We have had a lot of rain lately and it doesn't look like it is going to stop. This has caused almost swamp like conditions in my garden and over the last week it has had its effect on the vegetables. My green beans have quit altogether, luckily I have managed to get a decent amount of them. Most of my pumpkin plants aren't looking very healthy, but the pumpkins are ok. Actually I have harvested the large ones and taken them home before they would be affected by the wet weather (had to take the car out to the allotment, normally I go on my bike ). They are looking good, weighing between 10 and 13 kilos (22-28 pounds). The hokkaido pumpkin I first took home turned orange in the end, the others which are still on the vine have turned orange as well.
Here you can see them in the garden:

And here they are in my kitchen with some other things from the garden: zucchinis, cherry tomatoes and cucumbers, along with a big bowl of elderberries from the back garden:

I took out all my summer carrots, because some of them were rotting in the ground. They were rather small, but I think I'll get two meals out of them. The corn is doing great as you can see (as are all the weeds ), not ready yet, almost can't wait till they are, I love corn on the cob.  The cherry, yellow and roma tomatoes are turning red, I've tasted them and they are delicious.

Finally, last week between al goings on I did some canning. I made 10 jars of blackberry jam (from our own garden of course), 5 jars of strawberry/raspberry jam (from the local orchard), 4 jars bread and butter pickles and I pressure canned for the first time: 7 jars of green beans. The pressure canning took quite some time, but that's because I had to read the manual again, and I did a dry run (ok there was water involved ). Next time it will take less time I guess.

I have planned to can lots of tomato sauce, some salsa, chutney, nectarines, and applesause of course. For the applesauce I will use some of our own apples, mixed with other varieties from our local orchard.

I think that's it for now, I hope to be back to more regular blogging from now on.

blessings, Ellen

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Finally, we're done for the moment, everything is in its place! Frank and his brother Maarten worked very hard and were able to put the floor in on Thursday and Friday. It looks fabulous! We're very happy with how it all turned out, our colour choices, the hardwood floor, which has an oil-finish, because we thought it would be easier for our dog Chip. Before we had laminate flooring and now and then for some reason he was afraid to slip when he walked the floor. Slowly he's finding this floor easier to walk on and is becoming more relaxed.  Here is a picture of the hardworking men (Frank is in the front):
 

Now we have to wait for the countertops to arrive and a new trim on top of the kitchen cabinets, because it's too short, luckily the company where we bought the kitchen agrees and they have ordered a new one. Because of this, Frank has to wait before he can put in a new wooden ceiling, but that's ok.
Here are some pictures of our open plan living/dining room/kitchen (the walls are empty, we still have to put up pictures and such) :

Finally, I want to thank you for the nice comments about my pantry, and yes Amanda, you are right, I do smile every time I open the pantry.

blessings, Ellen

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Well, the new kitchen is in and it is as beautiful as we imagined! But it's not finished yet, as we knew upfront, because the countertop had to be measured after the kitchen was installed. And because the countertop isn't there yet, part of the wall above it couldn't be plastered. We have to wait at least 3 weeks for the countertops , since the factory is closed. Frank has to cover the ceiling with tong and groove as well, he will do that after the new floor is in. This week, Thursday, Friday and probably Saturday as well, Frank, his brother Maarten and a good friend will put in the wooden floor. It's a really big job, because all the furniture is in the room , including a really big bookcase and a large dining table. Today and tomorrow Frank and I will finish odds and ends, bit of painting, bit of wallpapering, and then on Tuesday I get to empty the bookcase again. Only this time it has to be completely empty (cleared out only the top part last time when we moved it: 12 boxes of books), because the men will have take it apart to move it across the room. When the floor is in, I will take some pictures to show you how it all looks.

With all this remodelling and redecorating I neglected the allotment a little bit, but I have started with a vengeance again and have planned to go there every day this week, otherwise the weeds will win. Luckily, the vegetables are growing as well, can't complain there. We have eaten french beans this week and they were delicious. Wesley was even disappointed I didn't cook more.  I have more, but will can those, so the kids can eat them as well. They are on vacation with their biological father now, so we will have to miss them for three whole weeks. After eight years I'm still not used to the vacation weeks. Actually we have eaten something from the garden almost the whole week. Yesterday Frank and I had zucchini soup with soft goat cheese and basil, and it was delicious!

