Into The land Of Carmel

I'm knackered. My right shoulder aches, right in the middle. Not as bad as tooth ache, but persistent and annoying just the same. I once described this in great detail to an ortho, and was told the pain was most likely due to holding back a punch. I've always rather liked that (wholly facetious) explanation. That's how work's been these last few months, knackering and driving me to silent, well-contained fury; hence the shoulder pain. Still, it pays the bills and since Christmas I've turned in some amazing work.

And rather surprisingly, my garden hasn't had to endure months of neglect. Instead I've written one huge list, then gone at it like a mad thing in short, hour-long bursts a couple of times each week. The potatoes were planted in one early evening 45-minute blast (staff induction then pointless back to back meetings then a two-hour crawl along the M1 car park). All the bean supports went up in another 40-minutes (interviewing for colleagues and realising no-one was appointable after seeing 9 illiterates one of whom actually submitted their band 8 presentation entirely in text-speak.) That day almost ended with no shoulder pain... Even the onions sets, shallots and all the roots are in.

Part of me worries about this. Like Tita, will all this rage find an explosive outlet in the vegetables I've sown? Hope so. Imagine the rabbit that eats my French beans. This could be the year of a reasonable crop.

At the end of May I took off for the flat lands of Norfolk and some peace and quiet with the vegetarian sisters. An onion tart, a simple dish of perfectly cooked green beans and some fruit were set out for my arrival, and together with a bottle of Isla Negra High Tide and thoughts of my favourite poet I started a few days break from the world. I'm planning a return visit in the autumn, for who can resist the allure of a journey into the land of Carmel to enjoy its fruits and blessings?

Smoked Bacon

Look away now if you are of a sensitive disposition.

I bought several packs of smoked bacon from the farmers' market at Bakewell last month, no doubt inspired by Fiona and Danny's home smokey bacon adventures. I can't be bothered to hang things up a chimney, as greed, laziness and impatience govern my appetite like some triumvirate of gratification. But the home smoked bacon idea's been chewing away at the back of my mind and finally found an outlet last Saturday.

Each pack cost about £1.80, not bad for something that makes the fridge reek within minutes. I thought the smoke smell might mean the bacon would be too strong, as the packs appeared to contain the most smoked offcuts from the outer side of the bacon joints. No worries. When lightly fried off for inclusion into a suppertime omelette the bacon was sweet and crispy and delishy.

I really like the checkerboard pattern.

Prayer Of St Patrick, Apostle Of Ireland.

May the Strength of God guide us.
May the Power of God preserve us.
May the Wisdom of God instruct us.
May the Hand of God protect us.
May the Way of God direct us.
May the Shield of God defend us.
May the Angels of God guard us.
- Against the snares of the evil one.

May Christ be with us!
May Christ be before us!
May Christ be in us,
Christ be over all!

May Thy Grace, Lord,
Always be ours,
This day, O Lord, and forevermore. Amen.

But after I reached Ireland I used to pasture the flock each day and I used to pray many times a day. More and more did the love of God and in a day [I said] from one up to a hundred prayers - Confessions of St Patrick.

A Soldier's Love Letter From The Desert

You will come with me,

in that hour I wait for you,

in that hour and in every hour,

in every hour I wait for you.

And when the sadness that I hate

comes knocking at your door,

tell it that I am waiting for you

and when loneliness wants you to change

the ring in which my name is written,

then tell loneliness to talk to me,

tell it that I had to march

because I am a soldier,

and that there where I am,

under rain or

underfire,

my love, I am waiting for you,

I wait for you in the harshest desert

and by the flowering lemon tree,

in every land where life exists,

where spring is born,

my love, I wait for you.

If they say to you: "That man

does not love you," remember

that my feet are alone in this night, and they

search for the sweet, tiny feet I adore...

...and your soul which I awoke

so that it should keep on singing

until the end of life...

My love, I am waiting for you.

Farewell, my love, I am waiting for you.

My love, my love, I am waiting for you...

And so this letter ends

without any sadness;

my feet are firm on the ground,

my hand writes this letter on my travels

and in the middle of life I shall be

always

next to my friend, facing the enemy,

with your name on my lips

and a kiss that never

went away from yours.

Pablo Neruda: The Captain's Verses

I shall complain no more about failing to meet the potting up deadline for hyacinths to flower in time for Christmas. There can be so much excess at Christmas; colours, lights, details, lists, shopping, baking, tidying, Masses, Christmas cards to post and the rooms to decorate. In all of this the simple colours of the bowls of spring bulbs are lost. Better to leave them rooting away in the icy darkness of the outhouses, and bring them into the light and warmth after the Feast of the Epiphany.

The seemingly grey and empty time that appears after the putting away of the tree and its sparkling baubles, is swept away by the beauty and scent of the spring bulbs, Paperwhite Narcissi, "Bridal Crown" all the way from the Holy Land, and as here, Dutch hyacinths. I place bowlfuls on all the window ledges and once the blooms open to the warmth and sunlight, the rooms are filled with their powerful scent. My January and February are filled with sunlight and snow and the scent of spring. Gaudium et spes. And my year stretches ahead with delight.

And On And On It Snows

"Our snow was not only shaken from the whitewash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely white-ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?

"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully. But all the children could hear was a ringing of bells."

"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"

"I mean the bells that the children could hear were inside them."

"Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints in the hidden pavements."
"Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-coloured snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept."

Dylan Thomas: A Child's Christmas in Wales

Hello Beautiful: Galanthus Nivalis

Galanthus nivalis, the common snowdrop, signals that winter is coming to an end, that spring is just around the corner.

It Was Chinese New Year On Monday, Phantom

Finally. Three months of silence, in the middle of which Fiona lands me with a furious dilemma. Of course, April is really to blame for all this. Yes, April, you are to blame. If I hadn't started enabling comments, at your suggestion, I probably wouldn't have had Fiona awarding me a very lovely blog award last year. I haven't ignored it, Fiona. Quite the opposite, actually. Who the hell do I pass it on to?

I enjoy all the blogs I read, and all of them are invariably written by creative, vibrant, colourful individuals, even that strange, odd little blog that makes me laugh in a most unpleasant fashion at celebrities' misfortunes. There is however, one blog that really created a change in the way I live, and that's Phantom's blog. Well, not really his blog, really it's one of the blogs on his blog roll --> Eggs, bacon, chips and beans. Because until I checked out Phantom's blog roll, and found Russell Davies' great blog, I wouldn't have dreamed of entering a greasy spoon, certainly not actually eat in one. And now, whenever I'm in Nottingham early enough for brekkie, I call into the The Cosy Teapot, 101 Carrington Street, Nottingham, for a plate of eggs, bacon, chips and beans. The Cosy Teapot; the only place in the world where I have eaten chips for breakfast. Now that's creative blogging.

Still Too Cold To Garden

I bet Helen Yemm isn't standing in her kitchen drinking tea and staring out at her garden. At least it was dry and clear enough to get a line of laundry out. I'm thinking of renaming this blog "The Slacker Diaries."

Helen Yemm uses chicken wire to keep cats off seed beds... Amalee Issa uses a hundred pack of Sainsbury's bamboo barbeque skewers, inserted into the beds in random, overlapping directions, but always at an angle of 45 degrees.

New Year, New Term, New President

I finally got my act together and put my hands into the soil over the weekend. Quickly drew them out again too, because it's still far too cold to be diddling about in the garden, and anyway, if I walk about on the lawns or the borders the soil would become compacted and rot off. It won't actually rot off, it'll just become compacted, airless and solid; I just rather liked the way rot off sounded as I wrote this. So far this winter we've had prolonged spells of freezing nights and fog-bound days. Sometimes the temperature doesn't rise above freezing from one weekend to the next, and the last thing the garden looks from the study is inviting. Throughout this enforced captivity both beloved firstborn and merci beaucoup enfant deux cope magnificently; taking to their beds 'til noon; making hot drinks; filling the dishwasher to bursting point almost daily; helpfully texting suggestions for that night's tea to be fetched on my way home... idle toe-rags.

The point at which the Riot Act was read came early in the New Year when I arrived home cold and fed up to a fridge bare of milk for a cup of tea. "Oh yes, I had the last of it on my breakfast cereal," ventured one recklessly brave undergraduate.

Punitive action inflicted, appropriately alarmed undergraduates subdued, dispersed and peaceably departed to their lawful business (their laundry, ironing and unloading the dishwasher), civil order was restored.

You can't read the Riot Act and expect the weather to take notice. You just have to accept the enforced exclusion from practical tasks and stand at the french windows, cup of tea in hand and day dream about the year ahead whilst finding delight in the present. The mixed deciduous hedge is the sparrows' playground, and invariably the point from which the wren emerges into the garden. I might need to lower it a bit this year, and if I can get it done before the end of February, I should be able to shape it without the hindrance of obscuring leaves. One of these days I'll make the time to take a hedge laying course. And a dry stone walling course. You can't live and work in our part of the rural English Midlands without passing a dry stone wall at some point in your day. Then there's the butchery course offered by some guy in ChesVegas. I could buy mercy boo that piglet she's been hankering for; call it "apple sauce"; non-permanent pet.

They are both back at uni now, and sent me texts from their halls where students gathered after their exams to watch the inauguration of Barack O'Bama, the first black Irish American President of the United States. Well done America, you voted in a good 'un.

Light Up, Light Up

Why am I the last person on the planet to hear the brilliance that is Leona Lewis? Because blasted Terry Wogan only started playing "Run" this week, during my morning drive to work, that's why. I love Wake-up to Wogan, described by Terry's producer as "food and filth." He's not wrong there. Terry starts drivelling on at 7.31am weekday mornings, half an hour into my journey down the M1, and finishes off two hours later long after I've arrived, parked up, and started on my second cup of tea of the day. Sometimes his Janet and John story is so outrageous I have to pull into the first lane to avoid a fast lane shunt because I'm laughing so much. Then there's the "poet laureate Andrew Motion" submitting his latest three line epic by email, or Barnsley Chop wooing the traffic totty with his unfinishable poems, usually starting something like this, "Oh lovely Lynne you have me in bits, I'd really like..." Chuffer Dandridge, the retired Shakespearean actooor manager invariably emails in with his latest attempt to relaunch a failed career. All interspersed with Terry chomping on snorkers and the latest provender sent in by enchanted listeners.

