Colour Collaborative: September: Market

Photos from last week's local farmers' market in town.  I do like farmers' markets.  There's always something different and always a real flavour of the area.  Ours isn't the trendiest, but it's still well worth a visit on the two days each month when it's held.  There's also a much bigger food fair from time to time.  I'm always glad to see local food for sale.  It's just a shame that it's a once in a while novelty.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if this was how we shopped every day?

I know food from markets tends to be more expensive, but sometimes I like to have less of something, but enjoy the fact that it's local.  I think we appreciate it more, and it's never ever wasted.  Cheeses are a favourite, and the odd jar of chutney or pickle.  I like to find seasonal fruit as well, plums picked when they're just ripe, instead of the hard balls at Tesco that came here from Chile weeks ago.  Nothing like a plum they are.  Apples of different varieties that you'll never see at the supermarket.  Strawberries that will only last a couple of days because they're so real and delicious.

I like to wander through the market looking at the changing produce as the seasons roll on.  At the moment there are the first vivid orange squashes and creamy white cauliflower curds.  There are slender green and white leeks, and the dusty greens of apples grown through a long season without chemicals.  Nothing bright or shiny here, the skins are the dull oranges and olive greens of pippins and russets.  The plums veer from purple to pale yellow, with a soft bloom shading their thin skins.  The greens are deep and healthy, cabbages grown in our west country rain and beans from our dark fertile soil.  As winter moves closer the palette will narrow to the whites and oranges of root vegetables and the hearty bottle green of kales.  But right now as the Autumn equinox passes it is harvest time, and the market is filled with bounty.  If I can't grow or make it myself, this is the place I most like to buy it.

To visit the other Colour Collaborative blogs for more of this month's posts, just click on the links below:

               Annie at Annie Cholewa                       Gillian at Tales from a Happy House

               Sandra at Cherry Heart                          Jennifer at Thistlebear

               Sarah at Mitenska

What is The Colour Collaborative?

All creative bloggers make stuff, gather stuff, shape stuff, and share stuff. Mostly they work on their own, but what happens when a group of them work together? Is a creative collaboration greater than the sum of its parts? We think so and we hope you will too. We'll each be offering our own monthly take on a colour related theme, and hoping that in combination our ideas will encourage us, and perhaps you, to think about colour in new ways.

Wonder Woman and the Giant Peach

"Help, can't breathe."

Misty mornings, dewy spiders' webs and crane flies.  It's that time of year.  I've been going at things far too slowly I think.  I'm ready for the new term at last.  I feel that bit of determination and the need to be organised circling in my brain.  I could make New Year's resolutions today, and I've finally come up with a word to live the year by - "Productive".  That's what I need to be, productive.  I want to be Wonder Woman.  I was talking to a busy friend who was still working at midnight the other day.  I need to put more effort in I think.

I had all these thoughts this morning.  After lunch I found myself in the garden, weeding and tidying.  I often end up gardening that way.  One minute I'm walking along on my way to the bin at the end of the garden, the next thing I have a trowel in my hand and I'm rooting out weeds.  I got rid of the tomatoes in pots on the patio as well.  They weren't a success.  Tomatoes in my garden like to be in the soil for some reason.  I picked a load the other day and made sauce for the freezer.  Winter spaghetti with homemade tomato sauce, love it.  The remaining tomatoes are ripening very slowly.  In the cold dripping early mornings they look quite sorry for themselves.  A tomato should be basking in the sun shouldn't it.  There might be a few more to be had though.

There's a giant peach in my oven.  The children's school love to torture parents with regular dressing up days.  This week it's Roald Dahl Day.  Apparently James of Giant Peach fame just wears regular clothes, so if you have a giant papier mache peach you can wear what you want.  The littlest boy and I tackled the project after school.  We sellotaped a balloon down to make it rounder, more peach less balloon shaped, then stuck on strips of newspaper with 50:50 flour and water paste.  I was sat there with it dripping from my hands, trying to grip a slippery balloon and smooth out the paper nicely, and the littlest boy said, "Gosh, it looks just like a giant peach!".  Not a hint of sarcasm.  I do so love his happy take on life.

