The weekend started so well: Spruce, the annual Centre Space Christmas show on
Friday night (more of which in another post, along with a show at The Bristol Guild), and Leigh Woods for a birthday party on Saturday afternoon.
But then the lurgy arrived and Matilda, Martha and I have been in bed ever since.
So, Nanowrimo is over. And, sad to say, I not only failed to make the official finishing line, but I also collapsed long before I reached my own finishing line (25,000 words).
I was on track for a full eight days during which I managed to hammer out 12,000 words. But then my mini-Nano was derailed by a deadline which was suddenly brought forward from January to November. Work, of the paid variety, always has to come first. And fortunately it was a nice feature to write – it’s about two very interesting people and it will be accompanied by some lovely photographs taken by my friend James.
Although the writing didn’t go entirely to plan I did get a lot of knitting done. I find that simple knitting – of the hats, fingerless mittens and socks variety – is very conducive to the sort of free-form thinking that creative writing requires. Round and round I knit, and round and round my thoughts go. I always have a notebook to hand and ideas pop into my mind effortlessly; so different from the paralysis I experience when staring at a blank screen.
It works with articles too. There is always a point when whatever I am writing about becomes far more complicated than it needs to be. A cup of coffee and a bit of knitting, and the tangle I am in with my writing has miraculously unravelled.
The hats, from top to bottom are Snawheid by Kate Davies (pom pom yet to be attached), Julia’s Cabled Headband by Paulina Chin and finally my first, and not entirely successful, attempt at making a hat without a pattern. I also managed to make several pairs of fingerless mittens using this excellent pattern by Leslie Friend, though I am now keen to have a go at two other fingerless, wrist-warmery, stash-busting patterns, both of which I’ve had sitting on my desk for months now: Susie’s Reading Mitts by Susie Rogers and Runrig Muffatees by Annie Cholewa, aka Knitsofacto, who is currently running a very lovely knitting-related giveaway.
Launched last week, bought on Monday afternoon at Bristol Credit Union, these beautiful Bristol pounds (£B) are still in my purse this morning despite several attempts to part with them. Although a number of businesses on the Gloucester Road are part of the scheme they were not the ones I needed to visit. Still, I’ve had fun flashing the cash at bemused check-out staff and hopefully a few more shops will sign up.
Fortunately, although burning a hole in my purse, £Bs won’t depreciate in value if they aren’t spent unlike their German counterparts, the Chiemgauer – one of the most successful alternative currencies in the world, and possibly the model for Bristol’s system.
Anyway, I have high hopes that all the independent traders on the Gloucester Road will soon be taking £B. It will be interesting to see whether or not it boosts the local economy as planned, or proves to be nothing more than a nice idea that never quite takes off.
A the moment the £B is worth £1, and it can be ‘bought’ in a free, straight exchange at various points around the city including The Tobacco Factory and Bristol Credit Union.
The idea, I suppose, is that in exchanging sterling for £B one is committing to buying locally and, crucially, from independent businesses rather than national or international companies such as Tesco or Asda* (Walmart). Local farmers based outside Bristol, but who sell at the various farmer’s markets around the city, are also being encouraged to sign up, which is great, as I think the success of the system will rest on there being the widest possible range of goods available to currency holders.
I will report back on my future attempts to spend my squeaky clean Bristol notes, which, I must point out, are really very, very lovely, especially the fiver which was designed by the wonderful Alex Lucas whose house I wrote about here.
NB Personally I don’t have a hang-up about these companies – sometimes they are the only source of whatever it is that I need. Some weeks I do an entire shop on the Gloucester road and other weeks I go to… whisper it … Tesco.
Although the weekly vases of flowers are looking less blowsy, the garden is still in bloom and Sedum is taking centre stage. I love sedum as a cut flower, it lasts well in the vase and a small amount goes a long way – though of course this is slightly dependent on the size of the vase. In early summer the heads are a fresh, pale green and I pick them to add bulk and structure to small posies; as the season progresses the colour deepens until, by around late October, each head looks like wine-red worn velvet, at which point I think they can happily do a solo turn.
