Cat musings

Herb Gardening by Claire Loewenfeld

2011-10-21T12:28:00.000+01:00

I didn't think I could possibly need another general book on herbs but I bought Herb Gardening (at the very wonderful Slightly Foxed Bookshop on Gloucester Road) because it's one of the more comprehensive I've found.

The book starts with some brief chapters on herbs in general, then each individual herb is described under several headings: Virtues, Description (or Appearance), Growing, Harvesting and Uses. Several headings are self-explanatory; Virtues covers folklore, medicinal properties and other interesting facts, while Uses gives directions on the preparation of simples (medicinal and cosmetic) and, in the case of the kitchen herbs, a recipe, or other comments on its culinary uses.

There are two useful charts at the back, on growing and usage. There are a couple of inclusions which might be slightly unexpected - for instance, rose hips, which were much used as a source of Vitamin C during WW2* - and the range considered is wider than the usual kitchen-garden list: there are some plants here which we'd normally consider to be wildflowers or weeds. If you wanted to create a herb-garden like those of earlier centuries this, in conjunction with one of the early Herbals, like Mrs Grieve's, would be an excellent and practical reference work.

* As a child in the early 1960s, our school took part in a national scheme to collect rosehips - we would go out every evening with bags and, at the end of the week, the total would be weighed. There were lots of wild roses growing around the small Scottish torn where I grew up and we collected huge quantities which were sent off to be made into delicious rosehip syrup. I think the practice had stopped by the time I left primary school.

Out of season

2011-09-18T16:03:00.001+01:00

This cowslip should be flowering in spring, but here it is in my garden in September, trying to clash with the (admittedly rather limp) violas - this pot was prettier earlier in the year when, under the clematis which is its main occupant, there were violets and crocuses. The bowl below is more the kind of thing I'm aiming for when it's at its best - but the pot above is meant to be resting at this time of year (although you can see I made an attempt for summer interest with some lobelia which totally failed to grow in our cold summer).

I like doing this kind of gardening in miniature. That alchemilla seedling will have to go, it'll take over completely any minute!

Bugged by inconsistency

2011-08-19T17:28:00.000+01:00

It's official, I'm thoroughly inconsistent. Yesterday I was delighted to find that the hens view earwigs with voracious enthusiasm. Then I came in and spent ten minutes rescuing and trying to photograph a grasshopper. You can see it if you peer closely at the middle of the picture. It's a field grasshopper, chorthippus brunneus, I think.

Time marches on

2011-08-06T15:32:00.000+01:00

Two months since I've been here! Obviously, life is so uneventful that there is simply nothing to say, I'm just swimming serenely along with my feathers only slightly ruffled by a passing breeze - or else, it has been so frantic that I haven't had time to sit and write. And it's the latter, I'm afraid, there's just too much to try to fit into the day - it doesn't matter how hard you try to organise work, noting schedules and deadlines and calculating to be sure that one job will be finishing as another arrives: authors don't work like that, and it all manages to come along at once. Add in a funding emergency, and that's it - the garden is utterly neglected, apart from four courgette plants limping along anaemically. What is wrong with them I can't imagine, except that it was cold and wet when they were planted. True, the strawberries have been tremendous, and the one cucumber was delicious. I don't mind that only two of the hens have been laying properly, because we still have more than enough eggs (who's got time to cook?).

I've been pleased, too, with the dozen pelargoniums I bought as plug plants, which are all growing healthily, and the sweet peas are a pleasure. If I haven't seen many butterflies, I've enjoyed the moths at dusk, and we've had an influx of scarily large beetles (as yet unidentified: I think some kind of ground beetle, and yes, I do know what they are not - not stag beetles or chafers; this is a beetle I haven't met before, and no, I didn't take its photograph...). Earlier in the month we heard quail calling, which was exciting, and the grey partridges creak away in the evenings. For a week or so, a red-legged partridge took to yelling its head off on a fencepost in the paddock. Was it trying to intimidate the hens? Or just out-shriek the competition? One morning I woke about 5 because there was so much noise outside my window - it was five blackbirds on the lawn, all scolding a partridge which was looking singularly unimpressed.

The most pleasure has come from a family of garden warblers who are constantly a-flutter around the house, tiny delicate birds with heavy eye-makeup and personalities out of all proportion to their scale, and the swallows - all day the sky is alive with them and the count of the phone lines is up to at least 50. OH says that when he is mowing they play chicken with the tractor, actually flying underneath it as it makes its steady progress round the paddock. There is certainly plenty for them to eat.

And the rain it raineth every day (but at least these streptocarpuses are doing quite well...)

Firebird!

2011-05-26T17:50:00.003+01:00

Last week I was visiting the APs in Devon and took the opportunity to do a little pottering in the garden - the weather was mostly mild and sunny, and the terrace was busy with deep blue damsel flies, orange tip butterflies, even the occasional small blue. My mother and I amused ourselves by counting bird species actually nesting in the garden - we got to well over 30, a count that includes ravens, jays, sparrowhawks, nuthatches...I've just done a similar count for home, and achieved similar numbers of very different birds (and because our northern garden doesn't include many large trees, the way the Devon one does, I expanded our area to include the fields immediately surrounding us, so the buzzards count here, but not in Devon). As I'm writing this at my desk in the window, a pair of bullfinches - regular visitors attracted by my rather laissez-faire atttitude to dandelions - landed in the ash tree opposite.

The high point of the Devon visit, though, was a sighting unlike any I've experienced before: as I walked across the terrace there was a tremendous kerfuffle as two birds hurtled into a pittosporum bush, shrieking their heads off. A high piercing note, an unmistakable screech of fury, and the minute bird emitting the racket was positively bouncing up and down on his branch. Yet despite his tiny size he was highly visible, because he was raising and flashing his crest, a violent streak of fiery orange that flashed in the sunlight. I watched spellbound for several minutes while he bounced and flashed, until the object of his wrath burst from the depths of the bush and fled across the wooded slope below the terrace. The owner of the spectacular headgear was a goldcrest, one of the enchantingly named kinglet family, and our smallest songbird:

Photo from Wikipedia

How such a tiny bundle of fluff could make such a noise I can't imagine, but the picture above does give some idea of the brilliance of his crest. In the past I've struggled to see these elusive creatures, which are more generally "sighted" by tracking their creaky tseeping cry (what Wikipedia calls "a subdued rambling sub-song" - love it!) to a bush and then peering into the murky interior to see the odd flick of a wing - they like dense bushes like yew, and nest in conifers, which makes them especially hard to see. I believe we may have them around us here in Northumberland, I think I heard them in the woodland a couple of fields away, but the tree cover around our garden is not heavy enough for them to visit us here.

I'm back home enjoying the sparrows - my mother is delighted that they now have a regular pair, and envies us our rambunctious flock of more than thirty. Who would ever have thought that sparrows could be rare?

Easter

2011-04-25T17:55:00.002+01:00

A very young Scotch Dumpling, a cooking apple with glorious flowers. The fruit are less appealing to look at, being pale green and knobbly, but I like the pleasant apple froth it creates when cooked.

Easter weekend was uneventful, which was nice, and we had some welcome rain on Saturday evening. Oh yes, and the swallows are back, they arrived on the 20th. Lovely to see them.

Thoughts of warmer days

2011-02-06T16:02:00.000Z

It has rained steadily all day and feels dreich and horrible. Yesterday wasn't quite so drear, and I went outside for a while to see how the various bulbs I'd planted in the autumn were doing, and for a bit of tidying up. A slightly unwelcome discovery (but not a surprise) was that my acidanthera (gladiolus callianthus) corms had all rotted. They should have been brought in for the winter, in fact, but they flowered incredibly late, standing well into the mild days of last November, so I was caught completely by surprise when the snow arrived towards the end of the month. I got back from London to find them under a foot of white stuff and, at that point, I'm afraid they were doomed. If I want more this year, I'll have to buy more.