The first couple of layers are drying out now.  I've popped it in the oven, and every so often I turn it on for a couple of minutes to keep it lightly warm.  If I forget to turn it off, which is extremely likely, the balloon will go bang and I'll just have an oven full of soggy newspaper sticking to the walls.  If all goes well and I end up with a peach I understand it needs to be decorated with insects.  Anyone know anything about that?  I haven't read the book, but I've seen something about bugs and seagulls.  There are some scarily professional ones on Google Images.  I'm not sure I'll rise to seagulls.  When we've perfected the giant peach, we will be moving on to giant ears for the BFG.  Wish me luck.

Five on Friday

Joining in with Amy and Five on Friday.

Allotment flowers.  I don't pick them regularly, and I leave quite a few for the bees, but sometimes it's nice to have a little bunch about the house.  At this time of year there's a sense of needing to enjoy them before the end of the season.

Autumn planting.  Sprouts and pansies.  A good pansy will keep going until spring.  No idea how they manage to keep blooming through the winter, they're really quite extraordinary.

Badgers at the allotment.  Happily, despite all of the works in the field over the back, the badgers are still about.  This isn't my sweetcorn, but someone else who's put in all the hard work will turn up and discover the badgers got there first.  I'm wondering why the badgers aren't eating the apples.  Maybe they're saving them for later.  They do seem to have a very good sense of when things are perfectly ripe.

A wonderful gift in the post.  A giveaway from the lovely Sue at Mr Micawber's Recipe for Happiness, thank you so much Sue.  Gorgeous plates, a tea towel that has vegetables on it, so is absolutely perfect for me, scrumptiously soft yarn, a mix of merino and silk and a lovely big red button.  The littlest boy asked if the yarn would be going into his blanket.  I fear not, it will be going around my neck in a delicious scarf I think.

A little calligraphy.  I got a book from the library, and just occasionally I have a moment to squiggle down some letters.  It's something that has always fascinated me.  Back when I was doing property law I used to love looking at title deeds from the 1800s.  Huge pieces of vellum, A3 or bigger, covered with immaculate copperplate script.  I liked to imagine the writer spending their days writing, writing, writing.  In my mind it was exactly like a scene from Dickens.  I've discovered that the beautiful swirly scripts are the trickiest.  Of course, they would be.

I'm wishing you all a good weekend.  I shall be tackling the garden on Saturday morning I think.  There are tomatoes that need to be turned into sauce and weeds that need to be weeded.  Living it large, I know.  Laters, CJ xx

A dodgy barnet and an insightful interview

green roof, blue sky

the flower plot

I took the littlest boy to the barber's today,  His barnet* was annoying him and the lure of the post haircut lollipop was strong.  I like it at the barber's.  Until I had three boys I'd never stepped inside one.  It intrigues me.  In the front of the shop are leather seats, free coffee, Sky tv (always on), an Xbox (out of order) and a fine assortment of man reading material.  Out the back are the barbers, two or three young guys, holding shouted conversations with punters and each other about football, celebrities and, well, that's about it as far as I can tell.

I usually like to read The Sun or the Daily Star and see what I'm missing in the world of tabloid excess.  Recently they've stopped taking them though, so today it was GQ or Muscle Building Meatheads (that might not have been the exact title).  I chose the muscle building.  The photos were quite horrific.  I couldn't stop staring.  Did you know that Arnold Schwarzenegger is 68, works out almost every day and he's just made another Terminator movie?  That's nearly 70!  And he hasn't let it stop him.  If it's worth doing, it's worth flogging to death.