And each morning this week, driving through freezing fog and bitterly cold driving conditions, I've listened to Run. I looked up the lyrics tonight, and thought of you. So far from home, working in a war zone, having the shit bombed out of you. Sometimes it really is harder to be here not there, driving in and out to work and not knowing if you survived the night.

Light up, light up

As if you have a choice

Even if you cannot hear my voice

I'll be right beside you dear
Louder louder

And we'll run for our lives

I can hardly speak I understand

Why you can't raise your voice to say

Light up, Light up

Happy New Year

I Believe In One God, The Father The Almighty

Santa's Coming!!

http://www.noradsanta.org/en/home.html

Winter Gardening

Sometimes my heart just sinks when the alarm goes off on Saturday morning, quietly but no less insistently than during the week. But I'm supposed to have a lie-in, I think to myself, and curl down even further under the duvet. On and on drones Farming Today. Eventually the thought of starvation forces me to get up and dress up. Cotton camisole, short sleeve cotton tee shirt, long sleeve fleecy zip-up, sleeveless body warmer, by which time I'm in the kitchen making a hurried cup of tea and snatching a bit of last night's takeaway for a breakfast eaten on the way out to the car.

I keep a box in the boot filled with hand tools and at this time of year, a selection of woollen hats and waterproof gloves. I keep my boots and jacket in the laundry room near the radiator, so I start my day warm from head to toe.

What I always forget to remove before stepping out into the winter garden, are my earrings. I have some diamond studs, which pretty much stay on all the time, and don't present too much of an earlobe chill factor. My gold studs are quite another matter. The damned things sit like tiny, invisible detonators waiting for the moment of maximum inconvenience. I was up a ladder on Saturday morning, tying in a fabulously wayward grape vine, day dreaming of Christmas wreaths I'll make with the prunings, when the detters chose to go off. Cold earring-induced earache is horrible. It comes on suddenly and you really can't get your gloves off quick enough. Then you have to go through the business of rubbing your hands together and blowing on them because they're too cold to feel the butterflies properly, and if you drop them when you're half way up your ladder you can kiss them goodbye... Eventually you get them off and zip them away into your inside jacket pocket, pull your hat right down over your ears, glove up and get back to work.

Not that I'm complaining. Pruning that grape vine completed my horticultural year. With both beloved firstborn and merci beaucoup enfant deux at university this year, and two lots of halls' fees, I front loaded this year with lucrative design work. All drawing board and little spade work, and this academic year's halls' fees are now safely tucked up in the bank earning zero interest. So I'd rather forgotten how cold autumn and winter gardening becomes.

Back home in time for lunch, and there's still a bit of lamb biryani and naan. A scaldingly hot cup of tea and a sit down in the kitchen chair beside the radiator quickly restores my inner warmth, and then I begin peeling off the layers.

Image: Winter Mist by Miranda Halsby, on sale at Abbott & Holder

Winter Gardening With Birds

I've reproduced Helen Yemm's article from last Saturday's Telegraph here, because it begins with a question from Faye & Peter Burton, wondering if they added a drop of gin to their birdbath would it prevent the water from freezing over. It won't actually, as I keep my Bombay Sapphire in the freezer where it's remains a deliciously gloopy consistency. Faye would need to make her birdbath 40% proof plus! I like their style. On to Helen's article.

"This query, together with the threat of nasty weather from the north, got me out in my own garden this week. I cleared out the mouldy remains at the bottom of my seed holders, tipped out rainwater sludged up with autumn leaves in the various drinking/bathing places that the birds have found for themselves and generally re-stocked the garden with bird necessities.

"Like many (most, I would like to think) gardeners, I greatly appreciate my feathered garden visitors. And, as we are now encouraged to do, I feed them all year round. To welcome all-comers, I put out an assortment of food. Seed tubes containing peanuts and sunflower hearts, bought as cheaply as possible in bulk and stored in lidded bins in my garage, hang off a high bird table placed close to trees and hedges. These provide cover and perching places (in which, among others, gold and green finches, various tits and even nuthatches queue for "their turn"). But I make sure there is no thick evergreen growth at ground level near the table in which the one or two malevolent local moggies can lie in wait.

"On the ground close to my French windows, I put out different food entirely - mostly apples, chopped, or grated scraps of old cheese or cheap porridge oats slightly moistened with vegetable oil (I mix this up in big batches).

"My ground-feeding birds, among them beady-eyed blackbirds, dunnocks and a pair of softly twittering robins, have become incredibly tame and stay close to me while I am at work in the garden or simply hang around in the bushes waiting for my appearance.

"Gangs of jeering, clattering starlings flock down from the oak tree to splash around the edge of the pond and demolish all available food in seconds, while collar doves sit on the garage roof. It is a wonder I get any writing done at all."

Holidays Are Coming, Holidays Are Coming

Remember this? Now, I don't know if they retired the global head of Coca Cola or sacked that scary, fat pervert dressed in the red suit from the 2006 Christmas Coca Cola advert, but there I sat tonight, watching NCIS and at the third ad break the Christmas Coca Cola advert comes on... and it's the trucks! Oh thank you, global head of Coca Cola. Now we know that "Holidays are coming."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogetBqMgau0

Who Can Find A Virtuous Woman For Her Price Is Far Above Rubies

Oh blessed are those who fear the Lord
And walk in his ways.
By the labour of your hands you shall eat.
You will be happy and prosper.

Your wife like a fruitful vine
In the heart of your house;
Your children like shoots of the olive,
Around your table.

Indeed thus shall be blessed
The man who fears the Lord.
May the Lord bless you from Zion
In a happy Jerusalem
All the days of your life.

Remembrance Sunday

The Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Shaibah, Basrah.

There's No-one As Irish As Barack O'Bama

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xkw8ip43Vk

And if you are still in any doubt, I heard that Jack Charlton chased him all through the 80's to play international football for Ireland...

Consume : Bill Owens

Friday Five: Riding The Las Vegas Deuce Bus

1. Buy an all-day ticket for 5$. You can jump on and off as many times as you want during a 24-hour period, handy when it's just too hot to walk. Ride all the way to the terminus and back, it's a great way to navigate the Strip.

2. Get on and get upstairs. Usually there are more seats, and the air-con is more efficient. The views are spectacular especially if you can work your way up to the bus seats at the front.

3. Queueing. Don't be fooled by German tourists. They claim through shrugs and sign language not to understand English but still manage to find their way to the head of the queue. Shout at them and get back in front of them.

4. Do not attempt to board the bus between Circus Circus and Caesar's Palace. You will queue for at least an hour and only a handful in the queue will get on each time the buses arrive.

5. If women in maid's uniforms are near you in the queue, pull them beside you when the bus arrives and ask them to get on ahead of you. They've cleaned your room and served your meals and they are knackered. They deserve your place in the queue. This is especially rewarding if there are German tourists immediately behind you.

Friday Five: Chuck Norris Part 2

Remember this? I clicked onto April's blog this evening and reading back a couple of entries I found this instruction for the 20 October 2008. April, you've just gone up another hundred points in my estimation...

1. Go to Google and type on the search line Find Chuck Norris

2. Hit the I'm Feeling Lucky button

On Lists Made In The Library During Wet Afternoons In Early Autumn

17th century Persians prized tulips, irises, hyacinths and roses in their gardens. List of plants Vita Sackville-West brought home to Long Barn in 1926;

Iris persica

Iris stylosa - her beloved iris

Anemone fulgers - scarlet

Gladiolus segetum - pink

colchicums

Tulipa sylvestris - little nodding golden tulips

Tulipa polychroma - yellow & white

Tulipa ostrowkiana - flame orange

Iris susiana - white with dark veins

Iris tuberosa - the widow iris

Crown Imperials

Persian yellow roses

Rosa foetida persiana

Isfahan / Ispahan - pink damask

La Réve* - Rosa lutea derived

Star of Persia* - " "

Tulipa aucheriana - most splendid of all, "like an old and rich brocade," the yellow-splashed rich rose pink tulip

* always treasured in her gardens subsequently

And That's The Joy You Bring

So impossible as they may seem
You've got to fight for every dream
'Cause who's to know
Which one you let go
Would have made you complete

Well, for me it's waking up beside you
To watch the sunrise on your face
To know that I can say I love you
In any given time or place
It's little things that only I know
Those are the things that make you mine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1LEISP6e9c&feature=related

Where Are You, Gastropunk n Maths Chick?

I have a stack of photos of our family holiday to the US of A, to upload here. I want to share my utter delight and joy with my witty and urbane readers. We encountered some really weird and wonderful people, we saw some incredible sights and ate the sort of food you only believe exists in a world that doesn't include Jamie Oliver, Delia, Jane Grigson (ok, I know this is a shortcut that means I don't have to mention Elizabeth David or the Pilsbury Dough Boy's buttermilk biscuits), Monty Don and my horticultural guru, Helen Yemm. We saw desert planting that made me want to relocate immediately to the Holy Land and the desert. We beat the casino at Vegas. We watched the sun rise over the Grand Canyon.

I want to tell you about this morning's farmers' market at Bakewell, that tomorrow morning merci beaucoup enfant deux leaves home for uni and that tomorrow night I will have an empty nest for the first time in over two decades.

But I feel it is more important to post this vital question? Where are you, Gastropunk n Maths Chick?

These Boots Were Made For Walking

...and back from america

Oi, Phantom? Remember this? -->

http://thephantomstapleremover.blogspot.com/2008/02/kew-and.html

And where is your post with pictures of your fridge?

