Good morning

Blue skies again

Already though a whisper of chill on the early morning air tells me that a change is coming.  Leaves already turning, confused by weeks of relentless heat and sun.

For now though the garden remains vibrantly, verdantly lush.

A slight breeze, and if I breathe in hard I catch the faint trace of lavender. Even this early in the morning the bush is heavy with bees addicted to the sweetly antiseptic scent.  Another breath and I can smell the last blooms of the honeysuckle, their fragrance touched with decay.

An obese pigeon flies overhead, comical in it’s ungainliness.  In it’s head is it soaring with the grace of an eagle?

Wasps circle the lawn like sharks.  I tuck my feet up on the chair.

Just in case.

Eyes closed now, the haven of my garden shrinks away and I am gradually surrounded, not by the peace and tranquility I expected, but by an absolute cacophony of noise.

Magpies argue loudly on the rooftop.  The smaller birds, finches and tits, delighting in their ability to manoeuvre in a garden that is inaccessible to their larger cousins, chase each other from tree to tree, taunting as they fly.

The gently inebriated drone of the bees.

Further away now.  Today the noise of the distant traffic becomes transmuted in my head into the roar of a great river.  The sound is the same but the irritation is gone.  Magic.

Overhead the faint rumble of a plane.  A white thread of silk in a tapestry of blue.  In this moment I don’t envy the travellers.  In this moment I wouldn’t swap this tiny tangle of green for anywhere else.

A GoodLife

The thing about growing up in the 70s

(Seen through the obligatory rose-tinted spectacles of course)

Was the amazing amount of high profile,  iconic,  creative types who were influencing culture – both high- and low- brow.

Building on the political,  social and cultural upheavals of the 60s, the 70s (if you could ignore the occasional ill-advised hair or clothing choice)  embedded that peculiarly British love of the weird,  the avant garde,  the misfit.

It embraced the iconoclastic,  the creative and the revolutionary.

So what icon of the 70s have I found to have made the most lasting impact on my life?

Was it Marc Bolan?

No,  definitely too glam

Was it the Sex Pistols?

Umm,  bit too spiky and aggressive.  Not enough languishing or wafting in a wraithe-like manner.   I definitely preferred the Goth movement that came in the 80s.

So what was my icon of the 70s?

Tom and Barbara Good,  from BBCs The Good Life.

I harbour dreams of smallholdings.

Of meals entirely made up of things Ive grown

Of children skipping happily down the lane in clothes I’ve made.

My reality?

When I asked oldest child why he didnt want me to knit him a,  really rather trendy,  beanie hat he said

“Because you’re a bit rubbish at knitting mum.   Thelast hat you did made me look like Yoda”

My yield of strawberries this year?

  and these are alpine strawberries too,  so basically the size of grains of rice.

Six,  admittedly flourishing in a bushy,  leafy kind of way,  tomato plants and my crop to date is?

One measly tomato.

And it’s a cherry tomato,  so about the size of a 5p piece

Less Tom and Barbara Good.

More Margot Leadbetter.

But all is not lost.

I can work a kaftan and a g&t.

Ahem.  🙂

Bunny

The weather forecast said to expect torrential rain yesterday.

So of course we had glorious sunshine.

Someone should develop a “random weather forecaster” web site.

I’m sure it would have the same accuracy rate as the Met Office.

But, I’m not complaining. 🙂

For yesterday we went to Hill Top, the home of Beatrix Potter.

It nestles in the tiny hamlet of Near Sawrey, near Hawkshead. The countryside around there is of the “gently rolling” rather than “dramatic and awe inspiring” type.

The house

is, apparently, just as it was when Beatrix lived there.

The rooms are small and dark, but cosy and welcoming.

The drawings, sketches and watercolours on display are breathtakingly good.

The gardens? Quintessentially English. Herbaceous, pretty

And look who we saw taking a rest on a tree trunk in the sunshine

He’s obviously been in Mr McGregors garden again as his little blue jacket was nowhere to be seen :-).

Finished the day with a woodland walk down to Windermere where we saw these girls

And managed to convince youngest child for a whole five minutes that these were rare, amphibious water cows.

Nearly as much fun as the time we convinced oldest child that he was going to a cheese farm to catch wild cheeses.

🙂

Fiction Friday

I’ve been ignoring it for weeks.

But today I finally succumbed.

I went into the garden.

And I didn’t immediately turn around and go straight back into the house again!

This is what awaited me

And this

And where did this come from?

It wasn’t there the last time I looked!

And after two hours solid gardening, can’t you see the difference?

Nope, me neither.

Sigh.

This Week I Have Mostly Been Reading

Well, it was ok. The tale of an ex-pat Singaporean woman who returns to the family fold, and business, after the breakdown of her marriage. The story was reasonably well told, well structured. But….But. It lacked something. The main character was not particularly likeable, so it was hard to care whether her journey of self discovery led anywhere. The descriptions of Singapore? Uninspiring. The descriptions of the art of soy sauce manufacture? Routine.

A bit of a missed opportunity.

Next Week I Shall Mostly Be Reading

A mysterious authors society, books that rewrite themselves and things that lurk in the woods.

Sounds promising.

Whoosh

I looked out of the window today.

I really wish I hadn’t.

Sunshine?

Showers?

You know what that means…

The whole garden has gone “thppppppttttt”

And that, my friends, is the sound of vegetation expanding exponentially (wow, my old English teacher would be proud 🙂 )

I am still trying the old “eyes tightly shut, fingers in ears, “la la la” I can’t see or hear you” trick

But it won’t be long.

It won’t be long before I have to go out there

In the immortal words of Swans

“In my garden….
Things grow in my garden”

Quite.

A Moment

Blue skies

Time, for once, to take my morning coffee outside and sit.

And listen.

And see.

Amazing. Really.

I almost got the urge to bring out my yoga mat and do a few sun salutations.

But the neighbours think I’m odd enough as it is 🙂

Sprung

Could it be?

Could it possibly be?

4, count them, FOUR whole days without rain?

It has been, gasp, positively warm.

There have been

Flowers

And buzzy things

And flowers

And tweeting things

And flowers

And oh? Did I mention the flowers?

So many flowers that I had a spectacular run of fifteen sneezes on the trot yesterday as the first twitchings of hay fever tickled around my nose.

Hmmmm, Hope there’s no pranayama breathing in yoga this week. 🙂

Chilly

Woke up to a very excited older child who was keen to show me this

Frost on his bathroom window.

And I realised that, with the seemingly universal use of central heating nowadays, I couldn’t remember the last time Jack Frost had been busy on our (or anyone else’s) windows.

You forget how beautiful it can be.

But I do vividly remember the horror of stepping out of bed on a cold winters morning when the only heating was the coal fire downstairs.

Brrrrr.