The littlest boy persuaded the barber to cut his fringe extra short, something they were reluctant to do because of his cow's lick.  (The Urban Dictionary defines this as "a parting in someone's hair that naturally goes to the back of their head - so it looks like a cow has licked your head". )  He was warned that if he had a short fringe it would stick up on one side mate and be all wonky.  He was keen to go for it anyway.  It's a look all his own.

I shall leave you with a conversation I had with the biggest boy, who had to interview a parent about their favourite villain.  He chose me, which is a novelty, he normally picks his father, but apparently he doesn't read books with villains, so me it was.

BB:   Who's your favourite villain?

Me:    Hmm, I don't know, that's tricky.  I can't think of any.  [Long pause].  Lord Voldemort.

BB:    Seriously???

Me:    I don't know any others.

BB:    Smaug?  Moriarty?

Me:    I can't remember anything about Smaug.  And I haven't read any Sherlock Holmes.

BB:    [With an undertone of slight impatience] Well what about from something you have read.  The Hunger Games?  Fifty Shades of Grey?

Me:    [Choking slightly]  I don't remember The Hunger Games that well.

BB:    [Eyeing me speculatively]  Have you read Fifty Shades of Grey?

Me:   I've read Fifty Sheds of Grey but there wasn't a villain as such.

In the end we went with Lord Voldemort.  I told him he could write "My mother reads children's books" at the end of it.  At one point he corrected my grammar.  I told him he could also write, "My mother has appalling grammar as well as reading children's books".

After he had grilled me at length about Lord Voldemort he asked me if there was anything I would like to add, and then faithfully transcribed my reply.

Me:  No thank you, I'm going to do the washing-up now, but thank you for your time.

Do you suppose it's all a subtle test to see how intelligent the parents are?

                                                              *  *  *  *  *  *  *

*Barnet being cockney rhyming slang for hair - Barnet Fair/hair

An own goal

sedum, beloved of bees

apple Sunset - aptly named no?

every rose has its thorns

Something's afoot down at the allotments.  Beyond my plot, and the hedgerow and the stream on the other side, there's a big field.  It was full of Christmas trees a few years ago, and since then it's been left untouched.  It was where the wild things lived.  Quite often you could see a rabbit over there, taking a break from eating allotment delicacies such as lettuces and strawberry plants and pea shoots.  As nature took over and filled the field with nettles and flowers, the insects had a, well, they had a field day.

But a couple of weeks ago a tractor arrived and started churning the earth up.  Then several heavy plants turned up.  (Is that the right terminology?  They aren't really plants, they're giant yellow beasts that shake the ground and scare the birds from the trees.)  It was all most disconcerting.  The field was flattened, and still the machines chugged up and down.

An allotment neighbour gave me the low down this morning.  It's to be a new football pitch.  I didn't quite know what to say to that, being as the children are footballers and I suppose might conceivably play on there one day.  But I do wish it was still wild.  The allotment had a nice feeling of being right on the edge of the wilderness before.  Now it's got a feeling of being right on the edge of the Emirates Stadium.  Oh I exaggerate, I know.  But I don't like change, and I especially don't like change that takes away wildlife.  The fields down the road have been concreted over, and where there used to be cows, now there are houses.    I don't have the answers, but I don't like it all the same.

I did some autumn things on the plot.  Taking down beansticks, cutting the fruited wood out of the wineberry, digging up some volunteer potatoes.  I made Allotment Surprise for tea.  I knew what the littlest boy would say before he even said it.  "I don't like Allotment Surprise".  It was a kind of vegetable hotpot.  Onions, potatoes, carrots, courgette, green beans, borlotti beans, tomatoes and a little bit of scorzonera, with some stuffed pasta to bulk it out a bit.  I do love meals that come from the plot and the garden.  Makes I 'appy.

