Tag Archives: rain

midsummer’s day

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Today is midsummer’s day. And it’s raining. Only lightly now, but I’ve been drenched twice. My anemone de caen are trying to flower, but it’s hard when there is so little sun.

I keep overhearing gloomy conversations such as “they say we’re going to get three months’ rain in the next three days”, or “they say it’ll brighten for the weekend and then get really, really wet again,” or “they say that in 1976, when we had a proper drought, it was actually really rainy until the end of June,” or, and this is my favourite, by which, of course, I mean it’s the worst of the lot, “they say it’s going to rain until September.” Please no. We’re off to Scotland in July for god’s sake.

How can it possibly be midsummer, when we haven’t even had more than three sunny days in a row since March? But there’s no denying the date on the calendar. It is the 21st of June. And at about this time every year Joe and I like to have our annual is-this-our-wedding-anniversary conversation. It’s a moveable feast, a bit like Easter, and takes place any time between the 21st and 28th of June and during the course of the debate we always decide that June 21st sounds about right. More often than not we’ve missed it.

Today is not our wedding anniversary though. And the debate ended, as it always does, with me pointing out, for the sixteenth time, that we would surely have remembered having a midsummer’s wedding. But then again, when midsummer’s day feels so very
un-summery, perhaps we wouldn’t. It turns out that our wedding anniversary is the 22nd.

swinging in the rain

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This weekend’s incredibly muddy walk: Abbot’s Pool, just along from Leigh Woods.

There is a large lake, a smaller pool and several little water falls, but best of all a very high tyre swing. This is the one walk the girls are always up for, come rain or shine.

wet, wet, wet

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Life at the moment seems to consist of endless rainy walks with lots of mud.

The dog loves it and, although not my favourite walking weather, I don’t really mind the rain either, even when it’s black-sky biblical stuff. Or at least I don’t mind whilst I’m out there in it, but when I get home and find that my knees are cold and damp, and a change of clothes is the only way to get warm and comfortable, I begin to resent it. So much so that I usually don’t bother – wet jeans are surprisingly difficult to take off. 

four seasons in a day

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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.

wet walks and walnuts

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This morning, whilst walking the dog, a sudden downpour left me sheltering under a tree. As the dog whizzed around gleefully, I realized I’d chosen to wait out the shower under the wrong tree: its canopy, though wide, was far too open and offered no cover at all. But just as I was about to make a soggy dash for a group of large beech trees, the leaky tree redeemed itself  - all around me the ground was covered with walnuts.

A vision of coffee and walnut cake replaced all thoughts of staying dry, and I scrabbled around amongst the fallen leaves gathering as many nuts as my pockets would hold. Despite visiting the park on an almost daily basis, and photographing many of the trees throughout the seasons, I’d barely ever noticed this one – It’s on my radar now though, along with the plum trees at Narrow Ways.


Although I find their bitterness slightly off-putting, I love cooking with walnuts and often use them in cakes, biscuits and sometimes as part of a crumble topping. Although the idea of coffee and walnut cake is uppermost in my mind at the moment, I am feeling quite tempted by the idea of a date and walnut loaf as well. Perhaps some biscuits too. An early morning visit to the walnut tree is on tomorrow’s To Do list.

We returned home soaked. I don’t know who looked more bedraggled, me or the dog. Sybil won the prize for being smelliest though. She needs a bath.

N.B. The plate in the top three photographs is one of my favourites. It was made many years ago by my mother. The little scratches in the cream glaze seem to echo the colour of the walnuts and the grooves on their shells. I’ll use the plate again when I make the cake. But right now I’m off to bake a different cake – Bea is ten tomorrow, so only one cake will do, Nigella’s buttermilk birthday cake.

rain check

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I never thought I’d be quite so delighted to wake up to rain in late May, especially as I live in Bristol where it rains, and rains, and rains. Or at least that’s how it feels. But this morning, the sound of heavy rain on the skylight at the top of the house washed away the guilt I’d been feeling about my neglectful ways down at the allotment.

As one child is slightly under the weather, and at 8.30 was deep in hibernation mode, I was relieved of the school run and so spent the next half an hour inspecting the garden instead. I love the way fat rain drops sit in the pleats of poppy petals and fill tightly packed rosebuds. On the leaves of Alchemilla and Nasturtium, rain drops look like beads of mercury, but as neither of those two plants are really in their stride at the moment, I wasn’t granted that particular treat this morning.  The top two photographs are William Lobb; and the bottom one is the Iceland poppy, Papaver nudicaule ’Party Fun’, which pops up as pure white, fiery orange, electric yellow or this rather pretty, pearly pink.

As you can see, the rain brings out the Iceland poppy’s other fans as well…

We tend to think of snails as slow creatures don’t we? Well this particular poppy was gone in an instant. There wasn’t much point stopping the carnage, instead I watched transfixed as the snail gobbled up the petals, one by one. Then I plucked him off and threw him on the ground where the birds would see him. I’m a bit hopeless about actually crushing snails myself, but happy enough to put them in the path of certain doom. I’m not sure what that says about me.

Tomorrow I’ll be writing what I hope will become a weekly post in which I review or profile a local shop, designer or artist. I have taken a two year break from journalism, and although I haven’t missed it much, I do miss writing about people whose work I really admire, and would like to share with others. Tomorrow’s profile will also involve a really lovely giveaway, so come back and follow the link.

almost there…

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At the weekend the final slab went down on the new terrace. It was a second attempt because the minute they finished on Friday, the heavens opened and washed away render and cement, leaving wobbly stones and deep scars in the retaining wall. It’s all fixed now, though. 

The garden faces south, and even in November the terrace and our kitchen, which opens on to it, feel warm. At the height of summer it can be unbearably hot without a parasol or some form of shade. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and although we do have a parasol it’s a nuisance: despite being portable, it doesn’t always provide the shade we want, where we want. I think we need something more permanent, such as an unobtrusive pergola which will give dappled shade rather than a limited block. The photographs above and below, are of my mother-in-law’s pergola, and I think this might be exactly what we need.

It is a brilliant design for several reasons. First, it’s cheap: the barley-twist pole is a long metal rod used to reinforce concrete. Second, it isn’t as bulky as a wooden version, which would take up more space and block out valuable light in the winter. Third, I think the way the reinforcing bar rusts and blends with its surroundings is incredibly beautiful. Although it is industrial rather than decorative, the re-bar is elegant, delicate even, whilst being strong enough to take the weight of multiple ramblers and climbers.  

As well as a pergola for the terrace, I’ve been making lots of plans for the rest of the garden, and I shall have to see how I can adapt them to include the children who will be on holiday at the end of the week.

I find gardening with children can be quite frustrating at times (ditto baking, if I’m honest – though I’m aware that this doesn’t reflect well on my parenting skills). My children are happy to dig, but often don’t know when to stop. They also need constant supervision, which is completely at odds with the Zen-like state that gardening on my own induces. This, rather than finding a suitable source of shade, will be my biggest challenge for the summer.