Slumped

The midpoint of the summer holidays.  The grass in the garden is worn to a nub.  The kitchen has been eaten empty, several times.  I've accomplished almost nothing and I've got (another) splitting headache.  I think summer might be too bright for me.

I'm in a slump, and in the words of Dr Seuss, I need to unslump myself.  Any tips gratefully received.

I've set a new world record for the amount of time taken to write a blog post.  Writing gloomy paragraphs of self-pitying whinging and then deleting them.  Eating crisps.  Watching rubbish tv.  Cheering myself up with a nice dark chocolatey snack.  Therein may lie the problem.  Routine has slithered away, sugar is here, there's not enough fruit (unless you count the sultanas in the giant chocolate chip cookies) and not enough exercise.

I yearn to be one of those energetic people who takes on the world and wins every single day.  But I tend to have too many days where I can barely take on teatime.  I shall make more of an effort I think.  I'm convinced that good diet, exercise and sleep will do me a power of good.  I shall start tomorrow.

Photos from a Sunday afternoon walk by the canal.  Not my favourite place to walk if I'm honest.  I prefer something a little more varied, or dramatic, or with a hill and a view.  Or maybe North Wales has just spoiled me for a bit.  I shall get over it all and stop being ridiculous.

Hope the summer is going well with you.  CJ xx

And the summer winds on

A messy post-holiday week.  The allotment and garden are scruffy and in need of some attention.  There's a long list of uniform things and bedroom re-arranging things to be attended to.  But there have been simple moments of enjoyment.  A long game of Monopoly with the littlest boy, who had been desperate for someone to play with him for ages.  A trip to a park in Bristol that everyone likes.  We passed a couple of gypsy caravans on the way, old fashioned ones, I always think of them as vardoes.  On the way home they had set up camp by the side of the main road.  It's hard to find pitches these days I think.

We found the book at the library.  It jumped out at me after the hours spent skimming stones on holiday.  We found some elder in the back lane and had a go at making elder whistles.  They didn't work, but the pleasure was in the whittling I think.  Especially for the littlest boy who was allowed a go with a knife and a hacksaw.

The best surprise at the allotment was the mass of Japanese wineberries.  The sun shines through them and they glow, it was quite magical.  There was a cucumber the size of my arm.  I forgot to pick them before we went away.  Masses of beetroot and beans and sweet peas.  But I do feel that the garden and allotment haven't done as well this year.  Maybe a lack of attention, maybe it's just one of those years.  The runner beans are looking miserable, as are the swedes.  There have been hardly any strawberries and the squashes don't look particularly prolific.  The onions were small, oh I could pick fault with almost everything.  But still, there's always something to harvest at the moment so I shan't complain.  The tomatoes have started ripening.  Orkado looks promising.  I always like to try a new variety or two every year, in the search for the most reliable ones.

The circus came to a nearby village.  A bit pricey for us, plus I didn't realise they were there until we happened upon them.  We watched the acrobats do a warm-up tumble or two within their circle of caravans, and the lady in her costume checking tickets and a man cantering his horse up and down the village green before the show started.  I'd have loved to have taken the younger two to watch.  Maybe next time.

I watched my first cricket match last weekend.  I got to sit in a deckchair in the sun, it was lovely.  I even picked up a bit of knowledge.  Although as that was the last match of the season I shall probably have forgotten it all by next year.  But for now I can do the sign for a four and a boundary and for when you're out.  I like to do it at the kitchen window when they're playing in the garden.

Football training started again this week, and there's a pre-season friendly tomorrow.  And the blackberries are ripe.  Onwards, always onwards.  I hope you're having a good summer, enjoy the weekend.  CJ xx

Postcards from the edge of Wales

where we stayed

giant jelly

bilberries

mystery caterpillar

mystery fluffy things

Just back from a fab week up in North Wales, where the mountains meet the sea.  I'd forgotten how much I love it up there.  We stayed in "a picturesque unspoilt fishing village", and it actually was.  No chippies or trashy shops or any shops at all in fact.  So quiet, and with stunning views across the estuary to Snowdonia.  It was one of those holidays when you come home thinking you might like to move there forever.  Mountains in one direction, beaches in the other.  Loved it.

There was rain at times and clouds hanging low over the land, but we got out and did it all anyway.  We tackled a little of Snowdon (the highest mountain in Wales) although we only made it halfway, partly because of the rain and partly because of the smaller legs.  We cooked sausages up there and channelled Bear Grylls at every opportunity.

I met the lovely Annie which was an absolute pleasure.  So good to talk to someone about blogging, no-one round here knows I have a blog as far as I know.  

We did a really hard walk on the last day.  Not a long one, but quite arduous and scrambly.  The littlest boy was an absolute star.  He wore a red band round his head and marched on up front until his legs wore out.  We were all tired by the end of it.

The biggest boy got to see red kites and ospreys, which made him happy.  The middle boy got to survive in the wild.  And the littlest boy had some time at the beach.  Their best activity was going down to the sea in the evening, just a minute away from the house, and skimming the lovely flat slate pebbles and scrambling over the rocks.  

