The pea doesn't fall far from the pod

The other evening I went to the allotment with the littlest boy and picked a big pile of peas.  The biggest boy helped me to shell them yesterday, and when he found a perfect ten-pea pod his first thought was to find his camera and take a picture of it.  That's my boy!

He said to me, "It's almost good enough to go in a book about peas".  Well yes baby, I believe it is.

The other day at the country park I spied a peacock feather.  They are so beautiful, and I've never had one before, so I decided to pick it up.  The only problem - it was in the turkey enclosure.  The little people were horrified at my chutzpah and a bit terrified that I would be attacked and gobbled up by marauding turkeys.  I gave them the job of holding the gate shut as I dashed in.  They were so shocked and so vocal in their disagreement with me that it was a while before they actually got it together enough to hold the gate shut.  Luckily the turkeys didn't make a break for it.  I'm thinking come December they might be a bit quicker off the mark.  So I did get my feather from the bossy male peacock.  He loves to get in the various bird enclosures and give them a hard time.  Quite often he's in the big chicken run pecking the hens and generally causing trouble.  I'm wondering if a turkey pulled this out in revenge.

I've put it with the bullrushes we found on recent walks and another couple of nice feathers.  Reminders of happy summer days.  The colour in the peacock feather is quite extraordinary.  Shimmering iridescent greens and blues.

More colour in the garden from my lovely little rose.  It went from bud to bloom between breakfast and tea.

Today everything was covered in droplets.

Inside I'm knitting hard and fast, ready for scarf weather.  I have a long to-do list of decluttering and room arranging.  I am in the process of evicting my other half from the smallest bedroom which he uses as an office so that the littlest boy can have it.  It involves complicated furniture shuffling and I'll need an electrician and possibly BT as well, and maybe even a man to move an incredibly heavy oak desk, so I've been putting it off.  I need to get it done now though, it has waited long enough.

We are in the second week of school and already the biggest boy has had a day off with some mysterious headachey thing.  I have it now.  Sigh.  How the germs do love a nice hot stuffy classroom.

Have a good Friday and a lovely weekend.  I shall be out and about looking for interesting feathers and loose bullrushes.

Figs, pigs and echinacea

Trying to get back into the groove of term time here.  I'm feeling the need to have a bit of a tidy up about the house and a little declutter.  I'm squeezing it in whenever I have a moment.

I tried one of the Hungarian Hot Wax Yellow chillies yesterday.  Most of it had no heat at all, but the top end was a bit fiery.  I ate some slices of it raw to test it.  By the time I got to the top I was being a bit blase, so I was completely caught out by the heat.  I stamped around for about five minutes, squeaking and sweating.  I think I'll try and leave the rest on the plants a bit longer, but I won't be eating them raw any more.

We went to the country park on Sunday and had a wander round the orchard, which is full of fruit and wasps hanging around the fallen plums.  I spotted this big plant pushing up through the trees.  No idea what it is.  I don't think it's a sunflower, but it has that kind of feel to it.  It's not a squash either, although the leaves look similar.  It's got quite hard strong stems underneath the foliage. There were a couple more as well, and I can't decide whether they were planted or just came up.   If anyone knows what it is I'd be interested to know.

We saw a speckled wood butterfly enjoying the late afternoon sun.  Most of the butterflies we see at home are white ones.  The little people are going to try growing some insect and butterfly-friendly plants in their raised beds next year, so maybe we'll get some different ones then.

In the garden I've cut some of the grapevines back to allow more sun onto the fruit.  There's quite a bit, once I got snipping I discovered loads of bunches lurking in the foliage.

I'm not quite sure what to do with them all.  They taste nice, but most of them have three large pips in them, so they're really fiddly to eat.

There was a little rain yesterday.  My little Rose de Rescht is going to flower again.  The buds look so pretty.

But the garden does have an overgrown end of season feel to it now.  The season is changing and changes are coming closer here too.  It's not easy right now, but all I can do is live one day at a time and try not to dwell on things too much.

