The turn of the year

It's that time again.  The nights are drawing in.  My hens go to roost earlier each night, and if I'm late in getting to the bottom of the garden to shut them in, it's already dark - and it's only 8pm.

We're down to three hens at the moment.  One of the speckeldy's died 25th August.  I'd spotted her going downhill on the Thursday, usual signs, mucky back end, listlessness, isolating behaviour.  But the timing of helping them on their way is never easy, and I'd given her a day too long, and we had guests that weekend, so finding an appropriate moment to do the deed was going to be difficult, and when I let them out on the Sunday, she'd died in the night.  At least she was with her friends, and although it saved me from a task which I am prepared to do, but don't enjoy, I still felt sorry to see her go.

Now when I let them out in the morning there's a chill in the air. No more wandering down the garden in my pyjamas, crocs and cotton dressing gown...  there's an image to wrestle with in your mind now!  No.  Now it's time for the fleecy dressing gown.  And anorak over that if it's raining.  And wellies if the weather's dire.  And I have been known in snow to put salopettes and ski jacket on over my pj's, and team that up with my snowboots to boot.

There's still a glut of apples in the garden, but the blackberries round and about have gone over. Last week when I was walking the dog I didn't have any containers to pick blackberries into.  I have, on the odd occasion, used dog poop bags (clean of course!), but kept promising myself I'd bring a container and do it properly.  Too late.

This morning the blackberries were soggy.  Not just from the recent rainfall, but from over-ripeness.  They burst upon touching them, and were somehow reluctant to yield, to give in and let me pick them.  How then to describe the clumps of them, the clusters, bunches, branches, droplets, drooplets, danglers, jam-jars brambles of them?  Sadly too late to now to bring in the bounty, they've turned mildewy, and gone mouldy with their lushness....

Still, the spiders were the ones to benefit.  More cobwebs than I've seen for a while, and although the wasps weren't buzzing, they were feasting, and close by them were the flies, disturbed by my reaching hand.. no rich pickings for me this time.  I've had my lot, and safely banked it in the freezer.

Pegasus, Woking

TTFN.  Kat  :)

Friday the thirteenth...

So the saying goes that 'things' come in threes.  And the 'things' that come in threes are usually 'bad things'....   It is also usually accepted that 'bad things' may happen on the 13th, and on Friday the 13th in particular....  Now, I wouldn't say that I am usually or unusually suspicious, but read on and let's see if what I relate is just coincidence.

Our lodger, bless her, has been known to be a little accident prone (in as much as she maybe has a tendency to break things.  Like the time she drove off with the coffee cup on the roof of her car. Needless to say it didn't stay on the roof of the car...).

On Thursday she apologised for breaking the catch on the door of the microwave oven in the kitchen, so for the moment the microwave doesn't work.  Not entirely a surprise, as the door had been feeling stiffer than usual for a while.  I tried to glue it back together to see if it helped.  It didn't.  The catching blob shape on the catch detached itself to the internal workings of the slot it engaged with, and is now lost.  The engineer will be here on Saturday.

On Friday (the 13th) I broke the kettle.  More of a nuisance, but not really a problem as I'd got a 3 year warranty from Argos, so a replacement was easy to come by.  What was irritating was the fact that I'd already replaced the same kettle (with the same model) after the same fault in January.  At about 6 months of use of this kettle the quick-boil 1-cup facility goes 'pop' if you drain it entirely after boiling and then fill with cold water.  I don't know about you, but this seems a design fault to me.  Replaced it with a different brand the following day, no quibble from Argos.

And the third thing?  On the evening of Friday (the 13th), our lodger put her head round the door, looked dejected and like she was about to cry, and said that she'd clipped my car (with hers).  What can you do?  It'll be fixable, and in daylight shows a scuff of exchanged paints and a pimple and hairline crack on my back bumper...  but it's a hassle.  C'est la vie?

On a lighter note, at work in the Library on Saturday I was delighted to try to find a book for a 10-yr old boy I'd not met before.  He was in with his mother and (as it turned out) younger half-sister.  His demeanour impressed me as he was polite, calm, confident and thoughtful.  Not adjectives I'd normally associate with 10-yr old boys, and thus far my experience working in the library has shown me that a classful is usually a handful, and class visits need to be carefully planned, but I'm ever hopeful of meeting a nice one, and 'O' was a nice as you could wish for.

