Making Space

I had some advice today - to pamper myself....to carve out time for what I most love to do...to chill.

I think coffee with a friend sitting in the warm air outside at a cafe table with the world rolling by......followed by shopping for a handbag for niece's wedding....finding the perfect beaded clutch bag to match outfit....counts as pampering.

Taking photos of this rose and cranesbill geranium in the garden....discovering a way to take better close ups - stand further away to zoom in ( probably should have read camera instruction booklet before now  - but not my forte - so rely on happy accidents)...counts as carving out time for something I  love to do.

It's hard to capture the exact coral red of this rose but it doesn't matter as this single one is going to be added to the basket of white rose petals I've been collecting from the garden and drying out on trays in the shelves of the utility room where the sun pours in most days.....turning the petals a bit brown at the edges but sealing in the sweetness of their perfume. They'll be added to another bigger basket of petals that my sister has also been harvesting and drying - flower confetti to shower on our sweet niece on her wedding day.

So I've felt some space opening up around the edges of my day -  maybe helped by taking four heavy black bags of old sheets and towels and duvet covers and an old iron and a kettle down to the dump for re-cycling. Making space in my cupboards.......and as I let go of more of the past - making space in my head for who I am now.

 As for the advice to chill -  standing further back before zooming in - that's something I've yet to learn - but something I could explore - practice even....and not just leave to a happy accident.

Wobbly As a Jellyfish

 Exmouth sands, Sunday evening - these jelly fish lined the shore.

I'd never have noticed the tiny purple stitches in the hem of its skirt...

not sure if this one is dead or alive.

 This one is upside down exposing the heart of its tendrils.

Inexplicably weary and grumpy tonight. Productive day with my sister - sorting out finances and the linen cupboard. 

 On the allotment black fly attacking the broad beans and the globe artichokes in dense sticky stripes.

Feel daunted by weeds and arid earth.

Lose my house keys and lose half an hour looking for them. Find them in the place I first looked. In my handbag where they always are.

Resist the temptation to eschew fridge full of greens and have beans on toast for supper. Make toasted cashew nut risotto with celery, ruby chard and baby carrots on newly mended hob.

Feel so grateful for dear friends taking such loving  care of my husband today so I can be as wobbly as a jelly fish, out of sorts with myself,  and he doesn't have to think it's all his fault that I'm not smiling.

Eureka! Wild and Wayward....

 Strelitzia  - which always reminds me of my aunty in South Africa - 

in the Sub Tropical Gardens at Abbotsbury on Saturday.

I love the  shady peacefulness of the gardens but remembered to pack a picnic as last time we went lunch in the cafe was unbelievably  awful.

The Japanese garden.....

Inside the handkerchief of the pocket handkerchief tree....

peace ....

perfection....

 There is a small aviary in the gardens - I'm not sure what this exotic bird is .....

Chinese pheasant?  As colourful as a painted African Warrior - 

preparing for a war dance.... or a courtship.

The same two Kookaburras are still there in their cage...

waiting for freedom...

still adorable and fluffy and sad.

The highlight of the afternoon - Robin spotting a bank of wild garlic - Eureka! We pick bunches - probably not supposed to - but I'm not going to walk past an opportunity to make him unbelievably happy.

The soft pungent leaves have found their way into every meal - chopped into an asparagus and feta cheese frittata on Sunday for the annual ACIM picnic....layered on an open sandwich with smashed up avocado, crunchy salted almond butter and sweet cherry tomatoes for lunch.....and tonight's supper shredded into a roasted green garlic, red pepper and egg savoury rice with  fat flakes of smoked haddock and a dollop of wilted spinach.

Supper was supposed to be a kedgeree but I managed to fuse the hob again by letting the haddock boil over when I turned away for a second..... everything else half cooked......so had to adapt by using the oven and it tuned into a completely different dish - maybe nicer. Lovely electrician coming tomorrow to mend hob.

Today while I made two more cauldrons of pink elderflower cordial ( had to go and buy more citric acid first from the Indian shop down the road), hoovered the stairs, mowed the lawn and savoured my morning alone - a lovely new gardener pruned and chopped and shaped the high-in-the sky hedges and the overgrown shrubs in the front garden - letting in the light.

Now everything is clearly defined, neat and square and round.  What I asked him to do. But somehow I miss the out of control exuberance of my wild and wayward garden - tamed for the moment but still rebellious at heart -  waiting for the sap to rise again

After The Drought

RANDOM PHOTOS from the last week....

Clevedon Pier near Bristol on Saturday...

the little glass house cafe at the end  of the  pier is like stepping back in time to the 1960s with plastic flowers on the tables,  powdery Cupasoup for sale and stale slabs of cherry cake for 50p. But it was good to shelter from the wind for a bit and look out across the Bristol Channel and the wind turbines turning in the sea.

