Eulogy for The Bitch

It is a sad, sad day in Bec and Cecil land. Today, after a few days of attempted resuscitation, we have had to declare The Bitch dead. It was a beautiful 2 months, full of sourdough bread of many varieties - normal sourdough bread, rye, malt, double malt, fruit and spice, malted fruit and spice, pizza sourdough, sourdough pancakes, sourdough flat fried breads. But now that beautiful ride has come to an end. In the prime of her life, when she was souring bread to perfection, The Bitch has died of an as yet undiagnosed condition. A few days of neglect, and unfortunately some other bacteria must have taken a foot hold in The Bitch, she has a distinct acetone smell to her now (as in when you lift the loose lid off the top, you step back and think "nail polish remover"), which we have decided is probably not healthy. We will start another one, but I do feel very sad that this one didn't last forever (as they ought to).

I had something else important to say, but it has left me. Oh well, I'm sure it was only important in my head anyway! If anyone is coming to Melbourne anytime soon, you have free accommodation if you bring me Double Happiness tea from Queenies Tea House. I have been to a few tea stores now, and have smelt an undescribable numbe of teas (and bought a fair few more than I should have) and none of them are quite the same and it is my favourite everyday comfort tea. If Queenies is too far out of your way, I'm pretty sure I'd settle for Monk's blend from Aromas (I think that's what it's called, I've only had it at The Three Monkeys, I've never bought a bag of it). Whilst I have many beautiful teas to drink, I'm still in a small tea crisis.

I had to build another no dig garden the other day. Decided I needed more fennel as I had eaten all the other fennel, and realised I'd run out of room to plant out half of the seedlings that I grew from my Eden Seeds (I think they're organic seeds that aren't hybrids and stuff so you can collect the seeds from your own plants if you let them go to seed - they have a webpage if you google them). I'm hoping it actually gets enough sunlight to keep my little plants alive! My backyard is quite narrow, and has a limited number of spots that get much sunshine.

Happily have managed to post the photo of the spider eating the other spider, it's a scanned black and white film, so you have to imagine the orange front legs!