He was looking for a 'Percy Jackson', ah, that's Rick Riordan, I'll check the shelves for you. No sorry, our copies are out, did you want to reserve one?  No thanks, I'll try and find something.  Have you seen this one?  (Inkheart, Cornelia Funke).  No.  Looks good.  Thanks.  I quite like football books, there's one with (I can't remember the character name, but I looked it up on keyword search, and found the author, Dan Sheldon?, but we didn't have copies).  Umm.  Have you read Harry Potter?  Yes, read them all when I was 8. (wow!)  I like the look of this 'Zom-B' Darren Shan. That may not be a good choice for you at the moment.  That title's 'older teen' as it's got a sticker 'teen+'. It's a good idea to try just 'teen' stickered ones as they're crossover from junior and will be more suitable.  Have a look at this one - Holes, Louis Sachar - I read it recently and really enjoyed it, and I've a 12-yr old daughter who read it as well. It's a modern classic, well written, a good story with a couple of good twists....

Eventually, in between serving other customers/borrowers, and keeping my eye on him, it ended up with him borrowing 'Bootleg' by Alex Shearer.  the blurb goes like this:

The Good for You Party is improving the health of the nation. Fruit and vegetables are compulsory and chocolates are banned. When best friends Smudger and Huntly discover an overlooked stock of cocoa and sugar, their secret chocolate-making business takes off fast. Can they stay ahead of the law?

I await his verdict with anticipation.

perched on my car ariel..  difficult zoom, best I could manage!

Night night y'all.  Kat  :)

Ode to Autumn

I remember this from school, must be 30 years ago now...

...'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom friend of the maturing sun who conspires with him how to load, and bless with fruit, the vine which round the thatch-eaves run' ... John Keats.

Our dog walks now are excuses to go blackberrying, or brambling, as someone round here called it the other morning.  The blackberries are very good this year, large, ripe and plentiful, and it's easy picking if you're not worried about a few stings (nettle) or scratches...  I've the stained black fingers/nails to prove it.

I'll have to make jam this weekend.  My freezer is already full - ready for the comforting crumbles of winter - but when there's this much abundance it's a shame not to make the most of it.

We've a glut of apples as well.

I'm not entirely sure what the variety is, but I'm guessing it's Cox's Orange Pippin because there's a definite orange flavour - I'd never actually understood it until I ate apples from this tree, but it's there and it works.  Wierd, but in a good way.

The wasps love it.  The air around the tree is thick with a sweet perfume, and a buzzing reminds you to be careful.  There are husks of apples on the ground - barely core and skin, where the wasps have sucked the life out of it and moved onto the next one.  The apples actually move under the skin, there are that many wasps there - I counted 6 that I could see in a hole the size of a 10p coin, and there must have been more inside...

So although there's a glut, and I've a fruit bowl full inside and more on the window ledge of the kitchen, there's an awful lot of windfall on the ground being worked over by the wasps.  You have to be careful walking past the tree, and if you do want to pick an apple, you should employ extreme caution - I learnt to my cost last year that hastiness equals sting.

There's only one thing worse than a wasp sting, and that's two wasp stings.....

On a lighter note, the children have returned to school, and me to my beloved routine.  I made headway on the ironing this morning listening to Radio 4, and I could feel the tension of the holidays dropping from my shoulders.

It's not that I feel I have to entertain the children the whole time, but there's only so much TV/screen time you can allow them, and only so much backchat I can take, so we did have a few excursions on my Wednesdays off when the Library is closed...  and my pile of ironing grew and grew....

Peacock butterfly on the buddleia bush overgrowing the derelict building awaiting demolition next to my back/kitchen door...  and that's another matter!

Barley field (this year) on the Letcombe footpath

It's been as nice a summer as I can remember - in fact nicer than I can remember actually. There was the hot summer of 1976, of course, and I seem to think 2003 had some heat to it as well, but there's no reliability to the weather in this country, and of course that's what makes us talk about it so much.

I'll have to download some more photos as I'm sure I had a few of the apple tree, but can't find them just now.

Back in the groove now the children are back at school.  Watch this space!

Keep it sweet,  Kat  :)