Internet access

It's working properly today. It worked properly yesterday as well.

I changed to Sky a few weeks back, purely because AOL is so damned expensive. Since then, I've regretted it. Very often, it slows right down about 9am, as office connections come on, and stays slow for much of the day. It will still download material without any problem, but accessing sites becomes extremely difficult. Sometimes it's like that all day. A dialup would be faster and more reliable. But then, sometimes it works.

We gave up on their phone connection after a month, and went back to BT. Their salesman lied to us, the service wasn't what we asked for, and it was more expensive than we were told. I'm trying to persuade the wife to drop their TV service, since it's also expensive, and she watches very little that isn't on cable. I'll probably get rid of their internet before long as well.

Mystery bean

It's not a good shot, but has anyone got any idea what these beans are? They were at the bottom of a parcel we're passing round, and that's all I know!

PS I've been informed that they're soya beans, probably 'Elena', which is, as far as I can see from a quick google, the best one for British weather. I'l try them next year and see what happens.

Last week I should have been in Oxford for a gathering of gardening bloggers, but I've had some horrible gastro-intestinal bug, and spent most of the weekend on the toilet. I'm still not right, but I did manage to check the bees yesterday. All four hives look healthy, with small amounts of brood, eggs, and reasonable quantities of stores. There aren't as much of the latter as I'd have liked, but they'll be OK if I keep an eye on them, and probably feed syrup next spring. This year they've gathered plenty of pollen, which provides most of their nutrition; honey is just a source of carbohydrate. This time last year, the weather was so awful that much of the ivy went unpollinated, resulting in a shortage of berries. The bees hardly managed to forage at all. It's going to be interesting to see whether they come out of the winter stronger than last year, after going into it well fed.