Amalee
(just walked in the front door ((OK, I walked in the front door last night then went to bed and slept for 13 hours, then got up and showered then drove to Marks and bought three suits for work complete with shirts, shoes and drawers (I am Virgo, people...)))

Friday Five: Remember These Cheesey Poptastic Rock Toons?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jexNsBjz1r8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtuvXrTz8DY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUHecG5wAFk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2IkLGFiKx0

But it was this one, that came on the radio as we flew down the motorway and provoked a laughing fit from the rear seat. When the tears and snot subsided and the laughing stopped long enough for the words to become audible, out came the story behind this song;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW1LkJNmWzg

"Oh s***, we were drinking in the Honk bar at the back end of the airport and Gerard Rikkard put this on the juke box, and we all joined in until it got to the chorus, when he just took off in this falsetto he could only do when he was plastered. He must have sung it three or four times before they threw us out. Said we were upsetting the farmers at the other end of the bar."

Some Prefer A Bright, Brash Midday Glare With Plenty Of Stuffing

We arrived back from France last weekend just in time for the rarely seen and thus fabled British summer heatwave. Of course, nothing will ever approach the famous Long Hot Summer of 1976. Although the summer of 1989 was supposed to be pretty hot, all I can remember of that heatwave is being sveltely pregnant with merci beaucoup enfant deux and planning my working day around the availability of and proximity to, lavatories. There's nothing quite like a second pregnancy and a 60-hour week for focusing one's mind. And one's bladder... Now, of course, I can swan about all day and not give a fig for anything other than recognising every moment of every day as the last summer of my active parenting career. The A Level results are published on Thursday - always the second Thursday in August. And then mercy boo is off to uni to read English Literature. Good girl.

So we left our house in France and returned to our English life again. Our home smells hot as we unlock the doors and open the windows. During our absence vases of roses shed their dessicated petals unnoticed over table tops, carpets and floorboards. Hastily tidied piles of books and papers in the study betrayed the thin film of neglectful dust. Threads of cobwebs discovered between the lamps betrayed our desertion. Desertion or relocation? We are home once more, in the heart of the English Midlands, surrounded by the hills and valleys of my beloved Derbyshire.

But our fridge is full with French groceries.

Christopher Lloyd would be proud.

Bulots Avec Mayonnaise

Or whelks, caught, bought and eaten within 24 hours. Drop into boiling water and depending upon size, boil for 20 minutes (because no-one likes to eat the mucoid end of an under-cooked bulot). Refresh in cold water and serve immediately with crunchy bread rolls and shivering dollops of golden mayonnaise.

Summer Days

Best of all are days like today; blustery, coastal winds that dry lines of sheets and beach towels and whip around the garden scattering rose petals across the lawns like confetti. Handfuls of grasses and coastal path flowers brought back to the kitchen and dropped into vases. Sea shells and beach treasures filling the deep window ledges. Lamb roasting with garlic on an impossibly deep bed of garden herbs; rosemary, marjoram, too much bay, thyme. And sunlight everywhere, bouncing through our days here.

Sing Forever

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-mrYd1VKwc&feature=related

I will sing for you at the start of each day
I’ll sing forever, sing for you
In all things I do in the dawn of my life
I’ll sing forever, sing for you

Shutting out night, my life renewed
Happy for love that is to come
Opening eyes I’ll follow you
Glad to see, glad to be yours

Echoing what you say, echoing what you say
Shining out what you are, shining out what you are
Out of dark into your light

I will sing for you in the light of each day
I’ll sing forever, sing for you
In all things I do at the noon of my life
I’ll sing forever, sing for you

Shutting out night, my life renewed
Happy for love that is to come
Opening eyes I’ll follow you
Glad to see, glad to be yours

Echoing what you say, echoing what you say
Shining out what you are, shining out what you are
Out of dark, into your light

I will sing for you at the end of each day
I’ll sing forever, sing for you
In all things I do in the eve of my life
I’ll sing forever, sing for you

I will sing for you each and every day
I’ll sing forever, sing for you
In all things I do to the end of my life
I’ll sing forever, sing forever

Sing, sing for you

Midsummer

First, choose a night that keeps the heat of day.

Next, order cool breezes from willow trees

soaked overnight in dark mysteries. Then,

remove bath from bathroom and place amidst

a filigree of ferns in folds of lime trees.

Now, frost rim of bath with silver moonlight,

line base with lemon verbena leaves and

place wild honeysuckle on taps. Slowly,

fill to brim with infusion of rosemary.

Order peacocks to open a jewelled screen.

When all is secret and silent remove clothes;

consume fig and elderflower salad.

Roll in rose petals, place parsley in ears

submerge body in water, dissolve all fears.

Rebecca Farmer

Rosa "Eglantyne," "Sceptre'd Isle," "Rosa Mundi," "Septre'd Isle."

But I Only Love Your Feet

...I love your boots
because they have wandered
over the earth and through
the wind and over the water,
until they brought you to me.

Sunday Morning Safe And Sound

He's home from Afghanistan. Safe and sound and in one piece. Phew. Rosa "Constance Spry."

Allium Sativum Does Best In Rich, Well-Drained Soils

I ought to know why garlic is growing up through the steps in my kitchen garden. Any ideas?

Breathless, Of Derbyshire

Oh my God, Helen Yemm has mentioned my name. I can't believe it. All the years I've read her column and done exactly what she tells us to do (well, except the bit about not pruning when you're just bored and itching to "tidy up"), and there she goes, actually reading my comment on her blog... Go and read her divine exploration of Titania's Bank, from a Midsummer Night's Dream; rush out tomorrow morning and get the plants in and plant up your own garden in time for midsummer; rush out and buy the Telegraph. Just know that after reading Helen's column, you will never be quite the same again. Welcome to my dealer...

I may have to go and lie down on the sofa with a damp cloth on my forehead and wait until Gardener's World starts in ten minutes. Now if Jethro Gibbs turns to camera halfway through tonight's episode of NCIS and whispers my name, I may very well spontaneously combust.

Lamb Kebobbies

Or lamb kebabs, to most normal people. Want to see what a really tip-top lamb kebobbie looks like? Pop over to tha Phantom's blog, where the git is preparing another garden feast. Lucky Mrs Phantom.

http://thephantomstapleremover.blogspot.com/2008/06/barbecue-2-putting-my-blog-where-my.html

Here's a couple of snaps of my barbe, on the Bank Holiday weekend at the end of May.

Guess the star sign of she who lays vegetables on her barbe in ordered rows... We made Sophie Grigsons' htipiti with the yellow peppers and cream cheese stuffed chillies with the... chillies. The aubergines were bashed to bits after a good old charring and made into baba ganoush. And next time there will be the Phantom's kebobbies and everything else Jamie does on his garden barbe / bread oven.

From Sacred Space, This Week

"Jesus said, ‘Take up your cross.' (Mark 8:34-35) It is not something you go looking for in faraway places. Sooner or later the Lord hands us a cross, and our job is to recognise it. For each of us there are events that made a difference. Our sorrowful mysteries will be different for each reader. Maybe it was a meeting with a friend, a lover or an enemy. Maybe it was a sickness, or a triumph. We try to see our life through the eyes of faith, with a confidence that God in his Providence can draw good out of the most awful and unwelcome happenings. This is true wisdom, to find a faith that can carry us through darkness, doubt, and suffering. They call it the mystical phase of religious development, and many of you who form the Sacred Space community are there."

http://www.sacredspace.ie/

Ever thought something was written with you in mind? Makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, doesn't it?

Clematis "John Paul II" growing on an east facing fence, looking towards Poland. Click on the picture to enlarge then save to your screen saver.

Helen Yemm's Blogging, Or Can My Life Get Any Better

No seriously, I've just clicked onto Helen Yemm's blog from the bottom of her Telegraph column. Oh thank you God for the internet and Helen's son, who appears to have set her up for blogging. Good man!

I've been reading Helen's column for a number of years, and in truth, the gardening section of the Telegraph newspaper is the main reason I buy it on a Saturday morning. And the hatch, match and dispatch... This week's Telegraph column features Helen in startlingly good ranty form. It's the mark of a good writer to be able to transfer irritation via a few ink stains on paper.

Click on this link; read her blog; leave comments on her blog. Just don't put a plant in the wrong area of your garden...

http://helenyemm.com/

Safely Out Of The Desert

photograph by Elliot Smith / Guardian Unlimited

Those Three Words Are Said Too Much

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajy0w1XPJk8

We'll do it all, everything
On our own
We don't need anything
Or anyone

If I lay here, if I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
I don't quite know, how to say, how I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough

If I lay here, if I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Forget what we're told, before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

If I lay here, if I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
All that I am, all that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all

If I lay here, if I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

20 May 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8ZOJj5ni44
...dutyinthedesert...

Early May Sunshine

A week ago, I awoke on the first morning of May to the dawn chorus. It had been warm overnight, and I remember getting up during the darkness to open the windows. When the dawn chorus began a handful of hours later, the birdsong filled and filled my world. Each morning since began mistily, chilly, with heavy condensation coating the lawns, the pots, the car. But during the long drive to work after the school run, the sun appeared and burned off the morning mists, leaving glorious mornings of pale blue skies and the promise of a lovely day ahead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DnUxLISFcA

Each evening since May began, I've arrived home, sometimes before teatime, sometimes later, and my house is filled with golden sunlight, right through from the west-facing kitchen to the east-facing front door. Warmth and sunshine, birdsong and dancing midges; all these things announce summer is on its way. The explosion of insects coincides with the birds nesting. Over the weekend the doves began their courtships, the sparrows too, and the blackbirds chased each other across the lawns and under the trees. The apple blossom is at its most beautiful and sketchable, and I am unwinding into the long summer months ahead.

Corey's Dad

Now here's a sad old thing --> Corey's Dad died yesterday.