Sedum works hard in the garden too: I have planted it in large pots just outside the kitchen door, and then in big clumps on every level of the garden where it provides a sense of continuity, as well as late summer colour. This continuity, or repetition, feels particularly important when everything else is dying back, and I love the way it actually props up other plants as they wither and collapse.
I think it looks particularly good garlanded with nasturtium, that other stalwart of the autumn garden.
I know it’s not to everyone’s taste, but I really wouldn’t be without it, and having noticed how much attention it gets from bees and other insects – by mid-morning each clump is alive with bees intent on gathering what they can as autumn rolls in - I realise that no garden should be without at least one small clump.
One morning last week, as the end of term chaos reached its peak, I tilted my head back all the better to yell something along the lines of “please do hurry up my darlings, we are really rather late”, and my neck went ping!
And that was that.
I’ve been in bed or at the osteopath ever since.
But this morning, all the pulling, pushing, twisting and prodding, not to mention pill-popping, of the past five days has finally worked, and I woke feeling bruised and stiff, but able, at last, to move my head without pain.
Hurrah! The girls and I celebrated with homemade lemonade*.
Interestingly, although I was completely incapacitated, the world continued to turn, and the house appeared to run itself rather efficiently without me. Not sure how I feel about that.
*Home made lemonade – recipes for this abound. We took the peel from four lemons and steeped it in around 1ltr of boiling water along with 100g of caster sugar, for three hours. I then squeezed the juice of the lemons into the pan before straining it all into a jug. The colour you see is entirely natural, the flavour is delicious: not too sweet or sour, but properly lemony. The recipe comes from the River Cottage Family Cook Book.
Flowers from the garden.
In a commemorative mug that I found in a junk shop in Southville.
The Queen celebrates sixty years on the throne today. Although I am by no means an ardent royalist, the older I get the more I admire the Queen. The Golden Jubliee largely passed me by, but I have very fond memories of the Silver Jubilee which we celebrated with family friends (one of whom turns forty-four today – see below), and we will be celebrating this one in similar fashion, though it’s largely because Matilda turns thirteen on Monday, bang in the middle of the extended weekend.
Happy Birthday Becca, these flowers are for you.
In place of the birthday card I failed to send!
The light is terrible today so it was difficult to take decent photographs, but I wanted to catch the garden as it is now, roughly a year on from when I first planted it – the photograph below was taken on the 8th May 2011.
As you can see the paving at the bottom of the garden, which looks so pristine in the second photo, really needs some attention – we laid it ourselves, very badly and in great haste, but I have just finalised a plan for that section of the garden and so it will be done properly when work starts in September.
In the meantime there is quite a bit of editing, re-thinking and general tinkering to be done. I love this aspect of gardening. Above, the Stipa arundinacea, Sisyrinchium striatum and Geranium pratense ‘Mrs Kendall Clark’ were my solution for the bed beneath the four Amelanchier I planted earlier in the year. Although now, having recently been introduced to Libertia, I am thinking that perhaps this would have worked better. I’ll see how I feel about it at the end of the summer when the bed has knitted together.
You can see the Mrs Kendall Clark in flower alongside Alchemilla mollis above, and below, alongside a billowing bank of nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’ – both are combinations which I think work well, and I am hoping that the Alchemilla will self-seed.
At the moment the main problem is lack of height in the righthand bed on the second level down. I think a small shrub or tree is what I need, and whilst I am tempted by exciting and beautiful plants at various nurseries (most recently a Cercis ‘Forest Pansy’), I’m managing to be uncharacteristically restrained. I want to think it through properly. This morning I settled upon a wigwam of runner beans as a good temporary fix.
It should look lovely once the beans, White Lady, are in flower, and I have another wigwam further down on the left hand side which will mean it doesn’t look too lonely.