I have kept a record off the harvest from my garden:
zucchini             5.8 kg (12.8 pounds)
cucumber           4.2 kg (9.3 pounds)
endive                3    kg (6.6 pounds)
lettuce               2.5 kg (5.5 pounds)
kohlrabi             4.1 kg (9.1 pounds)
french beans     3    kg (6.6 pounds)
We have passed 20 kg and there is still a lot to come: cabbages, broccoli, brussel sprouts, runner beans, beets, carrots, tomatoes, fennel, corn, and pumpkins of course!  
I hope to get some more french beans and that the runner beans, which are flowering at the moment, will hang in there, because we've had a lot of rain even though it was hot. 'That made that part of my allotment very wet, and beans don't really like wet feet, it causes the leaves to turn yellow and fall off.
I have to clean up my greens bed, the lettuce is overgrown, so I will take that out and plant some new ones, as well as endive and some more leeks.

I have picked blackberries from our back garden over the past two weeks and froze them until I had enough to make a large batch of jam and now I do. So I have planned a kitchen session either this afternoon or tomorrow to preserve some of  the harvest, but I will tell you more about that when I'm done. 
To finish off a picture Frank took yesterday when I was picking blackberries in our garden while talking to our neighbour at the other side of the fence.

blessings, Ellen

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and I painted and filled.  I just love my new pantry! (I'm sorry for the blurry picture, I apparently did something wrong)  I already had a hallway closet for pantry use, but with this new one I have more than doubled my pantry space. You can see our colour choices for down stairs: light yellow and burgundy. It's been a long week, all the redecorating took longer than we anticipated, but we're almost there, finishing up some last jobs and waiting for the new kitchen, which will be installed on Tuesday and Wednesday. Frank and our son Wesley dismantled the kitchen yesterday, so now we're left with just the movable part with the electric hub and the fridge situated in the living room. Luckily I'm not totally without appliances, but it feels like camping in our own house.

The weather has been strange, first we had a lot of rain (really a lot) and it was quite cold, the last couple of days it's been hot (and I don't like hot ) and yesterday we had a monsoon (lots of people in our little town had water in their basements and houses, but we didn't have any problems, only the rainbarrel had trouble coping). But it's good growing weather, the garden it doing great. I was worried about the tomatoes with all the rain, but they're hanging in there. I took my first pumpkin home, I'm a little confused, because I had sowed orange Hokkaido pumpkins, which should be quite small (6 inches), but mine is big and still green. It's outside on the garden table, we'll see if it turns orange. There are at least 6 more on the vines. The other pumpkins are growing fine as well, they're supposed to be really big ones and they're yellow. The French beans are almost ready for picking, and the runner beans are growing very well. With all the rain last week and the redecorating at home I didn't go to the allotment for a week and found some monster zucchinis when I went. I'm not sure what to do with them, maybe make soup out of them, but I'll definitely dry some of the smaller ones this weekend.

blessings, Ellen

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We're in the middle of redecorating our downstairs floor. So I spent the day sandpapering doors and wallpanels, while Frank sandpapered part of a newly built wall (we moved the door to the living room about a yard two months ago), rebuilt part of the wallpanels and started on the new cupboard in the hallway. I'm really looking forward to this cupboard  (talk about things to get excited about), because it will be my pantry. I really do not like sandpapering, but it has to be done, just one more piece of wallpanels tomorrow and that part will be finished. Then I have to remove the old wallpaper and after that I can start painting, burgundy red for the wallpanels and doorframes (three of them), and a soft yellow for the doors. Frank will finish the cupboard and paint the ceiling. On Friday or Saturday we will put the wallpaper up, one wall in the hallway and the walls in the living room. After that there are just a few odd and ends to finish up. Of course I will post pictures when it's all finished. Oh, almost forgot, tomorrow I also have to put back all the books in the bookcase, which I had to take out, because we wanted to move the bookcase just 12 inches.