I surfed on into Corey's blog shortly after I first discovered blogs. I like her photography (better than Pioneer Woman's). I've hungered for the meals she describes. I like that cerise cardi she wore to French Husband's do. I especially like her helpful chats about buying French antiques... (in sunny Derbyshire we call "antiques," "tat!")

But more than this, I like her candid revelations. So American. So for Corey, French Husband, Chelsea and Sacha, this is for you; (in English "ships" are assigned the female gender (how very French), but for today, they assume the male gender, for George);

A ship sails and I stand watching till he fades on the horizon

And someone at my side says "He is gone."
Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. He is just as large now as
when I last saw him. His diminished size and total loss from my sight is in
me, not in him.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says his is gone

there are others who are watching him coming over their horizon

and other voices take up a glad shout "There he comes!"
That is what dying is.

An horizon and just the limit of our sight.
Lift us up, Oh Lord, that we may see further

Bishop Brent

(because, if I'm good enough and I die and return to paradise, I'd love to sing like this)

On Snowing All Day

It's been snowing all day, on and off. The Phantom's right. You can tell it's snowing even before you wake up. Just open your ears to the muffled sounds then your eyes to the whiter than usual glare coming through the curtains, and you know it's snowing. The snow bounces light right through the windows into every corner of the rooms. The birds huddle together in the hedges and trees, urging me to feed them last night's bread ends. Later in the morning they are followed into the gardens by children sliding about bare headed and gloveless. A car or two passes. Lunch is prepared. And still the snow comes, on and off, but not really sticking.

It hasn't really snowed properly, enough for drifts halfway up the house walls, since the children were at primary school. Then we'd be out making huge snowmen, leaping off the garden benches into enormous snowdrifts, and finally making snow angels. Sometimes even the village school would close, and parents would be summonsed from work at lunchtime to collect their over-excited children. Of course no-one minded, we all joined in with the mock-anxiety of it all. Should I try and get to the butcher's for stewing beef just in case we get snowed in? Have I enough milk and bread? Shall I get the barbeque out just in case we get a power cut, and where are those blasted candles? You only need to be snowed in and cut off once, with young children, to know that the panacea for all ills and fears is a well stocked pantry, a beef stew on the go and lots of candles. And snow angels, of course.

On Stuff White People Like

I like this blog, it makes me larf.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

Alstroemeria In Easter Flowers

Yes, I knew that your hands were

a budding sprout, a lily of silver:

you had something to do with the soil,

with the flowering of the earth,

but when I saw you digging, digging,

pushing pebbles apart and guiding roots

I knew at once, my farming woman,

that not only your hands

but your heart were of earth,

that there you were making your things,

touching moist doorways through which the seeds circulate.

So in this way from one plant

to the other recently planted one,

with your face spotted with a kiss from the clay,

you went and came back flowering,

you went and from your hand

the stem of the alstroemeria raised its solitary elegance,

the jasmine adorned the

mist on your brow with stars of dew and fragrance.

Everything grew from you

penetrating into the earth and becoming green light,

foliage and power you communicated your seeds to it,

my beloved,

red gardening woman:

your hand on familiar terms with the earth

and the bright growing was instantaneous.

Love, thus also your hand of water,

your heart of earth,

gave fertility and strength to my songs

you touch my chest while I sleep

and trees blossom from my dreaming.

I wake up, open my eyes,

and you have inside me stars in the shadows

which will rise and shine in my song.

That's how it is, gardening woman:

our love is earthly:

your mouth is a plant of light,

a corolla,

my heart works among the roots.

On The Arrival Of Frogs And Toads

Fingers crossed, I may be emerging from beneath a six-month period of immense office based activity. During this time my garden has pretty much had to fend for itself. The appalling weather last summer helped; the seemingly constant rainfall gave plants a head start, only to encourage an explosion of slugs and snails that chewed everything in their nocturnal path. Plenty of growth but no harvesting or weeding problems... My favourite iris, smuggled back from a beach path near St Malo and nurtured for the past three years finally sent out a flowering stalk. Then one morning as I came to the terrace with a cup of tea, there it lay, flopped to one side where the damned slugs had chewed it through that night. How do you swear at slugs? Loudly and at length, that's how.

Every bit of cavolo nero chewed to bits as it emerged, and I can't even begin to describe what happened to my adored purple sprouting broccoli without genuine tears of regret filling my eyes. Adding insult to injury the blasted rabbits decided to have a population explosion and joined forces with the slugs and ate all my bean crop. Only the pumpkins and tomatoes survived.

I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago during another prolonged period of rain and blustery winds whilst walking towards the house along the drive after another office-bound slog. "Bloody cats!" I said, as I narrowly avoided stepping on a pile of cat poo slap bang in the middle of the drive. Except it was too big to be a pile of cat poo, and anyway it moved slightly. Thinking there might be a tapeworm in there, I bent in for a better look (it was nearly 9pm, after all and we don't do street lamps in our part of sunny Derbyshire). It was an enormous toad. The frogs and toads had arrived for their annual sexfest in my pond. Huge, bloated things were all over the paths, drives and lawns, all moving inexorably towards water, aided by the shiny wet surfaces all around us. "And where were you buggers last year," I muttered, and went on into the house.

The weekend's weather of blisteringly cold and clear early mornings with rainclouds moving in by lunchtime means I have a few hours to get the laundry out onto the lines to dry, before the deluge begins. Last night I went to bed to the sound of quite a gale rattling round the chimneys and rain lashing against the windows. Lovely. This morning I woke just after 6am (nine hours kip? I must be knackered) to another clear morning. Maybe I'll start some proper gardening today.

Easter Sunday

Good Friday

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvjKUFVLLrE

On Avoiding Gardening, Part 2

I'm sitting here at the pc googling "how to tie a butcher's knot." Half an ear on beloved firstborn and merci beaucoup enfant deux upstairs as the former teaches the latter how to play Wildside by Mötley Crüe on bass. This has been going on for about 20 minutes; mercy boo learns fast, she's picked it up already. They're moving on to Doctor, Doctor by UFO. My work as a parent is done.

Palm Sunday

I see the King of glory
Coming down the clouds with fire
The whole earth shakes, the whole earth shakes
I see His love and mercy
Washing over all our sin
The people sing, the people sing
Hosanna, hosanna
Hosanna in the highest
I see a generation
Rising up to take the place
With selfless faith, with selfless faith
I see a near revival
Stirring as we pray and seek
We're on our knees, we're on our knees
Hosanna, hosanna
Hosanna in the highest
Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like You have loved me
Break my heart for what breaks Yours
Everything I am for Your Kingdom's cause
As I walk from earth into eternity
Hosanna, hosanna
Hosanna in the highest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7SMUf6QcyQ

On Shovelling Snow And Flipflops

A lovely mild and balmy start to the day, so I decided to wear my flipflops whilst throwing crusts to the birds.

Oh Dear

I like the sound of Fiona, and there is no way on God's earth she's a Virgo, given all that rammel she's packed in at hers and Danny's place. Although Virgos do tend to horde things "just in case," so maybe she is one after all. Her latest post about those obnoxious money-grubbing clients got me thinking about my clients. I accept horticultural commissions by word of mouth only. Invariably one of my clients will ring me up and say, "I've just recommended you to a friend of mine. I did warn her that you won't take on a garden you don't like."

This serves a dual purpose. It gives me an immediate get out if I take an instant dislike to the garden or its owners. Once I rejected a garden after its owners told me they liked to holiday in Dubai. Any garden with slate chippings is rejected, but only after I rather slyly and unpleasantly enquire if, "that part of your garden has become the neighbourhood litter tray?" And any garden with spiky plants is rejected as a matter of course, as are owners who don't line dry their laundry or talk of "greening the desert."

Additionally, when my clients recommend me, they are playing with their friends that most subtle of British games, oneupmanship. The message is clear: Amalee liked my garden, but she mightn't like yours. Really, global brands spend fortunes cultivating that kind of marketplace mentality.

Looks like it's Gay Porn Day over at Pioneer Woman's site...

Some Kind Of Wonderful

Belting up the M1 this afternoon, rare event in itself, this lovely song came on the radio. Aled Jones is no Michale Bublé, that's for sure, but this duet is just delicious. So for the ungrateful wretch (you know who you are, matey) and for April whose missing her beloved, here's a little piece of musical heaven as Britain's lashed by appalling gales and floods, and my garden gets the soaking its needed since February.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIU2JhBXUu0

Homesick

First three horticultural commissions of the year completed; mid-semester exams sat and passed; final parents' evening of my parental career; Gardasil sorted; Lent well under way; and the closer we move towards the Triduum, the heavier my heart becomes, filling with longing for the Holy Land and my home and my past and my future and everything in between. My kitchen turns eastwards and closer to my homeland as rice replaces tubers, and harissa enters centre stage, with cumin, saffron and green leafy coriander to rock my world. I hanker silently for rice and chestnuts and lamb, for kibbeh, for falafel crammed inside flatbreads, for musakan and always for mansaf. Homesickness always strikes hardest during Lent; longing and loneliness born with silence and courage and shreds of hope. I love what I do not have. You are so far.

But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.

The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.

And as I love you, the pines in the wind

want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.

Narcissus Obvallaris

Narcissus obvallaris, or the Tenby daffodil, appears in my garden about three weeks after the little Tete-a-tetes and Jetfires make their appearance around the pond. N. obvallaris is taller and a more buttery yellow than the perfectly-formed wild N. lobularis which has yet to make an appearance. When my little beauties begin to flower, spreading through my garden like a creamy wave of baby smiles, I know that spring is truly here, that the long days of winter are finally behind us and soon I'll be eating breakfast on the terrace again. The cowslips flowered throughout the winter, the prostrate rosemary too. At least the pinks had the decency to stop flowering in December and make a stab at dormancy.