Vegetables came to the rescue last year when I felt the left hand bed was lacking architectural interest – the artichokes I planted are doing incredibly well, so well in fact that I can’t quite make myself pick them. Although as my sister-in-law is staying tonight we might cut a few heads in her honour.
Waking up to grey skies and the tap, tap, tap of rain on the skylight is really getting me down. For a while I comforted myself with the fact that the garden is looking greener and fuller than it might otherwise be.
But on the downside, and it’s a downside that to my mind completely outweighs the upside, the slugs are out in force. I have been out each day, picking off the slimy blighters and flinging them in buckets of water or leaving them out for the birds. But still they keep coming, more and more of them.
To date they have claimed all my sweet pea seedlings – I now need to start again, but with the terrible sense that it is utterly pointless; they have destroyed an entire clematis, montana ’Warwickshire Rose’ (above) – every bud, flower, leaf and shoot has gone, just bare stems remain; I have lost most of my alliums, each one nothing more than a slimy stump.
The clematis was the biggest shock – stripped over the course of two days.
Slug pellets then. Never used them before. But from today it’s war.
On Monday morning, along with a number of packages from the likes of Amazon, I received a rather special parcel. It was from Mary as part of our scrappy decorations swap, and although I knew it was on its way, I had no idea what it would contain, all of which was rather exciting – a bit like having a Christmas stocking again.
Inside I found lots of lovely decorations and some wonderful treats. First out was a
flock of birds which look so good in the kitchen, they won’t be making the flight
upstairs to the tree, not this year anyway.
Next came some felt baubles which I love – they look fabulous on the tree and I think I might even have a go at making some more myself. And last, but by no means least, on the decorations-front anyway, two little houses made from scraps of fabric, which you can see to the left on Mary’s banner. Mary is far better at sewing than I am, as you’ll see if you take a look at her blog, and as well as all the decorations she also sent us some lovely handmade accessories – a bag and cloth-covered notebook for me and hair toggles covered in vintage fabric for the girls, which they adore.
Thank you SO much Mary and Happy Christmas!
And thank you to Ali at Very Berry Handmade for organising the swap.
I’ve been trying to write a post about something nice and Christmassy that I did at the weekend, but I’m not getting very far. This is because I am also chasing last minute bits and pieces for an event which may or may not happen tomorrow evening, as it is totally weather dependent. Meanwhile, outside the weather is taunting me with an impressive medley and I keep leaping up to take photographs. I suppose I’m only encouraging it.
So far this morning we have had high winds and heavy, heavy rain; thunder and lightning; three separate hailstorms; sleety-rainy-haily stuff and now, brilliant sunshine.
I’m expecting a rainbow and perhaps some snow by this afternoon’s school run.
The other post will follow soon enough. But in the meantime Amy left a comment asking for the chocolate shortbread recipe which I mentioned in this post – here it is, Amy, and sorry that it’s taken so long for me to get round to writing it up. It’s not mine, but from The Great British Book of Baking (the first one, as I think there might be a second one).
Ingredients: 260g plain flour; 100g caster sugar (plus a little extra for sprinkling); 40g cocoa powder; pinch of salt (not necessary, I think if you use slightly salted butter); 200g unsalted butter, chilled and diced.
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas 4 Grease a loose-based 20.5cm cake tin
Put flour, sugar, cocoa and salt into a mixing bowl and stir well to combine. Add the butter and rub into the dry ingredients until it resembles fine damp sand, or sandy crumbs. Tip it into a prepared tin and press into an even layer using the back of a spoon. Finally prick the dough well with a skewer or a fork, and then score into 12 sections.
Bake in the oven for around 25 mins until just firm.
Remove from oven and sprinkle with a little more caster sugar and then, before removing it from the tin, carefully cut along into the pre-marked sections. Leave to cool before removing from tin. This might be difficult as it smells wonderful, and you may be tempted to eat it, but it is still quite crumbly at this stage, and will set firmer as it cools.
