wanting to do something I bought two small dwarf trees to live inside the house (last year my blueberries were pilfered by some feathery bastard), the tree's are a Fig and an Olive. The former to bake and the latter to eat off the tree, its also nice to have a bit of green adorning the window.