After school today there was sunshine, a carrot to eat and football gloves to wear.  It was enough for him.  It's enough for me too.

Sungold

If I had to choose just one tomato to grow, it would be this one.  Sungold.  It does well almost every year, outside, and the flavour is great too.  This one is growing in front of an artichoke, and the mauve/orange colour combination draws my eye every time I walk past.  There have been plenty of fruits this year, so I thought I'd try drying some.

I halved them, scooped out the seeds and sprinkled them with a little salt.

Then I patted them with kitchen paper to remove the juice that was drawn out by the salt.  I put them on baking paper and dried them in the oven on the lowest setting for a few hours (four or five), being careful not to make them crispy (the oven door can be propped open a bit if need be).

They were pretty small by the time I'd finished, but the flavour was amazing, really concentrated.  I put them in a sterilised jar (only needed a little one!) and covered them with sunflower oil.

I'll use them in salads, pasta and on pizza.  If I can I'll make more, as they really are delicious.

Elsewhere other things are being put by for the winter.  It makes me happy to see onions and squashes in the garage.

There was a tense moment in the kitchen on Friday.  The fridge stopped working and by the time I noticed, everything was warm.  I rang a bloke, who said turn it off for 48 hours and then turn it back on again.  So I spent Friday afternoon ferrying batches of frozen food to assorted friends to look after for me.  The thought of losing all of the frozen stuff was quite traumatic as it's mostly allotment produce.  It's not just food - I have an emotional attachment to it!  It was produced with the sweat of my brow.  Literally.  I remember one afternoon, doing the watering at about 2.30pm, just before the school run, which was the only spare time I had.  It must have been nearly thirty degrees, and I was sweltering.  Was that only a few weeks ago..?

In the garden I have a new tree.  I may have mentioned how much I love figs and yew trees.  I also have a bit of a thing for mulberries.  At St Fagans, the Museum of Rural Life near Cardiff, there is a walled garden with several beautiful mulberries in the middle.  And I do so want one.  A large tree is rather out of my budget.  So I have this.

A baby tree!  Not sure how many years I will have to wait for one of those ancient looking mulberries.  But hey, I'm a patient gardener.

Bean flowers, a bee, bookmarks and a balloon

How I love it when my day alliterates nicely.    Let's start with the bean flowers and the bee.  Heading optimistically into that blue, blue sky, despite the late season.

It seems that summer isn't quite over after all, although it's not at all the same without small boys about the place.  In the pond there is a last waterlily.

The tomatoes are doing so well this year.  Warmth and sunshine.  I pick some almost every day.

The borlotti beans are sparse, but so pretty.  I don't think I've quite given up on them.  I might try some climbing ones in the rich allotment soil next year.

It's the end of the sweet peas...

and the beginning of the time of the spider.

I had a nice surprise in the post this week.  A bundle of bookmarks from the wonderful Gina Sekelsky.  I'd describe her as a modern calligrapher and artist, and she's also a really talented sewer as well.  This summer she organised a summer reading programme.   In return for five book reviews she generously sent everyone who took park a set of her lovely quote bookmarks.

Apologies for the poor quality photo, the light was fading when I took this.  There are some lovely quotes here.  This one is part of a favourite poem, from Roald Dahl's "Charlie and Chocolate Factory".

The full poem is here should you feel inclined to read it.  Interesting to see this view expressed back then in 1964.  What on earth would the wonderful Mr Dahl think of the amount of screen time children have now?  The poem is more relevant with every passing year I think.

I really like Gina's lettering and the way she illustrates her work.

I have a Mark Twain quote on my mantelpiece which she did, and I see it every day.  I moved it to the garden to take a picture, and as luck would have it a balloon floated into the viewfinder as I was focusing.

The quote says, "Don't be afraid to go out on a limb - that's where the fruit is".  It's something I try to remember.