Yesterday morning I went to the allotment first and did a lot of weeding , but got to take 4 cucumbers, 2 zucchinis, a kohlrabi, lettuce and endive home with me.  I have been thinking about what to can, dehydrate and pickle for the coming year, because I would like to start soon and do something every week. The weather hasn't been great this week and it doesn't look like it will improve very soon, so prices of fruit and vegetables will stay higher than I'd like them to be. It will be a few weeks before I can start canning my own produce. On a positive note I picked the first real batch of blackberries and I'm putting them in the freezer to save up for the first batch of jam. We're down to the last jar from last year, and my son won't eat pancakes without blackberry jam.

blessings, Ellen

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We've had a lot of rain over the past few days, heavy thunderstorms and lots of wind. So when I went to my allotment today I wasn't sure what I would find, but I shouldn't have worried, everything looked great! So I worked very hard today to get victory over the weeds and I haven't won the war yet, but I did win today's battle.  Of course there are still weeds, but most of the beds look fine at the moment, except for the strawberry bed, but I'll get to that in the next few days hopefully (they're not producing anyway). I picked 4 zucchinis, my first two mini cucumbers, one head of endive two heads of lettuce and the first kohlrabis.

I thought it was time for an updated picture of the allotment, everything has grown so much.

The flowering french beans at the front with my big pumpkins behind them, there are a few pumpkins on the vines, but they don't grow fast. The cabbage patch covered with a net is next.

Here's another picture further down the beds:

My other pumpkins (Hokkaido) are growing much faster as you can see. Between the pumpkin and the corn a zucchini is hiding, but producing very well.

Yesterday I received my pressure canner, which is a present from Frank and the kids for my birthday on Saturday. I had to order it in the US because we don't have them in the Netherlands, but with the cheap dollar it was really worth it. Unfortunately, I have to wait till the new kitchen is installed to use it, because you have to use it on a gas hob.

blessings, Ellen

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I have been pondering or brooding on this for a while and now the time has come to write it all down.

For a long time I have had my concerns for the environment, but lately they have grown stronger. We've always taken steps to limit our impact on the environment, recycle glass, paper, clothing, old furniture, composting material, use less electricity (no dryer) and gas, eat less meat, use the car wisely. We even have solar panels on our roof . After reading the books Animal, Vegetable, Miracle  by Barbara Kingsolver and Living the Good Life by Linda Cockburn, and finding the website The Path to Freedom I have been inspired to lead the most sustainable lifestyle as possible. We will eat according to the seasons (something I have been doing for a long time, but not very strictly) and try to grow as much food ourselves, on our allotment (it's not big enough to sustain us the whole year, but I hope to add a bit more next year) and in our home gardens (in the fall we will plant another apple tree in the back garden and a plum tree, a pear tree and raspberry, blueberry and goosberry bushes in the front garden). What we can't grow ourselves we buy local (we're very fortunate to have a local orchard where they have a non-heated greenhouse with strawberries and several vegetables as well) or organic with the least possible foodmiles. I will can the surplus of our own garden and things like jams, tomato sauce and soft fruits. Much to the chagrin of our son, who would rather have meat than anything else , we will have more vegetarian meals (dd and I have been vegetarians before, but are not at the moment), because it's more sustainable to eat less meat, but also because we want to buy organic meat and that's very expensive. I have been baking our own bread for a while now, but I also want to start making our own yoghurt and cheese, but will have to find a milk supplier not to far away (still working on that part). We have made our own elderberry wine last fall, but haven't tasted it yet because it has to age in the bottle for one or two years ,  and Frank wants to try make his own beer when the kitchen is ready.

Energy wise we will make progress when the new kitchen is installed. It will have a gas hob, which is better than cooking with an electric hob and I will have two ovens, one normal size and one half that size. So if I have just one casserole or a tray of muffins I can use the small oven. We'll also have a new dishwasher (I couldn't convice Frank to leave it out) and a new freezer, both very energy efficient. Because of our new woodburner (I just love the heat from a wood burner and we have free wood from old bridges and such, because of Frank's work ), we'll be using the central heating a lot less and that will save gas as well as electricity.