Walk Of The Month: Derbyshire

I've lifted the enclosed in its entirety from this weekend's Daily Telegraph, because that's the view I have driving merci beaucoup enfant deux to school over the mountains. Although obviously, I don't actually climb Stanage Edge...

"Christopher Somerville feels the weight of history in Derbyshire as he follows in the giant footsteps of Little John and Charlotte Brontë.

"It was a red dawn and a murky sunrise as I drove north into Derbyshire. But when I swung over Bradwell Edge and looked down into the lush farmland of the Hope Valley, the snake of mist that traced the curves of the River Derwent was already shredding away. By the time I got to Hathersage, the gritstone houses and road walls were sparkling under a pale sun.
On a pub sign I spotted a likeness of Little John, Hathersage's most famous son. The fierce but genial giant who once tumbled Robin Hood into a stream stood depicted in tunic of untraditional blue, his nickname abbreviated to a curt, if trendy "LJ". Up in the churchyard of St Michael and All Angels I found his grave, long enough for two ordinary mortals.
Those who opened the grave in 1784 reported finding an immense thighbone nearly three feet long. Little John's mighty bow and cap of Lincoln green hung in St Michael's Church for hundreds of years; his cottage near the churchyard stood until it was demolished in the 19th century. Whatever the facts about Robin Hood's right-hand man, Hathersage continues to bask in the reflected glory of the Big Man of Sherwood Forest.
I pondered his provenance as I climbed the frost-whitened field paths north of the valley. In the 12th century the Hope Valley lay within the northern bounds of Sherwood Forest. Could bold Robin and brave John have lain among the ancestors of these oaks and beeches, the grey goose-feather flights pulled tight beside their ears, a fine fallow hart in their sights?
The handsome Tudor house of North Lees Hall stands close under Stanage Edge. Its tower spawned a tale in the mind of a 19th-century governess, a fable that has earned an immortality to equal that of Robin and his Merrie Men. Charlotte Brontë first caught sight of the pale stone tower in 1845 when she came for a three-week stay in Hathersage with her friend Ellen Nussey, sister of the village vicar.
The local surname of Eyre caught Charlotte's inner ear, too. Soon Jane Eyre would apprehensively approach the dark tower of Thornfield Hall, lair of the saturnine Mr Rochester: "It was three storeys high, of proportions not vast, though considerable: a gentleman's manor-house, not a nobleman's seat: battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look."
Those battlements were the setting for one of the most dramatic scenes in literature, as poor mad Mrs Rochester made her final bid for freedom from a terrible fire she had started: "...she was on the roof, where she was standing, waving her arms above the battlements, and shouting out till they could hear her a mile off... She...had long black hair; we could see it streaming against the flames as...Mr Rochester ascended through the skylight...we saw him approach her; and then, ma'am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement."

For five minutes I stood at the gate, staring up at the tower, struck still and dumb by the power of that tremendous moment. I had walked on through the bare trees and up the ancient packhorse road to the summit of Stanage Edge before the picture faded and was overlaid by more immediate images - helmeted rock climbers festooned with rope, walkers filing up the rocky path of Jacob's Ladder, and, soaring above all, the rainbow arc of a paraglider's sail.
Stanage Edge, the rocky rim of what was once a gigantic dome of millstone grit, is a climbers' and boulderers' heaven. The grey adhesive rock, fractured into steps, cracks and layers, offers challenges to test tyro and expert alike. Famous names from that introverted, macho and phenomenally athletic world, the hardest of the "hard man" school - Don Whillans, Nat Allen, Joe Brown - cut their teeth along these modest-looking crags.
They and their successors dubbed every climbable crack and interstice with names superbly curt and clipped: Goliath's Groove, Agony Crack, The Unconquerables, The Vice, Blockhead Direct, Queersville, Eliminator.
I strode the flat, tricky gritstone pavement along the Edge, face to the wind, in a kind of high-level ecstasy. Climbers crouched and sprawled in impossibly heroic poses on every crag. Beyond them, a most enormous view opened to the south and west across the frosted fields and shadowy moors and edges of the Dark Peak. To the left ran cream and purple moors, the wind streaming their pale grasses so that the whole wide upland appeared to be in motion, racing north into Yorkshire.
Quitting Stanage Edge at last did not mean quitting these wonderful heights. Higger Tor and Carl Wark lay ahead, flat-topped tors like castles. I stormed their walls in an outpouring of supercharged energy.
Then, breathless and buffeted by the cold and wind, I dropped down through tumbled meadows around Mitchell Field Farm and the mock-baronial miniature fortress of Scraperlow House; down towards Hathersage, the warmth and light of the Scotsmans Pack inn, and the grey church spire that marks where Little John lies sleeping until Robin's horn wakes him for one last chase through the glades of the eternal Forest."

Freezing February Morning

You know that feeling when you wake slowly to silence? When your morning doesn't begin with John Humphries talking quietly in your ear, and your bed is cosy and warm, and your first thought is, "I have a whole weekend off," and you smile and move further under the covers? That's how my weekend began a couple of hours ago. And here I sit, having read my blogs and caught up with my fellow bloggers' news, read the papers online, Times, Telegraph, New York Times, made two cups of tea, eaten some toast and honey, and at 9am I'm deciding whether to drive to Belper and have a mooch around the architectural salvage yard there, or whether to drive over to Nottingham and visit M&S with my Oxfam vouchers, burning a hole in my wallet. Every once in a while, usually every couple of years, I open my wardrobes and decide to throw away everything in them. I have a couple of suits, a handful of Muji jumpers and three pairs of shoes left. And my Cossack boots and three Boden skirts, of course, but apart from that, the wooden hangers are having a lonely old time in there.

I take a similar approach to my garden. If a plant doesn't perform quite how I intended, or simply smells awful (something to remember when choosing lilies), after a couple of years it's hoiked out into a pot for the church plant sale. When I moved the fruit trees last weekend, I dug over a lovely bed in the middle of one of the lawns, shifting some revolting evergreens and some lovely bergenias to make space for the Egremont Russets and Discoverys. The evergreens are already potted up and in a quiet corner of the garden, awaiting transportation to the next plant sale and a loving home. The bergenias are sitting under a temporary blanket of soil awaiting inspiration. The apple trees are doing well, already the sparrows have discovered their latest perch and are busily chewing off the tiny fruit buds... This might be the distraction I need to save my espalier pear from their greedy little minds. Fingers crossed.

http://www.keepers-nursery.co.uk/product.aspx?id=DISCOV

This beautiful picture appears on the Telegraph's website this morning, and makes a delicious header for my list of gardening tasks to do this morning. Clear skies overnight made for a stunning display of stars, and a "red sky in the morning," dawn. Makes it jolly cold, too. So here I am, my breakfast of toasted prune and chocolate bread and the ubiquitous cup of tea to hand, listing tasks;

move that blasted damson tree; it's far too close to the bay which, I think, taints the flavour of the damson gin;

move that blasted apple tree; it snags the sheets when hung on the line;

prune out the autumn offshoots on the espalier pear;

unsubtle pruning of the vine really ought to be complete by late winter.

Of course, it's far too early to be moving the damson, as stone fruits really need delicate and well-timed handling. But sometimes irritability outweighs horticultural sense. Now let's get moving, we have a glorious morning in the garden calling to us.

"You could ride an elephant through the Tube and no-one would be particularly surprised."

Once again, Annie Mole and her great blog have provided a lesson to the world on what it means to be British. April, you may want to set this as a future homework for Little-Miss-Brit-in-the-making.

http://london-underground.blogspot.com/2008/02/tube-thriller-video.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6EDAZ3crdY

Early Morning And A Dusting Of Snow

A lie-in this morning 'til 8. Glorious. Beloved firstborn dropped to uni yesterday after a flying, midweek visit, and merci beaucoup enfant deux on a weekend sleepover with best friend jody the waif. A whole, two hours extra in bed. And then waking up to snow too! I'm off out to buy some potatoes from the farmer who also sold me snowdrops last spring, and then breakfast at the best deli in Derbyshire, then across into Nottinghamshire to IKEA to buy some stripey material to make table cloths for summer. Lovely start to my weekend.

Friday Five: What Are You Eating This Week?

I have been following Fiona and Danny's experiment with "buying less," for a while now. Actually, I didn't really understand it; both working, she shops at Waitrose, gorgeous garden, how difficult can life be? Then I open an email at work this morning that made everything she and Danny are attempting to do, perfect sense. So here are the pictures, a Friday Five of sorts (I know there are 9 pictures, but whose counting?), and a perfect preparation for Lent, which begins next week.

Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide. Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07United States: The Revis family of North Carolina. Food expenditure for one week $341.98

Italy: The Manzo family of Sicily Food expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or $260.11

Mexico: The Casales family of Cuernavaca. Food expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 MPesos or $189.09 . Poland: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna. Food expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27

Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo. Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 EPounds or $68.53

Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo. Food expenditure for one week: $31.55

Bhutan: The Namgay family of Shingkhey Village. Food expenditure for one week: 224.93 ngultrum or $5.03Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp. Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFAFrancs or $1.23

What am I eating this week?

I Want, I Want, I Want.

Ungrateful wretch, I know. But I enjoy this gallery's choice of online art, and I really, really, really want someone to buy me these pictures. They are probably sold already, so lucky fellow whomsoever bought them. Oh Abbott & Holder, I surfed into your website a few years ago chasing a link to Edward Ardizzone (now there's an illustrator way out of my reach). I have day dreamed over your lists ever since.

But this trio by Anthony Baynes caught my heart completely.

http://www.abbottandholder.co.uk/exhibitions.php?action=view_ex&id=35

These pictures remind me of John Minton's illustrations in Elizabeth David's French Country Cooking. I received a beautiful, brand spanking new edition of Elizabeth David Classics a couple of Christmases ago, and decided that I was now old enough to colour in the illustrations if I wanted. So one dreary January afternoon I nipped up to the west-facing study and found my drawing pens. A cup of tea within reach, I sat at my desk and coloured in Minton's line drawings of platters introducing "Substantial Dishes", from A Book of Mediterranean Food. Then the tent; then the camels. After that I lost track of time until the skies had darkened and my tea was long cold, and my brand spanking new cookbook shone with colour.