Fire, flowers and breathing garlic

There was great excitement here in town on Saturday morning.  It appears that at the crack of dawn, or thereabouts, a fire started out the back of the chip shop and no less than nine fire engines were called.  Everyone in town seems to be tightly connected by means of Facebook and Twitter, and by the time we happened to turn up the high street was thronging with breathless locals and surplus-to-requirements firemen.  There was even what appeared to be a Fire Station Catering Truck with toilets and Pot Noodles.  Who knew?

The local paper didn't disappoint, and got in quick with some fearless interviewing.  From their pages:

A local resident said, "I went to the bank this morning and they were talking about it in there."

They should have interviewed me.  I went to the stationery shop and they were talking about it in there as well.  Sadly a neighbouring shop and cafe with a lovely garden were damaged.  No-one was hurt though, fortunately.

We dragged ourselves away and I bought a notebook.  I have a feeling that buying a notebook is some sort of stress relief thing for me.  Not about the fire, but when life slips gently out of control I buy a notebook maybe in the subconscious hope that by getting things down on paper it will all be okay.  If it's contained within the pages of a book, then I can close the book and it will all be alright.  That is how it works isn't it?

At the top end of town, the local In Bloom group have outdone themselves with a wonderful drift of flowers, some wild, mostly pollinator friendly.  About a thousand times nicer than municipal bedding plants.  My little camera hasn't done it justice at all, it's glorious.  Hopefully all sorts of little beasties are in there.  If you're a lover of little beasties and hedgerows and other such natural loveliness, do pop over to see Countryside Tales' latest post all about hedgerows and their importance to wildlife of all shapes and sizes.  It's one of my absolute favourite blogs, I never fail to learn things every time I visit, and she's always funny and entertaining too.  Can't recommend her highly enough.

The flowers in the last two photos are from the garden.  Self-seeded cosmos and a second flush of lavender.  The lavender seems to have changed colour a bit from when I bought it.  Is that possible?  I know I had a lovely pale Christmas cactus once, but they'd done something to it to make the flowers really pale.  The next year it reverted to shocking pink.

A few germs have struck here already.  Just a cold or two, nothing dramatic.  But as soon as those classroom doors are closed and the urchins all clustered together in a warm and stuffy fug, the viruses are away.  I gave the littles a clove of raw garlic each tonight, which they love.  It was homegrown and really potent.  The whole house smells garlicky now.  If it doesn't banish the germs it will certainly banish the vampires.  I'm thinking about garlic soup next.  Just need to check we don't have dental appointments or anything.

The scent of a fresh notebook

The littlest boy's desk.  He gave me back his two pen pots and is going to keep his pencils like this from now on.  You will note that they are all freshly sharpened.  Name tags are on, new shoes are out of the boxes, the borlotti beans are in and the scent of fresh notebooks is in the air.  Oh how I love a new notebook.

The row of pencils got nudged earlier into an untidy mess.  The littlest boy was quite cross and blamed me.  Me!  Who of all people understands the joy of a neatly arranged line of things.  Order has been restored, although I am still suspect number 1.  It's so unfair.

The biggest boy is now at the big school.  So far so good I think.  The food is delish, although I fear the lunch queue may be ghastly once the whole school is there at once.  Apparently he's not learnt anything yet, but any day now.

The littles also went back today.  I straightened things up, dusted, hoovered, you know how it is.  I plumped things up and they stayed straight and plump all day.  Then the mud and the noise and the crumbs returned and life was good again.

I've been limping a little this week after turning my ankle all the way over playing football at the park on Bank Holiday Monday.  We were supposed to be watching a cricket match, but you know, bank holiday + cricket = rain, so we did the park thing instead.  The other half said helpful things like, "Up!  Get up!" and "Run it off!".  I stayed down in the damp and the mud for a bit making faces and grunting.  A&E on Tuesday, apparently I shall survive.  I have exercises to do that include writing the alphabet in the air with my toe.  All uppercase.  The children keep standing on my foot.  I didn't realise how often they do that until now.

If you will excuse me I'm off to play with my notebooks.  Wishing you all an excellent September.  CJ xx