Personally I have made a few decisions, very little tv, I already don't watch very much, but sometimes I tend to watch whatever the others are watching (would like to get rid of the tv alltogether, but I still get outvoted), even if I'm not really interested. I just have to make myself go do something else. Less computertime, sometimes I get carried away and spend too much time on the internet, the problem is that there's so much interesting stuff to find. Use the car only if I can't do it on my bike, because it's too far (ok that's debatable, but I think 12 km or 7,5 miles, one way, is still doable) or if I have to carry too much, and I can haul quite a load on my bike, I have bags on my rear rack and a basket on the handlebars.

We have bought a rainbarrel for our back garden, but Frank hasn't been able to install it yet, he will do so in the coming week. I still have to figure out if we can have one in the front garden as well. And we're looking into another powersource, but that's still at an early stage. I'll let you know when I know more.

I'll probably think of more things to do or implement in the coming weeks, months or years. I've been very lucky that Frank supports this all the way and even thinks things up by himself, we are a good team.

So, let me know what you are doing or planning to help keep our planet healthy!

On the garden front I have had a productive weekend, I have spent quite a lot of hours weeding and have planted paksoy, leeks, sellery, kale and my third little rhubarb plant. I still have some broccoli and sellery to plant. Everything, including the weeds, is growing beautifully, I have a pumkin the size of a small football and more to come, harvested several zucchinis and a LOT more to come, the french beans have lots of flowers and there are several kohlrabies ready for harvesting later this week. I just love spending time there. Although we have had rain the last couple of days, it's still very dry, but more rain has been predicted. This morning I picked the first blackberries of the season!

blessings, Ellen

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Here are some pictures of our building site.  This is how our kitchen looks at the moment:

I know it looks like a good kitchen, but parts of it came loose permanently and the appliances aren't very good, to say it mildly. Besides, the kitchen was very small, not enough countertop space for all my cooking and baking activities.

And this is how the french doors look from outside:

You can see the potting table below the kitchen window, where there used to be a door.

Oh, I picked the first two zucchini's this afternoon, and so far we have been lucky with the weather. We had some rain, but no hail (yet), alas there is still more to come.

blessings, Ellen

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It's been over a week since my last post, longer than I anticipated, but lots has happened. First I passed my last exam , which I never expected, but I'm not complaining! And now I have vacation,  9 whole weeks! I have so many things I want to do, but first I always read, read, read (in between chores, remodelling). I've managed to read the latest novel in the Elm Creek Quilt series by Jennifer Chiaverini, the Winding Ways Quilt, the second part of the Courtship of Nellie Fisher by Beverly Lewis and Living the Good Life by Linda Cockburn about tried and tested strategies for sustainable living. Great reads!

On Friday Frank and I started to take down our kitchen and the floor in kitchen and hallway, because a new kitchen will be placed after the wall between the kitchen and the living room has been removed. The wall and new kitchen were supposed to happen this week on Monday and Tuesday, but the builder called last week to tell me the kitchen was going to be delivered later than agreed (not his fault by the way, he was just the messenger). Grrrrrrrrrr, when we ordered the kitchen, month ago, everybody kept telling us how early we were with ordering, but still the kitchen isn't here on time.  The big problem is that our builder is going on vacation next week, so they wanted us to delay the whole thing. We weren't happy with this, because we have to paint, wallpaper and put in a new floor afterwards. I don't want to have to do these things just before I start classes again. So Frank proposed to have the wall taken down (and with it half our kitchen) now and put in the kitchen after the builder's vacation. Frank cut out the electric hob with the cabinets underneath and we put that under the new window, so I can cook. On Monday the builder took out the wall and put in a steel beam, which causes lots of dust, but I had taken precautions and covered everything up. So the clean up was less work, but still considerable. Yesterday he covered the steel beam, but the rest is left like it was and now it looks like we live on a building site.  But we'll manage, it's only for four weeks and after that I will have a beautiful kitchen. It already feels and looks a lot roomier. I have taken some pictures, also of the french doors, but I don't know how to get them from the camera into the computer.  Frank will show me tonight, so I'll post the pictures later today.

