Picked from the garden today, these little autumn raspberries and blueberries will be delicious sprinkled on our peach (from a friend’s garden) dessert – the only way I can get Mum to eat fruit. She has it with a deluge of cream and an avalanche of icing sugar, while I prefer a splash of yoghurt. The grapes are a refreshing and healthy snack just as they are.
Today my tyre hit a kerb for the second time this week. What’s going on? It’s bad enough that I’m driving a Suzuki Swift granny car (even if I’ve zhoosed it up with a few accessories). Also, that note left on my car the other week haunts me each time I park. “Learn how to park,” it said.
Then I found myself browsing for ages in the temperature gauge section of the hardware store today. I was fascinated by digital devices which can tell you the temperature inside the house and out. I already look at the Met Service app on my phone most mornings before deciding what to wear. Am I becoming obsessed with the daily weather just to fill in the time that stretches before me into oblivion? I ended up buying a cheap thermometer with large numbers – suitable for elderly eyes.
My brother-in-law (who is not elderly) has a fascinating weather station which tells you everything you’d ever want to know including wind speed and rainfall – perhaps even phases of the moon. You just read the screen fixed on a wall inside the house.
I could be tempted to buy one of those old-fashioned weather houses where a little man comes out the door with an umbrella when it’s going to rain, and a little woman disappears inside. She comes out when it’s sunny – probably to hang out the washing. I don’t think they make those anymore. It would go well with our cuckoo clock. Speaking of kitsch, when I was a child Uncle Bob gave me a glittery poodle ornament which changed its sparkles with the weather: blue for rain, pink for sunshine. I loved it, but dust did for it in the end, sticking to the glittery bits so the weather was just overcast.
We have a couple of inherited barometers. I remember Dad tapping the one that hangs on the wall. Mum reads it from time to time. “The glass is rising,” she will say. “What does that mean?” I ask peering at it and wondering which hand you’re supposed to look at.
I’ve just gone hunting around the house for thermometers and found these:
The one on the right is, appropriately, beside a drawing of Shakespeare’s ‘Seven Ages of Man’. Perhaps, as the title of this post suggests, I’ll take up yodelling next – or, imagine this: a yodelling-blues fusion. It could work. Come to think of it, we’ve already experimented with both those genres at Singing for Pleasure on Thursdays at the WEA – where retirees go to keep their brains active.
How did this happen? One minute you’re in shorts, and the next you’re digging merinos out of the back of a drawer. Last night we had our first fire for the year. According to my 2023 diary, our first fire was on 21 March and we had rainy, windy weather around that time which blew down my runner beans and turned my umbrella inside out. But we also had ‘gorgeous’ days and continued to paddle at the beach.
When I noticed Mum reaching for a knee rug yesterday afternoon, I knew it was time to light the fire. Felix was quick to find a fireside chair. He is quite recovered from his annual visit to the vet for his vaccination. He came down from the top of the cabbage tree just in time to make the appointment. His weight has doubled since his appointment in March last year, but he is still lean at 4.46kg and is advised to eat more wet food each day to ensure he is hydrated. Felix is quite happy about that. Despite the three claw punctures in his right ear, there’s no sign of infection. He has the odd altercation with visiting cats, such as the one he bailed up on the roof this week. Felix has a ‘don’t mess with me’ look on his face which seems to work despite the other cat being much larger.
This morning, he’s enjoying the sun. Notice that Mum has put her walker aside; she is walking independently more often.
The man in the bathroom outlet store (‘outlet’ as in trading, not plumbing) reminisced about his grandmother using a blue bag to whiten the sheets. He was forthright, practical and, above all, humorous, which was a refreshing change from the serious salespeople we’d met up to that point. “No,” he said, dismissing a vanity top I thought might go. That’s what I needed to hear.
The outlet store gave us an insight into how the basin and vanity top we had selected would wear. Shop-soiled and often seconds, they showed unfortunate marking and we, thinking of me coming in from the garden with grubby hands, changed our minds again.
Here we are, me and my Bathroom Advisor Extraordinaire, back in the main showroom, looking contemplative and serious. We’re matching a ceramic, semi-recessed basin with a hard ‘Carrara (but not really) marble’ surface (shown in the block sample) and the floor tile.
Back to the drawing board. My B.A. (Ext.) suggested a mood board. I patched something together over the week.
My mood got bluer as I obsessively found, selected, then re-selected and moved things about. I researched all manner of toilets, looking for one that had some character and a high pan height. My other sister-in-law advised chrome tap ware, as the gunmetal we’d chosen would probably date. She and my brother endorsed the idea of a high pan height for the toilet. Gradually my mood board took shape.
Although still a work in progress, the mood board has helped (as B.A. Ext. knew it would) to visualise the end result and the planning seems pretty much complete. Here’s hoping. Such a fuss about a tiny space! But I was shocked to see what my bathroom looked like back in 1993 before the first renovation (see top left corner of mood board) and I remember how difficult it was to remove all that red paint – and the layers of paint underneath. Now, this new renovation is necessary to address the sinking floor and the impractical shower-over-bath.
Meanwhile, B.A. (Ext.) found a digital programme and made a 3-D model.