All in all a top week.  It's back to reality now though, it'll take me a couple of days to settle back in.  In the meantime I shall be googling houses to buy in North Wales.  

The Colour Collaborative: July: Mend

I like mending.  Not the actual act of mending something, but the whole principle behind it.  In our throwaway culture, mending something stands out as someone caring, both for their possessions and for the planet.

When I was growing up, there was a mending basket, mostly full of wool socks.  And there was darning wool in shades of brown, grey and dull green.  Can you even buy darning wool any more?  It came in loose hanks and it was fine enough to weave a neat darn across a toe.  I learnt to do it, although my darns were sometimes on the chunky side.

An elderly relative told me a while back how when she was young and the sheets wore away with age, you would cut them in half up the middle, swap the pieces around so that the outer edges were together, and sew them back up.  So you ended up with a soft faded white sheet that had a seam up the centre and the thin worn parts on the edge.

I'm not under any illusions as to how hard it must be not to be able to afford new things when you need them, but I do think it's sometimes too easy to throw things into landfill and buy more.  We care very little for the cheap modern imports that are sold in vast quantities.  Giant brightly coloured plastic toys (and millions and millions of small ones) and every imaginable non-essential item are destined for the rubbish tip after a short life.  Mountains and mountains of brittle black plastic electrical units, turned swiftly into garbage.  I know I'm guilty of this too.  Somehow these things slip into my life.  I'm going to try harder to cut right down on them.

It infuriates me when someone tells me something can't be mended.  Some things are built with a deliberately short life expectancy.  Some things are built into sealed units so that small parts can't be replaced.  It's wrong, the world can't sustain this sort of enforced consumerism.  Everyone knows this, but the thirst for money and possessions drives it ever onwards.

Mending is something that happens a lot around here.  I sew, I stick, I nail.  A faded quilt is stitched with matching cream thread.  A tear in the sofa cushion is machined in almost identical brown, a throw is darned in gold that barely shows.  The boys of course test my mending abilities to the full.  A while back they managed to snap the lid of the tan wood toy box.  They thought they had me for a while, but I glued and nailed on some chipboard and battens and it all works again.  It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but it's functional, and I'm happy to live with imperfection.

Someone (and the golfer is the number 1 suspect) has smashed in the door of the empty guinea pig hutch.  If you need me, I'll be sizing up the hole.

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.

The July allotment

The allotment has been looking after itself a bit this month, with less watering needed, thanks to the frequent showers and the lovely moisture retaining soil (unlike the horrible dust at home).

The harvests are coming in thick and fast.  Mountains of blackcurrants, a sudden rush of early courgettes, dozens of beetroots, piles of French beans and bunches of sweet peas with the delicious scent of summer.

I've brought in the onions and the last of the garlic and there's a lot of weeding to be done.  Then there will be space for the next things.  I do need to put some serious hours in though.  I've been spending more time at home writing lately, and of course it shows.  The weeds are galloping about the place with gay abandon.

One of the things I didn't plant is this poppy.

It's appeared out of nowhere amongst the borlotti beans.  I'm quite blown away by how such a pretty thing can just pop up.  I shall leave it to seed and see if there are more next year.

I've often said that the plot isn't immaculate, but despite the limited time I put in, it's still amazingly productive and a very good place to be, especially right now in the height of summer.  However weedy it may be, there's always something to bring home, and that makes it all worthwhile.

Wild plums and other fruitiness

the community orchard

There's been a flurry of putting by food in the kitchen.  At this time of year there's often more than we can eat, so the freezer starts to fill with boxes of blackcurrants and beans and cooked beetroot, ready for the less plentiful season.

I took the biggest boy with me yesterday and went to pick some wild plums.  They grow near the streamside, and there are a few different trees, and at least two different types of plum.  Maybe not strictly wild, they must have been planted by someone as they're all in a row, but no-one looks after them and as far as I can see no-one harvests them.  In years past I've seen dozens of them squashed into the path.

Many of them were too high to reach, so I shook a few branches so that the ripe ones fell down.  Some fell down my top, and quite a lot of stuff ended up in my hair.  I did notice the odd earwig dropping out of the branches as well and later on I found a small (unharmed) grasshopper up my sleeve.

The fruits were perfect miniature plums, pink and yellow and surprisingly sweet.  There were other bushes with round yellow ones that weren't quite ripe yet.  We'll no doubt return in two or three weeks and see how they're doing.  We filled a bag, but there are masses more.  It amazes me that no-one else bothers with them.

On the way home we stopped by the community orchard to see how the fruit there was doing.  The Victoria plums won't be ready for a while, but it's all looking good so far.

At home I washed the plums and started cutting them up to remove the stones.  Then I had a moment of genius and dug out the cherry/olive stoner.  Almost all of the mini plums fitted in there perfectly.  The littlest boy was thrilled about that too, and took charge of the stoning.  He sat in the kitchen with me and stoned every last one of them while I made lunch.  In fact it took him a bit of time after lunch too, and the kitchen was lightly sticky afterwards because sometimes the stones shot out in all directions, but it was a satisfying job.  I do so love filling the freezer at this time of year.  Maybe next time we'll make jam.