I despaired, in fact, of them ever flowering, they are really too exotic for our northern summers. But they're so pretty (you can just about tell from the not-very-good photos) and were such a pleasure during the short autumn days, that I may decide to try again. Actually, they only cost about the same as a bunch of supermarket flowers, and we could see them from the house, so I have nothing to complain about really.

The bottom picture shows how gracefully they grow, but you do spend a lot of time looking at those leaves getting longer and thicker. Next time I will grow them in tall pots, with the corms packed quite tightly together, I think. I have a tendency to space bulbs too widely in pots, as though I was planting them in the ground. I'm only slowly learning to wedge them all in as tightly as possible (like they do when selling them in pots). Habits of frugality die hard.

Home to roost

2011-01-22T17:00:00.000Z

I know not everyone takes pleasure in having a rookery next to their home, but I enjoy our neighbours most of the time, and often stop to watch them when I'm shutting up the chickens for the night. This is only a very small part of the flock that musters in waves in the pine trees before they all finally set off to spend the night in the woods below us. I do dissuade them from eating at the bird table, though, as they frighten away the smaller birds.

Moonrise

2011-01-19T17:03:00.000Z

"Softly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon"

The rest of Walter de la Mare's poem is not very appropriate, since it talks about a harvest moon, I think, and this one wasn't very silver-y. Actually, the way it was cradled in the branches of the tree made me think of Sir Patrick Spens:

"I saw the auld moon late yestreen

Wi' the new moon in her arms"

I hope in this case it doesn't betoken a "deidly storm"! We've had enough weather for now.

Foodie's Reading Challenge

2010-12-27T17:54:00.001Z

Not many challenges are undertaken at Cat Musings, but this Christmas brought two fat, delicious cookery books, and the promise of many hours of cosy reading. Recently, I've also been tracking down recipes in a desultory fashion; firstly, adding to my stock of staples, especially things to do with eggs, of which we have a constant surplus, and interesting bread recipes for the machine (yes, I know, but I truly haven't time even for quick, handmade bread) but also researching wartime recipes for an as yet ill-defined project. I don't do a huge amount of cooking but it does interest me, and since we don't go out to eat, it's good to experiment with different cuisines, and we all have our preferred styles: OH has always been interested in Chinese food and has turned out some notable celebration meals over the years (tonight is a family ritual, leftovers of the Christmas goose accompany a Peking duck, served with pancakes, spring onion and cucumber, with plum and hoisin sauces for dipping); both sons love Vietnamese and Thai food and have persuaded me that I can enjoy the combination of hot and sour tastes; I like Italian peasant food, and do most of the baking, but we'll all turn our hands to other styles, and cooking together can be fun, though the kitchen is only big enough to allow two people at once.

Anyway, last week on Nan's blog I saw that she was joining in the Foodies' Reading Challenge hosted by Margot at Joyfully Retired, and at the time I thought it was a great idea, but I wouldn't join because it would only encourage me to buy more books. On Christmas Day, though, both sons gave me books by Tessa Kiros, Venezia and Apples for Jam, because they knew I'd enjoyed her earlier books. And I thought, now I can join that challenge! So my first two books are decided, and I only need two more to get into the Bon Vivant category of 4 to 6; I am quite sure that the library will be able to offer a handful more, and I know that Elder Son has an extensive collection! Now, though, it's time to lay the table for dinner.

Even crosser!

2010-12-08T17:31:00.000Z

I wish I could have shared with you the spectacular sight today of two cock pheasants fighting in the snow! They met on the garden wall, and immediately took offence at each other, fluttering down to the ground where they leapt and struck out. This went on for several minutes while I alternately watched in delight as the sun shone on pristine snow and the rich russet of their feathers as they jumped and curvetted, and cursed while I tried unsuccessfully to make the phone camera work. Wretched thing, it refused to load, and the pheasants disappeared into the hedgerow.

Now that I really want to photograph the pheasants before the snow disappears, the sun probably won't shine tomorrow. But for now, at any rate, I like this picture.

Cold and cross

2010-12-02T16:16:00.001Z

Well, not quite as bad as that really, but the kitchen blackboard on which we note things for the next shopping trip looks as though someone just threw letters at it, so many things are needed. When we buy next year's calendar I'm going to make a note on the October pages that we must stock up on chicken corn, dogfood and prescription needs...that's snow shovels, down the bottom because Younger Son and I could have done with one as we lurched along the track last Friday (with me pushing the car). Lemsip is there, too, because I got home from London that night with a cold which I'm still recovering from, and which is responsible for the lack of blogging here in the last few days. I've been saving my energies for the daily trip outside to clear the gutter where the broadband connection comes into the house, to feed the wild birds and to take the hens their bowl of warm porridge. Instead of demerara sugar on top (which is how I like it), they have a generous sprinkle of dried mealworms.

There's no immediate prospect of getting out. We're not completely cut off, as the neighbours have just managed to get their 4-wheel-drive out this week, but our cars won't manage the mile up to the road until the snow clears a bit, and more is still coming down every day. This is the view from our French windows - that black thing on the left-hand-side is the gutter, which came down last winter as well. There should be some hills in the distance, but I haven't seen the Cheviot for a week. We won't be desperate for supplies until the milk goes off or the bread flour runs out, but today I came in from the outdoor jobs and made a honey and ginger cake for comfort eating (and to use up the older eggs). As you can see from the rather blurry picture, it wasn't long out of the oven before YS and I succumbed to the lure of hot cake. While I was making it I spotted half a jar of marmalade in the fridge - I know what I'll make next! If the milk goes before we can get out to replace it, having cake should help to offset the horror of drinking my tea black (though there will be much gnashing of teeth if this becomes necessary, since I am a tea addict, incapable of working without a regular supply).

Oh, our post has just found its way here by tractor! YS is happy as he was expecting something - we rely very heavily on shopping by post here - me, less so, as the parcel posted from Devon last Tuesday still hasn't arrived. Ho hum. I'll keep hoping for a thaw, but meantime a huge load of snow has just slid off the roof outside my window!

Winter visitors

2010-11-07T17:45:00.000Z

Fieldfare

Photo taken in Rumia, Poland by Adam Kumiszcza

They're back, the fieldfares, and my heart gave a real leap when I saw them in the ash trees at the top of the garden this morning. They are much later than in some areas of the country, but I've found that to be the case every year. There will be no shortage of berries for them this year.

Mellow fruitfulness

2010-09-15T17:43:00.000+01:00

We went recently to Priorwood Garden, in the Borders town of Melrose, on one of our occasional "old peoples" trips. Next to the graceful ruins of Melrose Abbey is a small orchard containing apples dating from medieval times to the present. We'd waited to visit until the apples were ripening, so that we could be tantalised by the prospect of one day picking our own apples. We'll have to be patient for a couple more years, but I'm persuaded that we might add a Victoria plum to our tiny orchard, along with a couple of unfussy cherries. Our old crab apple, though, is covered in fruit, and younger son has plans for making jelly.

Priorwood, a tiny garden, has a dried flower shop where you can see the drying process taking place (and buy dried flowers, of course), and holds an apple day in October (I think possibly on 2 October - for anyone interested there is a phone number on the website). It's a lovely place to visit at this time of year.

Melrose Abbey

Crab apple, John Downie

This damson has rooted partway along its stem

Cooking apple, Dr Harvey

Eating apple, Miller's seedling

The old ladies sunning

2010-09-10T16:40:00.001+01:00

The Bluebells do like to take advantage of good weather - it was very wet most of the week, so they didn't get out much. Today is warmer, if a bit windy, so they can enjoy it. Here they are - scraggy old dears!

For most of the past two months my dressing table has been home to various bottles which might make you wonder about my toilette regime. Alongside the delicately packaged Calvin Klein 1, Paloma, something with such a pretty box that I can't bring myself to start it, and the usual prophylactics against ageing that we over-50s allow ourselves to be conned into buying (though mine are distinctly closer to the cold cream end of the market than the designer labelled kind - indeed, they would be cold cream if it weren't that I don't much like the smell!)...I digress, alongside these fancy bottles are white containers stating "Total Mite Kill!", "Poultri-Drops", and "Just for Scaly Legs!". It comes of living in a small cottage - when you unwrap a parcel there is nowhere to put anything down, and the last line of resort is always my dressing table - things there are out of the way but easy to find. They should, of course, be on their way to the bin where all such items are kept, but the scaly leg treatment needs to be applied regularly, so it's good to keep it where I notice it from time to time.