The garden is doing great! I expect to harvest zucchini, kohlrabi, lettuce and endive (chicory) this week, that is if the thunderstorms predicted for today don't bring too much hail. It has been hot the last couple of days, especially today 86F/30C, and in over here that usually means thunderstorms and back to unsteady weather and 68F/20C.

Talk to you later!

blessings, Ellen

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Last week was so busy with the remodeling and my exam, that I didn't have time to go to my garden until Saturday. When I came I saw the remodelling some pidgeons and a mole had done on my garden.  The pidgeons had feasted on my cabbage patch, but I don't think they did permanent damage. I immediately put a net over that patch and another small one, where I planted Brussel sprouts last weekend. The mole had gone under one of my pumpkin plants and damaged its roots, but after pushing it down and giving it enormous amounts of water, I think it will survive. I have little zucchini's in the making and tiny, tiny pumpkins, tomatoes and cucumbers, they are fun to watch.  But our first treasures were several kinds of lettuces and some radishes (I ate a few just there and then). Oh and luckily my second sowing of runner beans (a different kind this time) has been succesful so far, almost all have come up.

Tonight dh will finish the new part of our deck in the back garden, which connects the french doors to the existing deck and afterwards I will make some pictures and post them tomorrow. I'm really happy with the small potting table we bought, it's under the kitchen window and I already used it for repotting some seedlings and a few house plants. I used to do that at the garden table and make a mess.  All we need now is a rain barrel and the garden is ready.

I made another batch of elderflower cordial, which you dilute with water for a very refreshing drink. I have been making this for a few years now and dh and I love it when the weather is hot.

Today I have my last exam and then I'm done for this year. By the way, I did manage to pass my exam from last week, got the results over the weekend by mail (got to love technology), but I don't have much hope for today's exam. I haven't prepared properly with all things going on last week, but maybe I'll qualify for a resit. We'll see, and if not I can take the class some other time.

Have a nice day!

blessings, Ellen

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That's how it feels after two days of workmen around the house, our little guest (who behaved impeccably), and in between reading as much as possible for my exam on Thursday. The french doors are almost finished, they (the factory probably) made some mistakes: one piece of glass was much too small, so now there is a piece of board there, and some parts which were meant to be red were white. It will probably be a few weeks before those things are fixed.  They will be back tomorrow to finish a piece above the french doors, I haven't got a clue how it's called, but maybe you can help me after I post some pictures.

I forgot to take a before picture, but I'll go through our old pictures and I expect to find one with the back of our house in it. When it's really finished, I will post before and after pictures.

Tomorrow will be a lot quieter, since the workmen will be outside and our little guest has gone home tonight. So I hope to get in a lot of studying and some cleaning, but not too much, because in less than two weeks the kitchen will get done.

That's it for now, I'm going to relax a bit and read some more.

blessings, Ellen

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Yesterday the builder who will install our french doors called to see if he could come a week earlier.   Well, ehh, I still have to move some bushes from the border where the doors are coming, ehh I have an exam later this week, ehh I have a little guest coming for a sleepover from Sunday till Tuesday. But after having talked it over with dh, we decided to let him come on Monday anyway. Actually, it may work even better than next week, because with our little guest I can't really buckle down studying, just reading those medieval Irish stories will do, and next Monday I can study hard for my second exam without all the distractions. So, having decided that, I immediately had to take action (otherwise it keeps going round in my mind) and cleared the border almost completely. There are only two more plants, which will have to stay out of the soil while they are installing the doors. Afterwards I can put them back at the side, so I will leave them in as long as possible.

On Thursday I had my last classes of my first year at university, only two exams left now, one for medieval Irish literature and one for historic linguistics of old Irish. I started out this year doing English as well as Celtic languages, but next year will be a complete Celtic year. I had planned doing both studies in three years, but almost having finished my first year I realise this isn't realistic. I could only make it if I wouldn't sleep for the next two years and I don't think I would survive, even though most of the time I think sleep is a waste of time.  Besides that, the English department is lacking a teacher for the medieval subjects and that's what I'm interested in. So for the moment English is on hold, but I did manage to finish 6 courses for it this year.