But oh, how I want, want, want these three pictures...

Oh Me Wantee

http://uk.tiffany.com/Default.aspx?overlay=linkSimply&omcid=SS11#p+1-n+6-cg+-c+-s+-r+-t+-ri+-ni+1-x+-pu+linkSimply-

On Starting Back To Garden

I start back to horticultural work this morning, a site visit for my first commission of 2008. I'd much rather stay in bed until dawn, but my boots are calling, my new fleecy lined leather gloves already tucked into my waterproof, and the porridge cooked and ready to eat. So off I go.

Happy Birthday, London Underground

"Many Happy Returns to the Tube. On the 10th January 1863 the world's first ever public underground line opened. The Metropolitan Line had trains running every 10 minutes and carried 40,000 passengers between Paddington and Farringdon that day."

And many thanks to the wonderful Annie Mole and her blog, a great part of my week.

The Epiphany

When the song of the angels is stilled

When the star in the sky is gone

When the kings and princes are home

When the shepherds are back with their flocks

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost

To heal the broken

To feed the hungry

To release the prisoner

To rebuild the nations

To bring peace among the people

To make music in the heart.

With thanks to Jan, on whose blog I read this Howard Thurman poem in the early hours of Saturday morning. Then off to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for the closing days of the Andy Goldsworthy exhibition, the largest and most ambitious project ever curated at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

This Precious Stone Set In The Silver Sea

This royal throne of kings, this sceptre'd isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,—

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.King Richard II Act ii. Sc. 1.

Victorian Treasures In A Clinker Path

The following from late July early August this year:

I started at 5am because the rain was forecast to arrive at 11am, and I hoped to get the back of it broken by then. And right on schedule, it started raining, but softly, so I carried on until lunchtime. The gravel had been laid straight onto a bed of builder's sand, the perfect medium for couch grass and dock weeds, so they all had to be dug out. Garden paths need sturdy foundations as they can remain in place for generations if laid out as part of a well thought out design. Simply chucking in a 6" bed of builders sand and topping off with an inch or two of the more expensive gravel only provides a luxurious bed for deep rooted weeds. So out it all came. I mixed the sand and gravel into heaps and barrowed it across to a quiet area of the garden to await another project over the winter.

Then I began to skim off the layers of hard, impacted soil underneath the path until about four inches down I started to hit evidence of the original Victorian path. Bits of clay pipes, broken crockery, usually blue and white patterned, shards of broken green glass bottles, bottles likely to have contained medicine or poison, given the ridges along the bottle sides, clay and glass marble-shaped spheres used as the stopper in bottles of Victorian ginger beer, even a couple of tea pot lids. All these treasures are the classic domestic detritus of earlier dwellings on a landscape, and point to the origins of my house and garden. At the time they were thrown into waste pits and perhaps later dug out to join clinker when the garden path was originally laid.

Clinker is the general name given to waste from industrial processes particularly those that involve smelting metals or burning fossil fuels. In this area of Derbyshire that's likely to be coal. Clinker often forms a loose, black deposit that can consist of coke, coal, charcoal or grit, together with other waste materials, and was often reused to make hard paths. It is laid & rolled, and forms a hard path with a rough surface. If my clinker path has been in situ for maybe a century or more, it is the perfect structure to reinstate and use again.

Friday Five: How I Know I Lead The Life Of Riley

1. Beloved firstborn was robbed in the street this morning - nasty level of violence included being stamped on the head and removed to hospital via ambulance, where the consultant (thank God it occurred during office hours, when consultants actually bother to turn out to work...) confirmed no fractured skull, no perforated eardrum, no dental damage, no broken nose, and no blood clots just waiting to kill 12 hours later.

2. Merci beaucoup enfant deux dropped the house phone down the lavatory this afternoon. That this happened exactly one week after she dropped her mobile down the lavatory whilst out with the girls, is slightly remarkable. What is utterly remarkable, is hearing her clattering about in the bathroom this evening and asking her if she had a phone in there with her... and she had the audacity to laugh and reply, "Is that an offer, mum?"

3. That I have WD40 in the garage, although it won't revive the house phone any more than it revived a mobile last week. What is she doing with phones in the bathroom?

4. I'm sitting at my pc with a glass of French bubbly (is there really any other sort?) and a slice of Christmas cake made for me by my dearest client.

5. NCIS is about to start on Channel 5. Sigh....

Christmas Day

Christmas Eve NORAD Santa's Coming

http://www.noradsanta.org/en/home.htm

So Very Far From Home

Frailty, Thy Name Is Woman

And this has remained, seared into my memory during my formative years. Until December 2, 2007 when, accompanied by merci beaucoup enfant deux, I heard Michael Bublé sing at Nottingham Arena. Oh my goodness. Sorry Kevin. Click onto radioblogclub.com, type in Michael Buble Save the Last Dance, and be transported to American jazz heaven.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY60CkP1qAc

Hark The Herald Angels Sing

"...Glory to the newborn King.

Peace on earth, and mercy mild,

God and sinners reconciled."

Bet you couldn't read that without singing the verses. Peace descended upon my horticultural heart this weekend. I finished all my commissions for this year; all designs are designed; all borders renovated; all tasks completed. My drawing board in the west-facing study upstairs stands empty and my collection of rainbow-coloured drawing pens, my templates and my beloved HB pencils are tidied back into their boxes and won't be allowed to emerge until early next year. In the tool shed my spades are washed, oiled and hung up in their racks. My gardening gear laundered and stored in the hot press. Only those blasted hyacinths need potting up. December stretches ahead of me in one long, luxurious, self-indulgent, glorious reading session. New plants for drought resistant conditions; hostas bred for deeper shade; some glass house newbies; water gardening to include salad crops that is definitely not hydroponics; on and on my reading list stretches... a gardener's paradise. "...Born that man no more may die,

Born to raise the sons of earth,

Born to give them second birth.

Hark! The herald angels sing,

"Glory to the newborn King."

Winter Gardening

November slid by, cold and wet and windy until all the leaves came off the trees and lay in golden swathes, calling to me to come with my rake. I know I ought to rake them up and store them in wire baskets until they rot down for perfect compost, but really, I can't be bothered. And if we are honest with ourselves, no-one wants half-filled black bin liners leaking slowly rotting cellulose hanging around their garden for a couple of years, either. So throughout autumn I rake the moss from the lawns, gather the leaves, then stuff the lot under the hedge in the kitchen garden. I like to think of this process as creating warm bedding for the hedgehogs' hibernation in this relatively quiet part of the garden.

What I'm actually doing is intervening in the Carbon Cycle. The element Carbon is a basic constituent of all living organisms. Its atoms combine easily with other atoms to form a huge variety of molecules. Some of these, Carbon Dioxide CO2 and carbohydrates C6H12O6 have names which are clearly Carbon based, whilst others, fats and proteins for example, are not so obvious. All cells, whether animal, plant or bacteria, contain Carbon in the form of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. Plant cell walls are made of cellulose, a form of carbohydrate.

Carbon cycles through ecosystems, moving repeatedly from one organism to another, and between organisms and the environment. The Carbon cycle is a key factor in maintaining the balance of an ecosystem, and works thus:

Plants photosynthesise, taking Carbon in the form of Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and locking it into the carbohydrate glucose: Carbon Dioxide + Water = Glucose + Oxygen, or 6CO2 + 6H2O (+Light) = C6H12O6 + 6O2 Chlorophyll is the green pigment that enables plants capture light energy.

Animals get their Carbon from eating either plants (carbohydrates) or other animals (proteins and fats). They respire, releasing Carbon Dioxide to the environment. Plants also respire, taking Oxygen from the atmosphere or the by-products of photosynthesis: C6H12O6 + 6O2 > 6CO2 + 6H2O (+ released energy)

Waste Carbon-based material is excreted by animals, and is digested by decomposers, mainly microbes and fungi. The decomposers also respire, releasing Carbon Dioxide.

When animals die, their remains may be either eaten as carrion by scavengers / roadkill by you-know-who, or digested by decomposers. Both scavengers and decomposers respire, giving off more Carbon Dioxide. Here's a diagram:

Plant leaves therefore have two primary functions; to act as solar panels for the plant, enabling the sunlight falling onto the leaves convert into carbohydrates by the process of photosynthesis; and to enable gas exchange via the lenticels. Of course, Jan doesn't know this because she didn't bother reading this far, did you Jan? Naughty blogger.

The growth cycle of deciduous trees and shrubs is linked to day length. Most have a relatively short period of annual growth. New stems begin to grow from overwintering buds when the days lengthen and temperatures are warm enough to support growth. For most trees, growth is usually completed by late June in the Northern Hemisphere. The following year's leaf buds are set at this time and will not open until they experience the chill and short days of winter followed by the warmth and increasing daylight of spring. Once the leaves are fully expanded and the buds are set, the work of manufacturing and storing carbohydrates to support the following season's growth accelerates. These carbohydrates are stored in the branches, roots, and buds throughout the growing season to support next year's growth. In late summer or early autumn, the days begin to get shorter, and nights lengthen. Like most plants, deciduous trees and shrubs are rather sensitive to length of the dark period each day. When nights reach a threshold value and are long enough, the cells near the juncture of the leaf and the stem divide rapidly, but they do not expand. This abscission layer is a corky layer of cells that slowly begins to block transport of materials such as carbohydrates from the leaf to the branch. It also blocks the flow of minerals from the roots into the leaves. During the growing season, chlorophyll is replaced constantly in the leaves. Chlorophyll breaks down with exposure to light in the same way that colored paper fades in sunlight; the leaves must manufacture new chlorophyll to replace chlorophyll that is lost in this way. In autumn, when the connection between the leaf and the rest of the plant begins to be blocked off, the production of chlorophyll slows and then stops. When this happens, the leaf falls. It retains little nutrient value, is almost wholly cellulose, and thus takes at least two years to rot down. It makes a good soil conditioner, and mulch, and that's about it. So under the hedge go the fallen leaves.

http://www.usna.usda.gov/PhotoGallery/FallFoliage/FallFoliage02.html#Betula

She's Back

And about time too. I'm sick to death of wannabe cooks, especially that woman in the warehouse. I want the real thing. I want recipes that work. I want Delia. Thank you God.