I'm happy to report that the Bluebells and I are recovering nicely from our scale problems, but this has been the worst year I've known for pests and unpleasantnesses. We made the mistake, too, of moving the girls into a wooden house - we had to move them from their wheeled Eglu, a wonderful beast known here as the Vardo, because Steerage is rather feeble, and stopped being able to flutter up the ladder. We tried customising the ladder, to no avail, and for several weeks younger son and I took turns at crawling into the run to pick her up and put her into the house each night, but that was less than ideal on several counts: first, she also tended to take a nose dive (beak dive?) or her way out in the morning; second, it was frequently a horrible, muddy task and very difficult in the dark, taking both of us, one to hold the chicken and one to hold the torch; and third, it meant at least one of us had to be here, since OH is, like Pooh Bear, a trifle stout, to put it kindly. The wooden house was a cheap option, but by mid-summer we were fighting mite infestations (and more earwigs than you've ever seen, yeuch!). The roof blew off in a summer gale, too, leaving three rather ruffled and indignant ladies, so a necessary accessory ever since has been a large bag of potting compost on top. I expect you know that if you heave a bag of compost off a chicken house roof and onto the ground, it tends to split?

We got tired of the wooden retirement home (not as tired as itchy hens, I'm sure) and the new retirement home is a handsome latest-style Eglu Go. I think with two Eglus we are probably producing the most expensive eggs in the history of humanity (best not to mention this to OH!), but they taste wonderful (the eggs, that is), and we do love our girls. We do manage to be pragmatic up to a point - one was despatched when she became ill: the vet might have been able to prolong her life at the expense of her comfort, but it seemed much kinder to get her misery over and done with. As long as the girls take pleasure in strolling round the paddock, and stretching their wings out in a dust bath, though, we are happy to clean them out, chat to them and provide quantities of dried mealworms for their delectation. Boy, do chickens love mealworms! How do they know they're so good? Betty runs across the paddock shrieking with excitement when she sees the tub. Yesterday, she flew half its length (possible slight exaggeration, but it was an impressive feat for an old lady).

Off now to check that the buzzard isn't anywhere to be seen - regular readers may remember Betty's nasty experience? Her confidence is entirely restored, but when they are out frequent checks are necessary, and if it's about, the girls have to go in. If we're in the garden, of course, it's a different matter, and then they really enjoy the company.

Millefleurs barbus d'Uccles

2010-09-08T18:28:00.000+01:00

Since I am in chicken mode - still besotted with the new girls, who are so keen on mealworms that taming them is going well - I thought I would post a picture of the prettiest breed of chickens we ever kept. I was going to use the picture from Wikipedia, but it really doesn't do them justice, so I thought that perhaps the British Belgian Bantam Club might be glad of a bit of extra publicity, and so wouldn't mind if I used one off their site.

When we lived in Scotland, we had a trio of these chickens, who were extremely tame, and liked to sit on people's shoulders (my mother-in-law was not keen). Unfortunately, they were really a bit too tame, and also liked to go for walks. In those days we lived opposite my sons' primary school, and it was a regular occurrence for the Barbus to turn up in the playground, at which point elder son was usually deputed to bring them home. Sometimes, they would set off straight down the hill through the village, and I am afraid that one day someone seized both opportunity and chickens; the someone is question, of course, might have been the fox, but we searched high and low and there was no sign of anyone, not so much as a feather, so perhaps they went to a new home. I was very sorry to lose them, they were tiny bundles of personality.

I don't think I would want to keep them on our clay soil here, they would get very weighed down in the mud. And I don't think that one of our neighbours would be frightfully keen on having a cockerel next door! It is exceedingly quiet here, and we're always rather embarrassed when the dogs choose to demonstrate their guarding qualities: a chicken shrieking his head off at 3.30am might not be popular!

New girls

2010-09-04T18:20:00.000+01:00

The Bluebell girls are getting quite elderly, and we only have three left, so we decided it was time to add to the flock. We're delighted with the four new girls - 1 black rock and three speckeldys. As with the Bluebells, where the original leader of the flock was one of the two white hens (succeeded when she died suddenly by the other one), the black rock has immediately appointed herself Chicken-in-Charge, and is living up to her name, Pocahontas. (Well, it suited her.) The others are just a little younger, I think.

Angel eyes

2010-07-31T15:22:00.001+01:00

My mother and I each have one of these, a pelargonium called Angel Eyes, which seems to be a very prolific flowerer, My plant is only a baby, and survived a hot airless journey home from Devon last month.

Next week is going to be purgatory, with four windows being replaced on Thursday. This means that half the contents of my tiny office space will have to be packed up and moved, including of course my computer. So three days disruption for one day of actual work. Meanwhile, the ongoing broadband nightmare means that the router which is sitting beside my desk absolutely must not be switched off, and the track is being dug up to try to address some of the also ongoing water supply problems. Oh, and someone should turn up to replace the oven element for the third time. The last two weeks have seen BT out goodness knows how many times, a surveyor for the windows, the lawnmower repair man, the oven man, someone to cut the hedge - considering that I can go for whole weeks seeing no-one but the family and maybe the postie, it all feels a bit overwhelming.

All I want is a hermitage with good broadband - too much to ask?

Sleeping dogs

2010-07-25T17:56:00.001+01:00

As a rule it's almost impossible to take a picture of Senior Dog upside down and relaxing. Point a camera at her and, quicker than a flash, she's the right way up and four-square in front of you with an expression of eager anticipation. On occasion, you would swear she had managed to conjure a ball out of nowhere, too (what this really means is that she's gone to sleep with one tucked away beside her, just in case...).

So, this afternoon, it took real artfulness - I noticed her upside down while I was putting away the things from the dishwasher. I crept off to collect and switch on the camera. On my return, I picked up the pile of plates and clattered across to the dresser with them, then slid my hand oh so quietly out from behind the dresser door and click! she was caught. Silly old thing! That cushion is just where she likes it. It takes a lot of effort to get a chair just right.

Baa!

2010-06-03T18:27:00.000+01:00

I want one of these!

Eggs everywhere...

2010-05-24T15:30:00.000+01:00

I'll never make a food blogger! For a start I don't cook very often - I earn the living, OH does the cooking. But he's been cooking practically every day for the last 18 years or so, and I feel it's time he had the occasional break. So the idea is that, when I'm home, I'll cook on Saturdays, and younger son thinks he might do a regular slot as well.

Unfortunately, this week I pretty much forgot about it and spent most of Saturday in the garden, cleaning chicken houses and planting strawberries - I did offer, but the thing that needed using up was sausages, so OH very nobly made toad-in-the-hole with ratatouille - it was very good. Since I offered to take up the spatula again my contributions have mostly involved eggs, since we have a glut, and I do a mean soufflé, if I say so myself. Last weekend I did potato and fennel soup, thanks to the River Cottage May newsletter and to our local Green Shop, which had lovely fennel and excellent spelt bread, followed by Scotch eggs. In the past I've always made these by deep-frying them, something I'm not entirely happy about - it uses a lot of oil, the end result is a bit greasy for my taste and it no doubt ups the calory content. This time, though, I baked the eggs in the oven and we all really liked them.

Hard boil as many eggs as you want, cooling them as soon as they are done and peeling them - I like to do it under a trickle of water from the cold tap, which helps to loosen the shell. I used sausages for the coating, splitting the skin and peeling it off - it took about one and a half sausages per egg. Wrap the sausage meat round the egg, sealing all the cracks, then dip the egg into beaten egg, and then into fresh breadcrumbs. The bake in the oven at 200 C for about half an hour. Let them cool a bit before serving, it intensifies the flavour of the sausage - best with salad, but in my student days I liked them with baked beans.