The balloon drifted over our house, so low that I could see the people waving.  It was a perfect evening for ballooning I think.  Warm, just a breath of a breeze, clear and with a lovely sunset.  They floated away over the river.  Perfect.

Oh we do love to be beside the seaside

Weston-super-Mare is not a classy seaside town.  Rather it is one of seafront chip shops, funfair rides, a pier, donkeys, bucket and spade stalls and ice-cream kiosks.  Perfect then for little people, who adore all of the above.

And there is space.  Acres of it.  Perfect for football, tag, knocking brothers down and practising the kind of tricky things that Christiano Ronaldo does.

It wasn't the hottest of days, and what you can't see from the pictures is the 80-mile-an-hour wind which was headed straight towards me.  If you sat still for too long, you disappeared under a layer of sand.  We took a picnic, and when I looked down the salad was covered in it after just a few minutes.  Although of course this is part of the full seaside experience.

The sea is a strange beast at Weston.  It's out there somewhere, but it's not the kind of blue and white rolling surf you find in other places.  This is the Bristol Channel, and it's a land of dangerous tides, sinking sand and lethal mud flats.  People do paddle further up the beach, but only when the tide is in.  When it's out, it's really out.  In fact the low tide mark is a full mile from the sea front.  This was the sea on its way in.  It moves fast.  As I said, it's dangerous.  The sign is one of many warning notices.

We ate our sandy picnic, and fed a little of it to the seagulls.  We don't normally do this, but I let the little people do it as a treat.  It was predictably riotous.

Note how they're all looking straight at me.

Then we did donkey rides.

Then we did ice-creams

Then I was done so we went home for tea.  I had a shower first because of the deep sand penetration.

So now the summer holidays are done, and it's back to school.  I will so miss these little chaps when they go.  If only the summer could last forever.

Bulrushes at dawn

I'd like to say that we had a blissful afternoon today, enjoying each other's company in the late summer sunshine.  But it was one of these days when everyone was a little fractious.  The biggest boy and the middle boy were banned from walking together because of an inability not to drive each other mad, to the point of whacking each other.  I picked a teasel for the biggest boy, who proceeded to use it to "defend" himself.  The littlest boy had a broken bulrush which we found which also did some brotherly damage.  A difference of opinion over whether it was swallows or house martins swooping overhead turned ugly.

But... we did have a nice time other than that.  The biggest boy walked 5 paces behind us, the middle boy was 5 paces in front, the littlest boy was stripped of all weapons, and other half was permitted to talk about golf uninterrupted.  (It's not necessary for anyone to listen to this.  The appearance of listening is enough.)  Thus peace was maintained.

We climbed up to St Arilda's Church at Oldbury-on-Severn.  It's on a little hill, and the views are lovely.

Then we circled back and walked down to the river shore.  It was a windy day.  In fact for most of the walk along the top of the flood defences my hair was blown into such a huge ball of whipped up chaos that I couldn't really see much.  I picked up a bit driftwood to make an insect-friendly woodpile for the garden (will the saltiness matter?  I might soak it first...) and carried that in a carrier, plus a chunk in my hand, my bag (which is quite big), my camera and camera case, the walk book, the teasel, the bulrush, a Power Ranger and two acorns.  No-one helped me over the gates.  What with the hair situation and the fact that it was quite a big bit of driftwood it's possible that I wasn't at my most elegant.

The white building on the horizon is a nuclear power station.  We can see if from our house, which isn't really what you want to see from your window, but someone has to have it.  The yachts are from the local sailing club, and they were having a great time in the wind.

This was the view downstream.  The Severn Bridge, and behind it (underneath) you can just see the new Severn crossing.  The river is mighty indeed from this angle.

There's one precious day of the summer holidays left.  I have a little tradition of taking the boys to the beach for ice-cream and donkey rides.  I'm hoping for a little entente cordiale.  Bribery with ice-cream and donkey rides may help.