This morning dh and I did our two-weekly morning paper route (ds does the paper route normally, but spends every other weekend with his biological father and we have offered to do it then), but we got to sleep in anyway. The papers were going to be late, so we could come a half hour later.  The rest of the day will be filled with some cleaning (dh and I always do this together, he insists, isn't he sweet? ), a quick shop at our local greengrocer, some time at my allotment, and studying. Oh and I shouldn't forget baking, our bread for the week and banabread for ds, he always eats a slice before his paper route.

Tomorrow is father's day, but we will celebrate it another Sunday when the kids are home. We will visit my parents in the Hague and pick up the kids with their little half brother (who is our little sleepover guest) on our way back.

Thanks for the warm welcome and all the nice comments about are garden, ladies, and Kim, you are so right, technology is wonderful. By the way, we don't have a short growing season, but we were just really late with tilling the garden (manually).  I think we actually have good growing season, some things can be sown in March, but officially the date for french and runner beans is still 15th May (thereafter there shouldn't be any more frosts), and it can go through to September/October. With the climate changes the weather can be strange sometimes. Last year we had a really hot and dry early spring, which was followed by six weeks of cold, wet weather, which together produced a gigantic amount of slugs, and they ate almost everything (this year I'm using slug repellants, which aren't dangerous for anything/one else). This year we had a rather warm spring, but with rain now and then, and at the moment it's a lot cooler with some rain.

Have a great weekend!

blessings, Ellen

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I spent some hours at my allotment today, weeding of course, but also planting broccoli, kohlrabi and fennel, and sowing runnerbeans (for the second time, the first batch disappeared into thin air ), beetroot, rocket and some radishes. When I'm there I tend to loose track of time, but it's time well spent. The weather was great today, a lot cooler than the last couple of days, but sunny and dry.

Here are some pictures:

Here you see my rhubarb plants, saved out of a compost bin, a small blackberry bush that's growing very fast, my strawberry bed (still recovering from the transplant), a bed with cucumber and tomato plants, with my little plastic greenhouse on the right, in which I have more tomatoplants and some pepperplants. After that there is a bed with a zucchini and a hokkaido pumpkin plant flanked by my compost bin, followed by a bed with carrots, fennel and beetroot.

This picture is taken from the other side, with my bean bed in front, where my french beans are doing well, and hopefully the runner beans will follow. In the background you can see two pumpkin plants, the big variety, followed by the cabbage bed with kohlrabi, broccoli, and several kinds of cabbages. I've planted corn in the next bed together with a zucchini and hokkaido pumpkin plant. Which brings us to the greens bed, several kinds of lettuce and leeks, and I still have some sellery to plant.

Finally, I have a picture of our back garden with the the blackberry on the left, the raspberry hiding near the woodshed (which dh built), and the very big eldertree.

I hope you have enjoyed the little tour, till next time!

blessings, Ellen

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I finally found my own little patch in bloggerland. First I will tell a little bit more about our homestead. It is a townhouse with a small front and back garden, which we (dh, ds, dd and I) share with one dog, two cats and a bunny. The house with the two gardens is about 1500 square feet, not much according to American standards, fairly average over here. But I do have an allotment, which is almost 1200 square feet and it's only a 5 minute bike ride away. In our back garden we have an enormous eldertree, a prolific blackberry bush, and a small raspberry bush, hence the berry patch.

Besides taking care of my family, house, garden and pets, I am studying English and Celtic languages at our local university. I have almost finished my first year, just two more weeks (and two exams ) and I will have a nice long break. During my break part of our house will be remodeled: french doors between the living room and the back garden will be put in, the wall between the kitchen and the living room will come down and finally a whole new kitchen!  When all that is finished we will paint and wallpaper the living room, and put in a new wooden floor ourselves.

Well, that's it for my first entry! I will take some pictures of my allotment , when I go there tomorrow to do some weeding and planting, and post them.

blessings, Ellen

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