The other reason why I'll never make a food blogger is that I don't take pictures of things. I'll try to do better in future.

Poorly puppy

2010-05-06T13:03:00.000+01:00

The Bolter isn't very well today. She ran full-tilt into Senior Dog a month ago and since then has had bouts of limping after she's been running. She's on rest and anti-inflammatories at the moment, but yesterday I thought she was feeling a bit off-colour and this morning she was sick - quite unusual for her, she has a pretty cast-iron digestive system, trained by years of eating every disgustingly dead thing she can find! She has clearly decided, though, that poorly tummies should be kept warm, and has retired to bed (mine) for the day.I expect the pills have upset her, so we may be in for a couple of days of this.

Salad days

2010-04-25T15:13:00.002+01:00

Reading John Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure for the Cornflower Book Group last week provided a good deal of food for reminiscence. Early in the book its horrible but compelling narrator, Tarquin Winot, talks about first experiences of restaurants:

One’s first restaurant is not or need not be one’s literal first restaurant, the place where one ate in public for the first time and paid for the experience (the forgotten motorway service station on a trip north to auntie’s, the first good-behaviour rewarding teashop scone), but rather the place where one first encountered the blinding, consoling hugeness of the restaurant idea. Stiff napery; heavy gravity-laden crockery; pristine wineglasses, erect and presentable as Guardsmen on parade; an expectant Commando of pronged, edged and expectant cutlery; the human furniture of other diners and the uniformed waiters; above all the awareness that one has finally arrived at a setting designed primarily to minister to one’s needs, a bright palace of rendered attention.

I got to thinking about my own experience of eating out and came up with a trio of memories, mostly by no means as grand as those which Tarquin is thinking of. The earliest is when I was six, in Scarborough, where my mother was working at the gloriously opulent Royal Opera House, in those days a proper repertory theatre and sadly now demolished, despite the fact that it had been refurbished in the 1970s. Rep companies tend to be very familial, so it was a fairly regular occurrence for a large group to descend at Sunday lunchtime on Scarborough’s first Chinese restaurant, where chopsticks and chop suey (which I adored!) were a novelty. I remember a large, light, upstairs dining room, leisurely meals accompanied by the sound of laughter.

My second recollection of eating out as a small child involves that largely-defunct institution, afternoon tea which, in the 1960s, could still be ordered in most hotels around the country – station hotels being particularly reliable in this respect. Sunday trips out in my grandparents’ car occasionally ended with tea (I recall a slightly undignified visit to the Loch Rannoch Hotel in Perthshire* when I had just fallen into a bog and was rather damp around the nether regions). Hot toasted teacakes or marmite on toast seemed much more of a treat than they could ever do at home: the toast was crisper, the butter sweeter…in those far off days, hotels seemed like heaven to me.

By 1967 my mother was working in London as wardrobe supervisor for a large organisation, overseeing productions both at home and on tour, and that summer she was asked to go to Bournemouth, where a summer show was opening next week at the Winter Gardens (to my horror, also now demolished – we used to joke that theatres my stepfather went to always burnt down; now it seems that all the theatres of my childhood proved surplus to civic requirements). I went too, and the team for getting the costumes ready for a show starring Tommy Cooper and Frankie Vaughan (big names then!) comprised my mother, the elegant and charming designer, two dancers from Bournemouth’s other theatre, the resident wardrobe mistress and me – there were 12 dancers in the show and I can’t remember how many costume changes (at least six, it was a lavish affair), but by the end of the week I was a dab hand with a staple gun and was practically on first name terms with the assistants at the haberdashery counter of Bournemouth’s department store. Yes, really, sixty yards of elastic, please.

The designer stayed in the rather splendid Royal Bath Hotel, while my mother and I went to a hotel next to the theatre, so that if I got tired (which I didn’t, it was all much too much fun) I would be near at hand. The evening we arrived though, we all sailed into the Royal Bath, where it was agreed that although the dining room was officially closed, the chef could probably rustle something up if we didn’t mind a lack of choice. I don’t remember what I ate, but vividly recall the pleasure of sitting by an open window on a warm summer’s evening, and watching several slices of melba toast float gently upwards in the breeze. The head waiter, who attended single-handed to our needs was stately, but not unbending. Several nights later, following the show’s opening, our wardrobe “team” returned to the Royal Bath dining room at nearly midnight – the centre of the room now taken up by a long table sparkling with silverware and glass – for a celebratory dinner, the head waiter, now an old friend, again presiding. This rather blurred photograph, the best I could find, shows that the dining room hasn't changed much in 40 years!

If I'd known then how much time I would spend in hotels now, I wouldn't have minded in the slightest – actually, even now, I don't mind it much, finding them to be places where you can retreat behind a closed door. I prefer them medium-sized, not so huge that you are completely anonymous, but not so small that you feel constantly on display. I generally eat elsewhere, though I could easily be tempted back by mid-afternoon toast and marmite!

* Edited later to add that the Loch Rannoch Hotel's website makes it quite clear that afternoon tea is still served there - nice to see they have got their priorities right. I must go back there one day.

And seeing visitors

2010-04-21T18:21:00.000+01:00

Photo: RSPB website

Rather exciting to see one of these walking across the lawn this afternoon. It's a ring ouzel, presumably on its way into Britain and heading for the nearby moorland and summer nesting ground. I was hoping to get a photograph of it, but the resident blackbirds were very agressively seeing it off even as I spotted it. The population is in serious decline in here, so I count myself lucky to have had even a fleeting sight.

The jackdaws, meanwhile, are frantically flying in the most bizarre collection of potential nesting material, bits of fluff (deer and dog?), spare feathers - even an unattached pheasant wing, which was proudly conveyed to the nest site. Ten minutes later, it was lying on the lawn - rejected? too heavy to stay put? A little later still, it had disappeared again, replaced, I assumed, but then I saw one of the jackdaws flying away from the nest with it. I'm not sure whether it was a strange bird, poaching, or a disenchanted partner ("It's not hygienic, dear!") Five minutes later, and its proud finder was back again with the wing firmly clutched in its beak. I guess it has now been cemented in!

Watching the neighbours

2010-04-19T12:26:00.000+01:00

Jackdaw by soikha

My new neighbours are a very industrious couple. They spend most of the day nest-building, having chosen a desirable site in the ash tree opposite my window, and I can't help watching when I'm supposed to be working. I can't see the nest itself, as it is deep in the ivy I've been threatening to remove - every spring when I decide to start work in the garden, the birds have beaten me to it and I resign myself to waiting until the nesting season is over. Somehow, come the autumn, nothing gets done.

This morning, Cor and Cora (as I am beginning to think of them) are prowling about the lawn collecting clumps of grass mowings, as well as venturing further in pursuit of sticks from around the field margins. Every few minutes they return with beaks full of spiky additions, sometimes flagging under the weight of a particularly choice item. One nearly fell off the branch just now. They are being watched beady-eyed by a pair of wood pigeons, who have previously raised the odd brood in the depths of the ivy (not very sucessfully, the squabs have a distressing tendency to make fatal descents from the heights), and there may yet be some nest-nabbing! Judging by the amount of sparrow activity in the ash tree, there are a number of smaller homes too - that's the excuse for not removing the ivy, it does offer such excellent habitat, though I do worry about the weight of it when the winds are high.

I rather look forward to young jackdaws - they will undoubtedly be noisy, and may be destructive, but I suspect they might prove amusing, if young starlings are anything to go by. The sparrowhawks, by the way, are back as predicted, and telling everyone about it at the top of their voices!

Reaction sets in

2010-04-12T20:43:00.000+01:00

Photo: angmac

* I've been working really hard for the last couple of months, setting up and running a conference. I'm lucky, really, the people I run it for are nice, the college where it took place last week was comfortable and the staff couldn't have been more helpful, and my wonderful younger son has been my conference assistant for 10 years, not only working hard during the event, but driving us both there and back (have I admitted it here before? I don't drive - and if I did, at conference time, I'd probably kill us both.)