At the end of the pier - more like going back to the 1950s...

At Tyntesfield before the tulips...

 and petticoat peonies.

Supper - stir fried spring cabbage and fennel with jewel chips of turmeric, garlic and galangal ( even hotter than ginger ) and circles of lemon grass...fragrant accompaniment to

  roasted cherry tomatoes tossed with the feathery fennel tops at the end of cooking -  so nothing wasted. 

More Topsham bees....feasting on cow parsley

and white wisteria. I keep signing petitions to save the bees - don't know what else to do - can't believe the unimaginable world we'd 

 have without them. 

Pigeon on our roof  yesterday evening.

Wild cherries in the car park at Killerton House

after our wild garlic goose chase.

Budleigh Salterton pebbles -washed clean....

a brief visit today in the rain and mist shrouding the cliffs.

I'm glad it rained today - meant I didn't have to water the allotment - didn't have to decide which beds  would get a drink and which wouldn't because I'd run out of time/energy..... a  wonderful gift of unasked for help after the drought. It's still raining - even better.

 This morning Robin said he couldn't go for the walk we'd planned as his hips and knees hurt. Maybe we overdid it on our hunt for wild garlic yesterday. So I walked into town and he took the car for a drive.

When I got home - before him  - there was a message on the answer phone from a worried friend. He'd met Robin in the street in Moretonhampstead ( on Dartmoor) he said he seemed OK but did I know where he was.... and that he was there alone..... and he had the car ....and should he do anything?

He hadn't seen Robin for a long time and wasn't up to date with his current situation.

I rang, but his wife said he was so concerned that he'd gone back to look for Robin and there was no mobile reception so she couldn't get in touch with him.

In the end Robin came home completely oblivious - said he'd met someone he knew but didn't recognise him or know his name. I spoke to our friend (who had asked the local policeman to keep an eye out) and re-assured him that Robin could find his way about if he'd been there before or with a Satnav but that he wouldn't know the name of the place he'd been to. We agreed to meet up for cup of tea soon.

 Later, when the lovely man from social services( I keep forgetting to call it Direct Care) comes to visit he's so down to earth and helpful and understanding and says immediately he can get me 28 days respite a year and some one-to-one care for Robin, that I don't know whether to laugh or cry or hug him. 

There probably won't be any funding for it but never mind.... just to hear someone say,

 You definitely need it ....and I can make it happen,

 is like a gift of rain after the drought.

Wild Garlic Goose Chase

This is what wild garlic looks like in May in all its garlicky perfumed glory.

These are the leaves and flowers we picked the last time we came for a walk at Killerton House with my brother a few weeks ago.

 Robin wants wild garlic. I'm not sure why. It doesn't matter. The idea is lodged in his head like a bee sucking nectar and nothing will shake it away. When I suggest a walk at Killerton  he says,

 That's where the wild garlic is. Can we get some?

I say there may not be any left now as the wild garlic season is nearly over. But we can look.

 And we do. Up and down and around re-tracing our footsteps along the shaded red clay paths lined with foxgloves, pink campion and buttercups, eyes glued to the edges..... searching........missing the late flowering rhododendron trees towering above us. 

Is this it? he says a thousand times.

No, I say a thousand times.

In the end we agree we've had a lovely walk anyway - much longer than usual. Back home we take scissors into the garden and cut the last few straggly leaves of wild garlic in a pot by the compost bin, and sprigs of rosemary, marjoram, mint and lemon balm from the pots by the back door. The sight and smell of the herbs seem to soothe his wild garlic bee buzzing and relieves my scratchy irritation.

Later I chop them up and stir them into a lemony tahini dressing to drizzle over the Bon Gout  vegetable samosa triangles I bought in the market this morning, which we have for supper.

But I don't think today is the last time we'll go on a wild garlic goose chase...

I'm Just Curious

 We're walking by the estuary in Topsham and I'm thrilled that this butterfly stayed in one spot for more than a few seconds - more  usually I get a nice close up of a flower minus the butterfly/bird/bee which has already flitted away.

The rest of the walk involves my husband stopping every few seconds, pointing to a leaf in the hedgerow and asking me what it is. If I know I tell him and always add,

'..but you mustn't eat it.

I won't he says, I'm just curious.

And he doesn't eat a single leaf.

At the end of the walk I ask him if he knows he's asking me the name of the same plant every time - ivy.

He says he doesn't. Which fits with him not being able to retain the name of things as well as not being able to recognise a thing even if he remembers the name of it. Like a packet of sugar.

Today I asked him to remind me to go to bed by 11pm tonight as I overslept this morning.

I will if I remember, he says.

And he does. What a mystery the memory is...... and now I'm going to bed.