From the Times Online today:

Culinary queen Delia Smith is returning to TV. Smith last appeared in the BBC's 2002 series How To Cook. Afterwards she announced she was hanging up her apron, saying: "I'm quite old now - I want to quit while the going is good." She complained that cookery shows had moved on.
"Now people want to be entertained, whereas I was trying to teach how to cook, that's where it's different," she said of the new breed of TV chefs. But the 66-year-old is back this winter with a brand new BBC2 series. The programme will give a glimpse into Smith's life.
And it will show Smith using ready-made products alongside her own techniques, revealing her shortcuts to taking the effort out of cooking. Nigella Lawson's latest series Nigella Express also focuses on fast and easy recipes, and features scenes from the cook's family life - although her 'kitchen' was revealed to be part of an industrial estate in south London.

Autumnal Brugge

I Shot These

There are three types of game; furred game, feathered game, and fair game. It's taken me 'til now to achieve the latter!

Early Winter Musings

I had intended this post to be an update of my clinker path restoration project, and the early winter clearing out of guttering and drainpipes. But then I logged into PostSecret, and nearly laughed my head off with their latest "Sunday Secrets." Now be quick, because the web page changes each Sunday. I've reproduced one of the postcards here, just to make you go out and buy the book (details at the bottom of the PostSecret web page.)

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

First Frosts At Cauldwell's Mill, Rowsley

Up early and off over the mountains with merci beaucoup enfant deux on the coldest school run this autumn. Cold and clear and beautiful. Safely dropped to the hallowed portals of the slave drivers, I drove back to Cauldwell's Mill for a bag of jumbo oats and some multi-grain bread flour. The river was so low and the morning light bouncing off the water so enticingly, I grabbed the camera from the glove box and recorded these lovely pictures. Then a short drive to a nearby deli for the best of Derbyshire breakfasts, a full English of course, then up and over to Chatsworth. Didn't stop for the tour of the house itself, all done up for Christmas, as I'm saving that treat for next month when friends arrive from Ireland. This time it was a quick tour of the converted stable block for Christmas present ideas.

Remembrance Sunday

Call To Action, My Lovely Readers

There's this blog that I check each day, the author of whom entrances me with his prose and the quality of his photographs. Especially I like the green tiles in his kitchen. Now his partner also has a blog, just as beautifully written, and today she writes the saddest lines. Maths Chick's mum died yesterday, having carried the burden of working age dementia for a while. So, my lovely readers, will you join me in offering prayers on reading this, for Cara's mum, her husband and her daughter and all her family and friends?

http://mathschick.wordpress.com/

Canada's Gifts To The World

1. Canadian wheat that makes the finest bread flour

2. Snow, snow, and a bit more snow

3. People that say "a-boooot" instead of "about"

4. Michael Bublé

5. Michael Bublé in concert in Nottingham in December

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flfDuYuy6aQ&mode=user&search=

Another summer day

Has come and gone away

In Paris and Rome

But I wanna go home

Maybe surrounded by

A million people I

Still feel all alone

I just wanna go home

Oh, I miss you, you know

And I’ve been keeping all the letters that I wrote to you

Each one a line or two

“I’m fine baby, how are you?”

Well I would send them but I know that it’s just not enough

My words were cold and flat

And you deserve more than that

Another aeroplane

Another sunny place

I’m lucky I know

But I wanna go home

I’ve got to go home

Let me go home

I’m just too far from where you are

I wanna come home

And I feel just like I’m living someone else’s life

It’s like I just stepped outside

When everything was going right

And I know just why you could not

Come along with me

This was not your dream

But you always believed in me

Another winter day has come

And gone away

In even Paris and Rome

And I wanna go home

Let me go home

And I’m surrounded by

A million people I

Still feel all alone

Oh, let me go home

Oh, I miss you, you know

Let me go home

I’ve had my run

Baby, I’m done

I gotta go home

Let me go home

It will all be all right

I’ll be home tonight

I’m coming back home

On Avoiding Gardening

My favourite Saturday mornings are those when I wake to a warm and still sleeping household, pad downstairs to a beautifully tidy kitchen and make a cup of tea before I've properly woken up. Often there's a bit of last night's left-over takeaway (my favourite brekkie of cold curry and a scoop of naan bread while the kettle boils); sometimes a bit of chicken absent-mindedly torn from the carcass in the oven with a dollop of chilli sauce (I like to roast off a couple of chickens at a time, so there's always something for lunch the next day). Rarely there are the softening remains of a plate of cheese, as this only happens when friends call round on a Friday night, and as Friday night is Gardener's World night, this is not something I like to encourage.

I reckon on having a couple of hours to get the weekend jobs out of the way, and by ten I'm watching Saturday Kitchen with endless cups of tea and the papers. I like the excerpts of old TV chefs preparing food before strange and unusual backdrops. Anthony Carluccio appears to be the master of backdrops. I like the little ranty strops that Rick Stein works himself into doing his face-to-camera shots. And afterwards there's Rachel Allen teaching us to suck eggs. Tonight we face Nigella pretending to cook fast food in her warehouse mock-up of a London kitchen.

One of these days they'll bring back the Fanny and Johnny Cradock cooking shows. Food rationing in the UK was finally lifted in 1954, and I suppose Fanny and her day-glo coloured food was a natural reaction against the austerity of the weekly 2oz butter / 3oz sugar / 1 egg rations. I grew up on her cooking, as my mother embraced with enthusiasm the food dye and piping bag during the psychedelic sixties. A favourite dinner party staple from my childhood seems to have been green butter (or was it mayonnaise?) piped into shells around the base of dariol moulded chicken towers. And potatoes piped around everything, often stiffened with beaten egg and moulded into baskets holding back mountains of green peas or a vast sea of prawnage. And Russian Salad. Remember whole melons cut into basket shapes, balled out and stuffed with melon balls and red grapes? And everything garnished with bunches of watercress, especially the roasted pheasant's bottom. Unmistakeably British. I learned to pipe before I could ride a bike. The first cookbook I received was the Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook, and by the time I took my O Levels I'd cooked the entire book. That classic black front cover and the impossibly tall Dundee cake...

I've a torn out review of the Fanny Cradock show between the pages of Frances Mayes' Bella Tuscany. Everyday food mixed with more elaborate recipes. Aide and fawning husband Johnny delivered the best-ever cooking ad-lib: "If you're very lucky your doughnuts will come out looking like Fanny's." I'm with Edith at the link below, on modern TV cooks...

http://www.skiptonweb.co.uk/message_board/reply.asp?thread=49395

No Seriously, The Telegraph Is A Broadsheet

Picture the scene. It's just before 5 on Friday afternoon, and I'm sitting at my pc composing a Friday Five (thank you She Who Influences for the whole concept), when I make the mistake of flicking onto the Daily Telegraph website for today's headlines. Now, I buy the Telegraph on a Saturday morning for the gardening section. And the magazine. And the weekend section. Ok I buy the damned thing really for the hatch, match and dispatch. Anyway. Back to today's front page. Now be quick, or you'll miss it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/?CMP=KNC-umknc01_ne_17_ggl_NeGB&HBX_PK=daily+newspaper&HBX_OU=50

It's the news story on the left hand side, under the lead article about Iran's warning "Of a "decisive strike" if US attacks; International tensions rise after Washington imposes unilateral sanctions on Teheran." Yes, I passed over this lead article in order to read about "Man attempted sex with bike." It's not a bit rude, it just beggers belief. And as if that wasn't bad enough, it appears that, "He is not the first man to be convicted of a sexual offence involving an inanimate object. An electrician was jailed for having sex with pavements in Redditch, Worcestershire in 1993."

I can't quite believe I've read this on the front page of a broadsheet. What is going on with the British?

On Leading The Life Of Riley This Week

I've just lived one of the most delightful weeks. It began on Saturday afternoon last week, 13th October, with a lazy lunch in the garden of pumpkin, chilli and ginger soup. It was really too cold to sit for long, but we managed it anyway, wrapped up in sweaters and scarves for although the autumnal sun was bright and low in the blue, cloudless sky, it was chilly enough. That night we skipped off to the Buxton Opera House for an evening with Ray Mears. I love Ray Mears, and if ever I find myself on a desert island I shall take my eight records and Ray as my luxury object.

"Over the last decade the name Ray Mears has become recognised throughout the world as being an authority on the subject of Bushcraft and Survival. Ray founded Woodlore, School of Wilderness Bushcraft, in 1983 and has been teaching for the past 25 years. Bushcraft is an encyclopaedia; bushcraft liberates and empowers. It re-acquaints man with nature and his roots and provides an escape from the shackles of modern life."

He entered stage right, preceded by smoke. Honestly, this man's an arsonist, and has carved out a successful career setting fire to everything he can lay his hands on. I bet Ray Mears could set a fire using two bits of asbestos. His stage show was really interesting, and if he ever considered getting members of the audience up on stage to try and set light to each other, his show could go global...

Liberated and empowered to escape the shackles of modern life, I nipped off to Bakewell on Monday morning. I parked up along the main road, just down from the agricultural centre, and walked through the children's playground to the river and then on to the weekly street market for vegetables and a few olives. They had black plastic boxes of small mixed peppers in autumnal reds, yellows and oranges, looking so crisp and perky I bought two. That set me thinking of harvest festivals and Hallowe'en. Walking back along the park, I noticed this beautiful scene; the wind had got up and sheets of leaves were drifting and falling right around me.