As of Friday afternoon, I'm back, and I enjoyed the weekend. I indulged in the only form of retail therapy that remotely interests me - I spent rather too much at the garden centre, and spent yesterday afternoon up to my elbows in compost. Today, however, despite lovely weather, and a cast-iron (you'd think) excuse to take time off (I am due at least 5 days in lieu, since I worked most weekends in the last month), I turned on the computer - a grant application looms, and I thought I'd better spend some time clearing up the outstanding email, at least. Only to find that the deadline for a second grant application has been brought forward a month, and I now have to prepare 2 submissions in the next three weeks. So now it's 8.15pm and I have alienated both husband and aforementioned wonderful son by losing my temper in an entirely manufactured way. I feel very unkindly towards the world.

Normally, one of the few things I like about being 55 is being much more equable. Most of the time these days I pass pretty convincingly for cheerful, and if I mention a tendency to moodiness people look surprised. Tiredness is my undoing, though, and a conference causes more than just a energy dip. I ran on pure adrenaline for several days, and now I'm suffering the consequences. And I'm afraid the growly black dog may be around for some time, because I hate grant applications more than anything else I can think of. Grrr-r-r.

* This wasn't at all the post I was planning. I was quite cheerful until half way through the washing up...

Blackbirds and thrushes

2010-04-04T16:15:00.000+01:00

The blackbirds and thrushes sang in the green bushes…

goes the folk song. Our garden is full of them at the moment, all intent on feathering their nests and nurturing their genes. At this time of year one of my amusements is watching sparrow fights, in which a horde of shrieking fluttering little brown birds rampage round the garden, like small boys in the school playground. This morning, though, it was blackbirds – five of them whizzed past me and into the hawthorn hedge, where I wondered if they would escape without getting spiked, so intent were they on each other.

Now that I’m at my desk, two very handsome song thrushes are stalking round the lawn, while overhead two buzzards soar. They too have been very active in the last few days, with some aerobatic displays more readily associated with some of the more agile raptors. This year I think we are going to have the buzzards nesting in the wood at the foot of the garden, while the sparrowhawks will probably be back in their usual tree just beyond the paddock. With both lots of fledglings screaming imprecations at their parents it could be a noisy summer. If you haven’t heard a hungry young sparrowhawk, believe me, it can shriek for England!

It’s pretty noisy already, in fact. There is a rookery here, and now that the rooks are convinced that spring is here, activity is non-stop. They wake at about 4am, with sleepy squawks and grumbles, and by about 5.30 the air of full of creaks and groans as they gear up for another busy day of collecting twigs. It’s not just picking of sticks (there’s another folk song – I’m as bad as the birds today) from the ground, the trees are full of rooks bent on that perfect twig, tugging away with dogged determination. On the fringes are the jackdaws, but they can’t compete for noise. Rook activity goes on all day, foraging for food and sticks, then as dusk falls those who aren’t nesting gather in our ash trees in great flocks like a flight of broken umbrellas, before rising all at once in a black cloud, streaming overhead on their way to their night roost in the woods.

Ornament and comely grace

2010-03-19T16:08:00.000Z

Spring in Northumberland isn't very far advanced yet, and I am swamped with work, so this morning I took a detour via the Garden Centre on the way back from the bank, and bought two deliciously scented sweet violets (viola odorata) - I wish Blogger had a scratch-and-sniff function, because they are quite delectable. They will do nicely to assuage my immediate need for spring flowers. With luck, they should also self-seed themselves around the place, which would be delightful.

In the tapestry series The Hunt of the Unicorn, one of the flowers surrounding the captive unicorn is viola odorata, because the sweetly-scented blooms are symbolic of fertility:

and in the Herbal, Gerard says:

very many by these Violets receive ornament and comely grace: for there be made of them Garlands for the heade, nosegaies and poseies, which are delightfull to looke upon and pleasant to smell to...Gardens themselves receive by these the greatest ornament of all, chiefest beautie, and most gallant grace; and the recreation of the mind which is taken heere by, cannot be but verie good and honest...

They amongst our oldest medicinal plants, containing salicylic acid among the active constituents, and were used by the Athenians "to procure sleep", while the Anglo-Saxons used sweet violet as a wound-herb and a cosmetic. The Romans made wine with the flowers, and of course they have long been used in perfumery. Crystallized violets were a popular delicacy, and in the time of Charles II "violet sugar" was a favourite. The leaves can be used in salads (although they have a laxative effect) and were used in poultices. You could try using the fresh leaves on bruises, for a cooling and soothing compress. Or, if you like a seriously sophisticated treat, what about these?

To crystallize violets, dip the flowers in beaten eggwhite, or paint the flowers with a small brush. Then dip them into caster sugar, or sprinkle it over them if the flowers are very delicate. You can do the same with primrose flowers to make pretty decorations for an Easter or simnel cake.

Spring Bluebells

2010-03-13T17:32:00.000Z

It was a lovely morning, and while I cleaned out the chicken house, the ladies took a stroll. Betty has entirely forgotten her horrible experience with the buzzard, and investigated every nook and cranny under the ash tree, but the Bluebells preferred to bathe in some nice soft, dry soil. Bliss all round.

Buzzard attack!

2010-03-05T17:22:00.000Z

Along with a lot of other people, I have always believed that buzzards won't attack chickens, so it was a considerable shock to find that while I was away recently, my favourite hen, Betty, had been attacked. She's the smallest of our girls, so it was very fortunate that the attempt was unsuccessful, leaving her bloodied and shocked, but basically okay. The girls had been free to wander in the paddock, which they loved, but have now been relegated to their covered run again, unless there is someone out in the garden to keep on eye on them. We were all outside on Sunday, and it was good to see that she's entirely recovered from the experience (or forgotten all about it). That's a very youthful Betty at the front of the picture - she's not at all pretty, but she is very sweet. When they were free to roam she would rush up the paddock to greet anyone who went out there.

A quick Google search suggests that it's not, after all, uncommon for buzzards to look beadily at chickens, but it does seem significant that it happened at the end the winter, with snow having lain for a much longer period than I've seen for years. When we came to live here about 15 years ago, there were no buzzards at all, but now we have quite a large population. We also have plenty of small creatures as a rule, on which they can feed, but this winter the voles were snug under a couple of feet of snow.

Spring flowers

2010-02-20T18:06:00.000Z

Spring has certainly arrived in Devon, though there's still not much sign here in Northumberland - since I got back on Thursday it has been cold with a smattering of snow. I may go and buy some flowering bulbs to cheer up the garden!

A blousy wench

2010-02-04T18:51:00.000Z

I can't remember which variety this is - it's the first time it's flowered, just in time to cheer everyone up post-Christmas.

Automatic writing

2010-02-01T16:55:00.006Z

I wish! Finding time to write blog posts is always something of a struggle (and of course it was idiotic to land myself with two blogs to keep up) so I find myself eagerly seeking new ways to make it easier. I already travel almost everywhere with a laptop, but evenings in hotel rooms or long train journeys are often spent working rather than relaxing. Posting by phone is beyond me - I am a slow texter, writing words in full and scrupulously correcting mistyped letters.

What I really wanted, I mused, was a device that would transcribe my thoughts as I look out of the train window. This reminded me of a Russian short story I read many years ago, about an inventor and writer who developed a machine that would record his thoughts. With such a device, he thought, he could write masterpieces! So he settled down with his machine to compose his magnum opus, only to find later when he looked at the tape, that it read something like, "Sitting by the blue Black Sea...why is the Black Sea blue?...why is it called the Black Sea when it looks blue?..." and so on, at great length. I did wonder about a dictaphone, since I already use voice recognition software, but that requires privacy, and is consequently of limited use. Other people may regard it as okay to sit on the train and talk into a recorder - I don't. (Actually, there is something of a problem with the voice recognition set-up, as I always forget to turn off the radio, and my voice, dictating, gets muddled up with Jenni Murray talking about female innards, or Martha Kearney sounding like a slightly benign terrier as she makes some politician squirm.)