You can move it around (but not on this screenshot) and visualise how it might look, hence the well-deserved new honour: ‘Extraordinaire’. And, hopefully, we’re done with the bathroom blues.
It’s proving to be a good season for New Zealand watermelon. We’ve enjoyed a few already, but you have to choose your moment and means of conveying it from the shop to home. I saw a woman drop one the other week. Car seemed the best option, but the traffic was busy. I chose to walk, taking a string bag, and lugged the watermelon home bumping against my bum – so it was well cushioned.
At home, I lowered the melon cautiously onto the scales thinking it would exceed the weighing capacity, but it came in at just over 4 kilograms.
Inside it is deep pink and very tasty and juicy (excuse my rubbish attempt at cutting. Perhaps I should have dropped it instead).
It’s practically seedless, and the pink flesh goes almost to the rind, so there’s little waste. This is a refreshing treat on a warm, sunny afternoon.
“I can manage that myself,” I told the arborist when he offered to trim this pittosporum six months ago. Then birds nested in it. Before I knew it, it was heading for the power lines again. It was an effort to trim from the top of a wobbly ladder, with my arms at full stretch holding heavy hedge clippers. Some bits I couldn’t reach, so it looked as if it had a lopsided mohawk. I shoved the clippings under a camellia.
Today, I had another go. I planned to head straight through with loppers, getting the large branches as I went. I climbed down from the ladder to inspect my efforts. What a mess! Stark cut branches stuck up at the top and a pile of branches was half way up the ladder. And I was hot, sweaty and scratched. I rang the arborist.
Ruby Red kiwifruit are available again – for a short time, I expect. They are my favourite kiwifruit – a complex and fruity flavour. I was quick to buy them when they appeared in my local fruit and vege shop the other day, but by yesterday there were none. I would imagine that most of them are exported, like most of our primary produce.
I will enjoy the few I have each morning while they last.
When the going gets tough, I look for something to make me feel better. When I stepped out of my art class this afternoon it was hot and windy. The sharp light and hard lines reminded me of the paintings of the Canterbury Group of artists in the 1920s to 1970s, who made it their mission to represent the local landscapes as they are, not in the romantic, European-influenced style of artists such as Petrus van der Velden.
Beauty pleases the eyes, sweetness charms the soul.
Voltaire quotation on the wall of Sweet Soul Patisserie.
It seemed a good plan to take the bus home rather than walking. On the way to the bus exchange I looked for that ‘something’ to make me feel better. I spotted a little slice of Paris: Sweet Soul Patisserie. I was enticed inside by the people standing transfixed at the counter. As I sat at an upstairs table (with a whisk-shaped table number) I looked down at the counter display while I enjoyed an iced coffee and a ‘Paris Brest’ pastry, and reminisced about my weeks in Paris in 2018. I re-read my journal yesterday and felt pangs of nostalgia.
Some people stopped to eat, others bought boxes of treats to take away. No sooner had one line of people gone, than more came in the door. The assistant was continually topping up the depleted counter display with fresh pastries.
I took one last photo as I left.
At home, the tomato plants looked disheartened and the sun umbrella had fainted into the blackcurrant bush. Water was administered (to the plants), and I thought of bedouins in the desert heading for the next oasis.
A woman at singing this morning reminded me that it’s the official last day of summer today. After several gloomy days, this afternoon is brilliant with sunshine. The crickets are chirping – always a sign that it’s nearly the end of summer. But the light is lovely, slanting in and casting shadows as the sun moves lower in the sky. The raspberries, apples and grapes are ripening. I felt a pang that the hens are all gone. They loved the grapes and would stand under the grapevine looking meaningfully upwards if I was near. I picked the first bunch today.
Blue sage towers over my head. The cranberries are plump and smell divine. The Japanese anemones flower in late summer and are at their best now. The roses are giving it their last shot. Bees are busy.
I found some new (to me) varieties of greens for the vertical garden. As ‘hardy greens’ they may prove to be good for winter salads. What great names they have!
Time to repair to the egg chair – with a slice of watermelon – to enjoy this glorious day. Perhaps we’ll have one of those lovely warm autumns…
Big hat, no cattle.
Texan expression
I am usually overwhelmed with courgettes, but this year…no such luck. The plants look healthy, but the fruit is minute and often rots at the end. Gardening seems to be a mix of triumph and disappointment.
I overheard someone describe my garden as ‘overgrown’ which sent me into a frenzy of tidying last week. It just is that kind of garden, though, as I posted earlier about being ‘hands off’.
While I’m far from self-sufficient in the garden, it’s lovely to bring what you have grown in to the kitchen. Today I was pleased to find the first potatoes I’ve grown in this garden, and to add them to this ‘still life’.
And then to use the produce in a nutritious meal.
At the garden centre today, the assistant suggested there might be too much nitrogen in the soil where the courgettes are growing, as it’s where my compost bins used to be. Knowing more about the soil is something I could work on.
While at the garden centre, I was intrigued by a sign which made me look worriedly about my feet. Fortunately, I hadn’t stood on any monarch caterpillars, and I could see them on the swan plants.
Monarchs often flit about my garden, and I’ve seen a few yellow admirals this year – and lots of white butterflies. The egg chair is a good place to sit and watch what’s going on.
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