And all this week the clear night skies and cold mornings led to heavy mists rolling down the hills and filling the valleys with morning fog. Some of the tallest oak trees growing along the hedgerows were the only part of the valleys visible at breakfast time. The ground frosts over this week thankfully began the destruction of the annuals, which should clear some space for mass spring bulb planting in the next couple of weeks. I still haven't potted up the prepared hyacinths for the house, which as last year, won't now flower in time for Christmas. But I have made the most sublime recipe from Sophie Grigson's Vegetables book.

Htipiti, or Greek red pepper and feta dip, contains a small and seemingly ordinary list of ingredients which transform themselves, as Sophie promises, into a dish of sublime delight. I shall take a photo of the page in this cookbook and include it here to encourage you all to rush out to Waterstones and buy it.

Sophie instructs us to halve, seed, grill until charred then skin about 5oz red peppers; and throw them into a food processor with a seeded and chopped red chilli, 6oz feta (I used the standard supermarket 200g / 7oz packet), a clove of garlic and a drizzle of olive oil sufficient to make a creamy mass on processing. Pour into your favourite serving dish and force feed to your new best friend who historically claims to dislike both chillies and peppers. She scoffed the lot. This dip is so beautiful to look at, especially if served in a white dish. I made it with the mixed peppers from Bakewell, so got a golden sunrise colour, with the flecks of chilli and a shake of paprika adding a "red sky at night..." note.

So there you have it. A wonderful week full with Ray Mears, markets, vegetables; frosty mornings and late evenings; lolling about on the sofas watching Bridge to Terabithia with merci beaucoup enfant deux; Sophie Grigson and a Saturday night double bill of NCIS. Life really doesn't get too much better than this.

Prunus Domestica "Warwickshire Drooper" and Delia's Spiced Plum Chutney

I picked the last of these rosy golden plums a couple of Fridays ago, then got up early on Saturday morning and made Delia's Spiced Plum Chutney, click here for the recipe. I usually make it every other autumn, as a pan full of chutney makes enough to keep me going for the next couple of years. It really tastes best when made with damsons. This season has been so wet, my usual damson supplier had barely enough drupes for my annual damson gin... no contest really...

Rising early, I took everything out onto the terrace and prepped it there. It's at times like this that I realise I lead the life of Riley.

Pumpkin Harvest

I love this time of year, when hard work and horticultural perseverance is rewarded with so much orange and green. Thankfully, my obsession with Rachel Allen's crab and coconut soup has moved with me into autumnal mode, and I make it with diced pumpkin, rather than crab and prawns. I've also learned to up the chili factor but tone down the ginger. It's just such a happy-looking soup, with shards of red chili, strips of orange pumpkin flesh and the tiny scallion slivers floating on the surface. Thanks to Nigel Slater's winter recipe for giving me the notion.

Friday Five: Early Morning Alarm Calls

Each morning this week I was brought to consciousness by a blast of classic rock. As my alarm usually announces the start of my day with the Today Programme, I thought initially it had picked up interference from Planet Rock. Oh how wrong I was. Now, to fully appreciate the experience, you might want to turn your volume up to maximum; this is, after all, an early morning alarm call...

1. Monday's alarm call

2. Tuesday's alarm call

Let's be realistic, most normal people with half a brain cell would have worked out by Wednesday that something was up. Not me, as this next one came as a real surprise;

3. Wednesday's alarm call

It was Thursday before I thought that something other than interference was responsible for my startled awakenings at 6.30am. That merci beaucoup enfant deux slept through the entire performance was nothing unusual, and she still had to be throttled awake at 6.40am.

4. Thursday's alarm call

This morning I had a relatively gentle awakening;

5. Friday's alarm call

One minute into this most favourite of Jon Bon's music, Tico Torres was joined by merci beacoup enfant deux on her Ludwig 5-Piece in the music room. I staggered across the landing and opened the door, to see m.b.e.d. laughing her head off and shouting, "Morning mum."

Teenagers.

Teenage girls.

Teenage girls with the patience and cunning to build a scenario over a week...

School Run 4: October

This is the school run of merci beaucoup enfant deux; over the mountains this afternoon on the way home from school, across misty, autumnal Derbyshire. The bee-keepers have moved their hives into the heather-filled foothills of the Pennines; the buffalo are destined for Derbyshire mozzarella and ultimately sausages; just as surely as m.b.e.d. is destined for A levels, university, career, and greathood. So there we have it. My beloved only daughter, taking photos; catching an unplanned ride home with mum rather than the school bus; eating a wrap from Sainsburys (oh wow thanks mum!), immortalised in print. All the days of my life I shall be thankful for digital photography and the world wide web.

Click here to download this beautiful autumnal image of Arum italicum subsp. italicum 'Marmoratum' for your desktop.

Wife Takes Clothes Off Washing Line As Her Cheating Husband Burned In Garden Shed Only Yards Away

Continuing my occasional theme of a woman's love for her laundry, here is a story widely reported this week, that just takes my breath away. Actually, I was breathless because I was laughing so much, even though this is a terrible tale of tragedy and loss of life. Nevertheless, the woman's behaviour upon discovery of the main event is, I believe at least, entirely reasonable. You just have to have an understanding of a woman's love of laundry. So here is the news story reproduced from the Daily Telegraph...

Inquest of fireball 'suicide' judge begins

By Richard Savill
Last Updated: 2:30am BST 09/10/2007

A judge's "controlling" wife took clothes off a washing line as her cheating husband burned to death in a garden shed only yards away - less than 90 minutes after he had asked her for a divorce, an inquest heard yesterday. Judge AC, 58, died in a fireball in the shed at his 19th century farmhouse near Chard, Somerset, on the evening of July 29, 2001 - shortly after telling his wife J, 60, that he was leaving her for his 38-year-old mistress.

At the second inquest into the judge's mysterious death yesterday, neighbours told how Mrs C appeared surprisingly controlled after the blaze and immediately claimed her husband had committed suicide. She had helped take clothes off the washing line and closed windows in the couple's home as the shed continued to burn.

A gardener who went to the scene told the hearing: "I found it strange that if her husband was in the shed, she was bothered about the washing." Mrs C even became "upset" when a police officer told her they could not find a body in the blackened remains of the shed and she insisted he was in there, the inquest heard. She told one neighbour on the night of the fire how she had told her husband of 34 years: "You're not going to divorce me."

Mrs L, a neighbour who went to comfort Mrs C, told the hearing at Glastonbury Town Hall how she appeared convinced her husband was in the shed and had committed suicide. She added: "She was very controlled. She knew what she was saying, she knew what she was doing. That is very strange stuff to say to someone half an hour after your husband's been incinerated in a shed." Mrs L said: "She was adamant he was in there and that he had committed suicide. "While we were waiting for the fire brigade, J told me she had been told by A that he was having an affair. Mrs L added: "J's friend said to her 'Are you insured with Bob? Bob pays out very well for suicides'. I didn't hear her reply. "I thought that a very strange thing to talk about when your husband is being incinerated in a shed and the smoke hasn't even gone out."

The hearing continues.

Alright Babe?

This makes me scream with laughter. I love footie, I just love footie...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nh7gm4jj6c

Early Autumn Sunshine

Jan! Look What You Did!

http://thephantomstapleremover.blogspot.com/

Free Burma

Link here -->

Thank you Jan.

Buon Giorno, Boys

I harvested my crop of Borlotti beans today; here they are. I set on 60 plants, but the wet summer encouraged a plague of slugs of Biblical proportions across the UK, and these miserable few beans are all that managed to grow. Oh well, these things happen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee3CPfH2O_I&mode=related&search

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEAxJ6zGiWg&mode=related&search

On Food For The Soul

Imagine the scene Sunday night: long-legged adults (that does not include merci beaucoup enfant deux as she is still too young to vote), lolling about watching telly and each attempting to goad the other into making another pot of Rachel Allen's Crab and Prawn Coconut Soup. We've had it three times each week since I got the book. I think we were watching LoTR: The Return of the King, (preview the soundtrack to hear Annie Lennox at her most beautiful) when this came on in the ad break -->

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdO2aYfQa6I

We missed the first few seconds of the ad, so thought it might be for air freshener, or a toilet cleaner, maybe extra strong mints. When the camera pulled back, we all burst out laughing. Now this is what makes UK advertising the best in the world. There is no connection whatsoever to the three factors that make this ad so brilliantly, so giftedly funny. And that presumably, is why it works!

Crouching Gardener, Hidden Spade

Rubus Tayberry, is a cross between the raspberry and blackberry. The fruit is dark red in colour and longer than a raspberry. Tayberries are juicier than raspberries, and ripen over a many weeks in July and August. They are best when allowed to fully ripen to a dark red colour before picking, rather like mulberries. Mine don't really last long enough on the canes to fully darken, as the resident blackbird population decimates it each year, invariably first thing in the morning just after the dawn chorus. I don't really mind, as I love the blackbirds. So does the cat that's just moved into the neighbourhood, judging by the bits of blackbird under the canes this morning. I shall sit here, silently, and wait.

Friday Five: Gardens Of The Beloved, Rumi

I lit the garden with candles tonight, set the table with wine and sweets and called the musicians. How I wish you could be here.

We have stolen the moonlight and brought it into the garden to shake the sleep off the flowers. Wake up, our ship has been ice-bound long enough, the time has come to sail the open seas.

A thousand beauties filled the garden: the scent of roses, the murmur of water gently flowing in the stream ... but how can one describe the indescribable?

What passed between us in that luminous night can never be written or told. On my final journey from this world the creases of my shroud will unfold our story.

Those beautiful words we said to one another are hidden in the secret heart of heaven. One day, like the rain, they will pour our love story all over the world.