Well, late last year I took the plunge and bought one of these. There was a bit of a setback the first time I took it away with me - no longer attached by an umbilicus to the computer, it ceased to function, so that I found myself at a meeting, ready to take minutes, with nothing but digital paper, so I had to scrounge. Some protracted chasing of the supplier followed (I was put off buying it from Amazon by people who had trouble getting replacements, but in retrospect, I'd as soon fight with them as anyone else) and the new one eventually arrived just before Christmas, just when I didn't want to play with it.

The smart pen, which is a little on the fat side for comfort, writes on "dot paper" which you can even print yourself (though given the price of printer ink, I can't imagine there's much saving) or which can be bought in variously-sized numbered notebooks. When it's docked after writing, it uploads the used pages to your computer, where you can save them. As well as recording writing it can perform some computational functions and record sound (which is disconcerting when you turn it on by mistake and hear yourself wittering away).

One of my concerns was that the charge might not hold up for more than a day's meetings, but on a recent London trip I used it for several days without having to recharge. I could have recharged it with the laptop - it's just a USB connection to the charging "cradle" - but it's not really set up to use with more than one computer at a time, and I didn't want to compromise it on my first trip away from its parent. In fact, it can connect to more than one - you just have to remember that you must upload its information to both before deleting anything. Once the data is uploaded there is a web-based desktop to store it so that you can access it from anywhere. I must admit I haven't used this very sucessfully yet, but that may be a function of my hopeless broadband rather than a software failing. Social networking is available through this site, but that's not something I am likely to make much use of. Much more practical, from my point of view, is the associated OCR software which translates my scrawl into text that can be transferred to Word.

I've written a couple of blog posts with the pen - not this one - and minuted a number of meetings. My minuting style will have to undergo some change for me to turn the uploaded text into a proper record: I am having to remember not to use the abbreviations I spent years honing, and to write more clearly than I tend to: unlike the voice recognition software, the OCR doesn't learn my personal idiosyncrasies. (Of course, it wouldn't be any use at all if I wrote in shorthand, but happily, I never learnt.) Despite the fatness of the pen, I didn't notice my hand cramping more than usual after a day of writing. One thing you do have to watch - it rolls very readily. A number of reviewers reported having pens roll onto the floor, but this can be combated by wrapping a small elastic band round the top (unaesthetic) or just Being Very Careful (my preferred option, until it does barrel its way off a table, at which point I'll regret ignoring the advice).

Altogether, I'm reasonably pleased with it so far. Perhaps I should add that the pen comes in black (to match my clothes) or silver, with 2 and 4GB memories. I have no idea how the latter works in terms of everyday use, though I went for the 2GB version. I don't plan on using audio recording much, so I can't imagine it will be an issue. I'll try to remember to post an update later in the year. One caveat: they are pretty expensive, and I shouldn't think they are going to come down in price anytime soon. And I wonder if the new Android/Google phones might start to fulfill many of the functions before long.

A last post for 2009

2009-12-28T17:33:00.004Z

Poor old Cat Musings has been much neglected of late - when I finally got home from Devon I had so much work to do that I had to be really strict with myself about time spent at the computer: if I wasn't working then there were other priorities than blogging, like reminding the dogs who I was! But over the last few days I've had a little time to myself, once I had caught up with the necessary Christmas-sy tasks. No decorations this year, I put up the cards and bought a poinsettia (quite the most pathetic one you've ever seen, unfortunately, but there wasn't much choice left). Just before the holiday we'd had a complete new bathroom suite including shower installed, and I ought to be clearing off the remains of the tiles ready for redecorating before the floor is done, but it can wait a little longer.

Time to myself meant that I've installed Google Chrome on the computer, to see whether I prefer it to Firefox, and played around a bit on YouTube. After some searching, I found this wonderful piece of music, The Second Spring by Chinese singer Tsai Chin, which I loved when I was small - it was the B-side of a 78rpm record, and I couldn't remember what it was called:

Home again

2009-10-16T13:44:00.005+01:00

I am back home, and hope I am not tempting providence by saying so. The APs are managing with some help from the neighbours and FD, true to form, is out and about again, welcomed back by the surprising number of people on the dogwalking circuit who had missed him. And That Dog is fully recovered and as rambunctious as ever. My real crisis is averted for the time being and I am chained to my desk attending to correspondence.

I suppose it's not surprising that I am now having a mini-crise, a crisisette. I'm fretting about eveything: neglected work, neglected garden, the fact that there is nowhere in this house to out anything down any more, and I can't think what to do about it...even my neglected Other Half, since at the start of the summer I had promised that we would have an occasional day out (we can't go far as he has CFS) in our new (to us) car. We have managed a total of two outings all year; most years we make an off-season trip to Seahouses, where we share delicious fish and chips with the dogs and walk on the sands, before a quick stop in Bamburgh on the way home - high excitement in this household, I can tell you, but we haven't got that far. Not that I mind outings when the weather is colder, and the dogs don't care at all, but I just don't have time.

Instead, I've wasted time today dithering over when to go back to Devon - I'll have to go close to Christmas but I can't leave it until then. It's all getting very expensive, but this is absolutely my last whingeing session. Back to writing about nature, I promise!

To which end, I think we'll have a random armadillo to cheer us up (the last was on Geranium Cat's Bookshelf), since I find them very appealing:

Oh glory

2009-09-30T18:21:00.003+01:00

There are small consolations from time to time. This morning glory is a joy to behold in the mornings - I pass it on my way to the washing line. FD is out of hospital (we won't talk about the state in which they discharged him) and now feeling a little more cheerful - amazing the difference eating can make. The dog is feeling better too, which means disruptive and demanding and generally infuriating, blast him.

The late evening sunshine on the church tower is pleasing too, but I'm not going to take its picture. And coming back from shopping I saw an egret sitting in the topmost branches of a dead tree, surrounded by 4 rooks, 3 magpies and a buzzard. It looked entirely untroubled by such company, and finally the rooks went off to mob the buzzard, which was obviously much more fun.

A small hiatus

2009-09-27T14:07:00.003+01:00

Not much time for blogging around here this past week. As I have mentioned, I am in Devon because both the Aged Parents had suffered injuries - unfortunately, FD's enforced bed rest turned into pneumonia and I found myself inexpertly nursing someone who was becoming seriously ill; though that didn't last too long, thank goodness. The doctor arrived and mercifully said FD needed to be in hospital, the dog - who had been looking increasingly uncomfortable all day - fell over, and the vet was sent for. Vet's nurse arrived, loaded dog into car and drove off, ambulance arrived, loaded FD in and drove off, my mother and I looked at each other...

FD is somewhat better, thank goodness, but now we are on hospital visiting. Or rather, my mother is, while I look after the dog, who is subdued after a severe attack of gastritis, but recovering his bounce. I haven't done any work for days and am beginning to panic slightly. I'm also wondering when I will get home again (I am missing my own dogs dreadfully, of course) and thanking the various gods of small domestic disasters that OH is having a good patch, and that I'm not needed at home. I'm trying to leave this rambling old house in a better state than I found it, so I'm falling into bed at night utterly exhausted, but when I have time I shall be looking for fellow bloggers caring for elderly parents, I think, in search of a bit of moral support and someone to share the anxieties with. Any recommendations, anyone?

Of mice and ....

2009-09-23T18:03:00.000+01:00

Wood mouse

The other day my mother and I were mystified when she took some boxes out of the kitchen cupboard: three open plastic boxes each contain bird seed, peanuts and dried dogfood, but that morning the peanuts and dogfood were all muddled up. Now, in the general run of things that would mean that while feeding the birds, FD had dropped one or both boxes, swept up and dumped the whole lot back into approximately the right place. That would explain the fluff too, stuffing from the dog mat that sits next to the cupboard door. The puzzle, of course, was that FD is tucked up in bed with an injured back, and definitely shouldn't have been feeding birds. Had him come downstairs while we were asleep? He can walk with a stick, but it seemed unlikely. However, the whole question seemed best left alone, and I sorted the dogfood out from the peanuts and the boxes went back into the cupboard.

This morning, however, the same thing had happened again, and we realised that a mouse - not behind a skirting board - has taken up residence in the cupboard (not very surprising in the circumstances, it must seem like paradise!) and is systematically sorting out preferred foodstuffs for a long hard winter ahead. I'm afraid the mouse's days are numbered, once FD is on his feet again - peanuts are for birds, not mice and squirrels. In the meantime, my mother likes mice and will igonore it provided it focuses its activities on that cupboard and not elsewhere. I'm somewhere in the middle - I generally use live traps at home, and take invading mice on long journeys when I catch them (though I think I have mentioned before that I reckon they usually beat me home) since I prefer them outside.

A couple of weeks ago a met a mouse in the downstairs loo one evening. It was an enchanting creature, no common housemouse, but a wood mouse, with huge expressive ears and liquid brown eyes. It stared at me thoughtfully for a while, before ambling off through a small gap in the door frame. I haven't mentioned it to Father Dear.

The halt and the lame

2009-09-20T17:51:00.003+01:00

Walking the dog this afternoon, I was thinking about families, and responsibilities, and so on: I have now spent more time this summer in Devon than at home, since my stepfather added a crushed vertebra to my mother's badly sprained ankle, rendering them both incapacitated at once. The dog, though comparatively elderly now himself, is unfortunately an out-and-out lunatic, who has both Aged Parents so firmly under his paw that he dictates every household routine. He views me with the jaundiced eye of sibling rivalry, and I suppose, if I'm honest, I view him much as I would do a spoilt toddler, though I try to be patient.

At one stage in the walk I was composing this post in my head (by way of explanation for my lack of blogging activity) and, as I said, brooding on families in general. I could, I thought, introduce my parents, FD (Father Dear) and MM (Madam Moth); we all, I would have to explain, tend to refer to each other by silly names, though I have been circumspect about using them, ever since OH took exception to my referring to him as The Playboy of the Western World. Honest, it was meant to be a mildly ironic allusion to a man not greatly given to garrulity and extravagance, but I think he took it to mean that he wasn't very exciting. Anyway, back to the other half of the family. FD was coined by my late stepbrother, himself always referred to as The Seventh Earl, named as he was after Titus Groan (yes, we knew the Earl of Groan was the Seventy-seventh of that ilk, but we couldn't quite compete, dynastically).

I was just congratulating myself on being the only one who didn't own a silly name, when I remembered that my mother's infrequent letters to me during my childhood began, first: Dear Baby Bird, and later, Dearest Bird Bath, after I had protested that the first was soppy. Madam Moth, of course, which appeared during my early obsession with Hamlet, was short for Madam Mother, but the overtones of Puccini pleased me, and I still begin letters that way. MM, on the other hand, still doesn't write many letters, which is just as well as no-one but me can ever read her writing.

Anyway, the sprained ankle is recovering slowly but satisfactorily, though the back injury is newly done and there are some weeks of recuperation to go. I have said I will stay for a couple more weeks, since in theory I can work from pretty much anywhere. In practice, of course, by the time I have delivered breakfast on a tray to one, it's pretty much time to offer morning coffee to the other, then there is lunch to prepare (they like a proper lunch, something to look forward to), then there is That Dog to walk, followed by afternoon tea….if I get up early I can have a couple of hours uninterrupted then that's about it for the day. Fortunately, I've been able to commandeer a son to do some of my work for me…

I can hear a mouse behind the skirting board. They are all moving in for the winter. I expect they will want breakfast on trays, too.

The Day Job by Mark Wallington

2009-09-01T18:40:00.000+01:00

Well, I said in my last post that I had wanted easy reading, and this book certainly met that requirement. The Day Job is the story of a year in the author's life before he and his partner managed to sell a script idea to Not the Nine O' Clock News. Since then he's written quite a few things I've never seen, though I note that he adapted one of my favourite travel memoirs for the BBC (Terry Darlington's Narrow Dog to Carcassonne - review coming up sometime soon, since I am about to start re-reading it). Unfortunately, I can't see any sign of the film having been finished - rats.

Anyway, back to The Day Job. Unable to sell his scripts, Mark Wallington decided that the best way to earn a modest living while keeping enough time available for writing would be to take up gardening. He didn't seem to know a great deal about it, but was fortunate in his first client, who needed help because her arthritis had become too sever for her to manage her large garden alone. Under her guidance, Wallington seems to have managed to wing it, doing mostly maintenance work during the summer, gaining clients by word of mouth and being lucky enough to find Mr Gold, owner of an extensive string of properties let to non-gardening tenants. Mild excitement is provided by his rivalry with Powergardeners and by the author's lack of any real knowledge about gardening - will he be unmasked as an imposter?

I was kept reading by the fact that there is nothing to object to - Wallington and his friends are an amiable bunch, and his adventures mildly amusing. The writing is chatty and eveything moves along at a fairly rollicking pace, summer reading if ever I saw it.

Mark Wallington has written a better known book, 500 Mile Walkies, about a journey along the Pennine Way with a dog. It has, I see, 2 sequels, so perhaps he has found his niche as a writer (and explains his interest in the Narrow Dog book). I think I might give the first one a try...

The Tides of Time: Archaeology on the Northumbrian Coast by Caroline Hardy and Sarah Rushton

2009-08-28T18:52:00.000+01:00

The trouble with ordering books from the library is you don’t always know what you are getting. I had hoped for a good solid book on coastal archaeology, but what I got was a hybrid funded by the Countryside Agency and published by Northumberland County Council that isn’t really quite sure what its audience is. The large format and glossy pictures suggest a coffee table book for tourists, while the blurb on the back cover promises that: "If you have an interest in the past, this book will supply all you need to develop that interest through visiting archaeological remains and perhaps even finding new sites for yourself!" (Therein lies the problem, I think: the County Council couldn’t simply produce something to read, it has to fulfill a need.)

The book is organised chronologically and thematically (resources, defences), starting with prehistoric remains, but at 96 pages, there’s not room to cover much more than the obvious landmarks, while “Finding new sites for yourself” is dealt with in less than half a page. The photographs are attractive and alongside the site descriptions are useful notes on access, while for each section there is a good “pull-out block” with a list of further reading. It is this last, with the aid of the library catalogue, which might provide me with some serious reading on local archaeology, so for that, at least, I owe it some thanks. At the reasonable price of £8.99, though, this is a nice book for visitors to take home

We plough the fields and scatter

2009-08-27T11:23:00.003+01:00

Photo: Chris Miles

Occasionally, living in the country is not all bucolic pleasures and the ripe fruits of harvest. In recent years we have been beset by what my son calls "the smell of death" - not the rotting corpse smell which sometimes happens if a mouse dies under the floorboards, and which is literally the smell of death, but the awful miasma created by the pile of sewage waste that lives a quarter of a mile down the track, and which is ploughed into the fields at this time of year. At such times, it's an undescribable, but utterly pervasive smell, with a background whiff of ammonia, and it catches at the back of your throat, causes headaches and nausea and OH is having nosebleeds (though they were probably started by the chaff that flew at the beginning of the week when the grain was being cut).

People living in the countryside are sometimes divided over the issue of smell - many people aren't keen in living near a pig farm, for instance. With the exception of hen batteries, I would say that the aroma of living animals is generally tolerable. This, however, hangs in the air for days (in fact, the pile at the end of the track has been there for some months, so there's often a lingering smell when the wind blows in our direction) and is impossible to escape. It's the first thing you notice when you wake in the morning and it can seem to hang even more heavily in the evening air. We are told that ploughing it straight in to the fields will cut down on the odour, but it doesn't while the ploughing is going on, and that has been for several days now. Worst of all, I think, is that you can taste it all the time. Today is lovely, fresh and breezy, but I have just realised that I don't want to put my washing out, because the air is full of grey dust.

I do accept that returning human waste to the soil of much preferable to dumping it in the sea and using artificial fertiliser, and that the lime treatment which makes the ammonia smell worse is necessary to reduce pathogens; I don't want to run for the city to escape, nor do I wish country life to be sanitised for my convenience, but oh, I shall be glad when it stops.

My Country Childhood by Susy Smith (ed.)

2009-08-26T18:06:00.001+01:00

This is a collection of articles from Country Living magazine (which, I should add, I don’t read, since I generally avoid magazines and newspapers of all kinds), reminiscences, mainly by writers and actors, about growing up in the country. My interest was mainly in its guise as social history, since many of the contributors are my age or older, and I was amused to find some similar memories to my own:

I grew up in post-war London. We had a terraced house in Chelsea with no garden. Ten houses along, there was a bomb site. The walk to school, past the bomb site, took twenty minutes. On ‘smog’ days, my sister and I were told to tie handkies around our mouths, and by the time we got to school, the handkies would be grey. London then – even Chelsea, which has always had pretensions to smartness – was a poor, dirty city. (Rose Tremain)

I spent my first few years in Bromley, which was a little less grey than the city, but the effects of the polluted air nearly killed me, and I was fortunate to move to the Highlands, where I became disgustingly healthy. I remember the bomb sites from trips into London, where my grandfather had a pharmacy – walls which suddenly stopped, exposing a fireplace or doorway and, in summer, blown fluff from the plant I then called fireweed, and only later learnt its prettier country name of rosebay willowherb.

Here are memories of hard winters, of milk collected in churns. Of cottages by the sea and huge, cold rambling houses. Richard Adams recalls a childhood learning the wildflowers and birds of the nearby Watership Down that made him famous, while Laurie Lee anatomises the country year through seasonal games. Tom Paulin admits to boredom in a coastal cottage, but horses provided entertainment for many. There is the exotic, too:

In Bengal our town Narayanganj’s river was the Lakya, part of the vast network of the Brahmaputra and the only direct way into town, There was plenty of life in and on the river: a life of crocodiles and fish, of porpoises that somersaulted in and out of the water, of herons and egrets wading in the shallows and kingfishers perched on marker posts. (Rumer Godden)

Fifty contributors offer little snapshots, mainly of the British Isles - though I found Scotland and Wales under-represented – in the sort of book that might make a good Christmas present. The line drawings throughout add a nice touch.

Butterflies

2009-08-12T11:14:00.005+01:00

This is the time of year when I fret about butterflies! Earlier in the year there seemed, yet again, to be very few in evidence, but in recent weeks there have been good numbers of red admirals, painted ladies, peacocks and large whites around the garden (especially on the buddlejas), with smaller numbers of small tortoiseshell. In the lane there are ringlets and meadow browns as well, although not in such large numbers as in good years. At the weekend I was delighted to see a small copper - pictured below - which isn't very common on our patch, and this made me think idly about keeping some sort of more formal record of the species I see.

The thought led me to the site of the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, from where this picture comes, and where I discovered that there are two people recording species locally (which is done by walking the same route every week for six months of the year). One of them is on Lindisfarne, and the other just a few miles north. They are both recording all the species that I see regularly, as well as a couple more, such as the green-veined white, a butterfly I may well have seen without realising it. I must start looking at the white butterflies more closely.

It would be quite an undertaking for me to walk the same route every week at the moment - I'm away too much - so I am not going to join the scheme, but I walk our track most weeks and it would be interesting to get into the habit of using the recording methodology. Then, if I ever get the chance to retire, I can start doing it properly! Before I got so busy, I used to record for the Nature's Calendar Survey, which tracks wildlife in relation to climate (and ties in to the Spring and Autumnwatch surveys) so my observations will still be useful and I'll be able to compare them with my own records on that site. And maybe I can get younger son interested in taking part, as he takes the dogs along the lane most days (he was with me when we saw the small copper, and wanted to check on its identity as soon as we got home).

Swallows again

2009-08-08T17:28:00.002+01:00

The infant swallows are getting bigger, and their parents are busy from dawn till dusk collecting insects (which is much appreciated by me!)

You Spotted Snakes...

2009-07-19T18:06:00.003+01:00

...with bright blue eye
Your pains the Bugloss will repay

The viper's bugloss is out again on the dunes, where it will last for some weeks. It's a striking plant with its vibrant deep blue flowers. It likes bare and scrubby ground, often growing near beaches or on mine spoil tips, where its roots go down deep, and is one of those fascinating plants whose flowers emerge one colour (a deep rose) and then change. In classical times it was thought to be effective against snake bite, and its spotty stem probably gives it the first part of its name, but "bugloss" comes from ox's tongue.

In her Modern Herbal, published in 1931, Mrs Grieve tells us that it is a diuretic and can relieve inflammation and fever, though I wouldn't want to pick its hairy stems without gloves! Alternative names, according the Geoffrey Grigson, include Blue Cat's Tail, Snake's Flower and Our Lord's Flannel! I wonder if this last is because of the reddish spots on the stem, which may look like flecks of blood?

Baby swallows in the rain

2009-07-17T11:39:00.008+01:00

These small black dots are baby swallows sitting on the lawn, waiting to be fed - I think it's too windy and rainy for them to fly, so their parents are making regular sorties with laden beaks. The picture was taken through the window because it's raining too hard to set foot outside, and anyway, I didn't want to disturb the poor things.

Rather better is this picture, taken by younger son at the beginning of the week, a much later brood of babies. Three heads, I believe, in a delightfully warm and feathery nest, some of the feathers, I rather think, contributed by the Bluebell Girls.

For weeks now, I have been regularly woken at dawn - about 3.30am at the solstice last month - by liquid bubblings and churrings just outside my open window: the swallow babies waiting for their breakfast. They line up on the guttering and wait for a bristling beakful of flies. At least when I look at my untidy garden I can console myself with the knowledge that it's a excellent hunting ground, helping to provide for good numbers of babies each year - swallows, flycatchers, wagtails, bats, and the ever-present and garrulous sparrows.

Martagon Lily

2009-07-14T17:30:00.000+01:00

Gerard mentions the martagon lily in his list of garden plants in 1596, and it was much loved in Elizabethan gardens. Common from Eastern Europe to Mongolia, where its bulbs were dried and eaten with cow's or reindeer milk, it probably only grows in the wild in Britain as a garden escape, and is another plant of woodland edges. It doesn't appear in our British herbals, probably because it was never common in the wild, but the (poisonous) bulbs were used medicinally elsewhere for heart complaints and as a diuretic.

It's not a fussy plant, growing quite happily in our heavy clay soil yet also thriving in lighter, sandy soils, and it will take both semi-shade and sun. The flowers, fragrant at night, attract moths, so it is a plant that has had a place in my garden for 30 years. I love its reflexed flowers - its other common name is turk's cap lily - and its muted purples.

(It has been suggested that martagons are the Biblical 'lilies of the field', but it seems likely that this is a confusion with lilium chalcedonicum, the scarlet martagon).

Hedge woundwort

2009-07-10T16:18:00.004+01:00

Stachys sylvatica

I grow within the lowly hedge;
My cousin at the marsh's edge.
And each, as shown within our name,
For healing wounds is known to fame.
Less famous is our second feat -
Our roots are very good to eat.

This pungent wild herb grows very happily in our garden, though no doubt my efforts to transplant it to the paddock will all prove in vain. Here it is growing across a path, and ought to be cleared away, but it's a cheerful soul and I shan't do so while it's in flower.

Despite its name it is not very highly rated as a wound herb - if its cousins, marsh woundwort or betony are to hand they are preferred; nonetheless, it was supposed to make a very good poultice (who, these days, remembers the agonising relief of a hot poultice on a recalcitrant splinter?) and styptic, more often collected from the wild than cultivated, since it grows readily in hedgerows across much of northern Europe. Gerard advised mixing it with hog's grease, much as I used to make comfrey ointment by heating comfrey leaves in lard.

Mrs Grieve, in her Modern Herbal, reports that a yellow dye can be made from the plant and it is suggested that there might be commercial uses for the fibres. Young shoots can, apparently, be eaten like asparagus, and the roots are said to be very nutritious, although the smell does little to persuade me.

There are good reasons for encouraging this plant in the wild areas around your garden, however: bees and moths both love it, and we should be doing all we can to provide habitats for both. Encouraging moths will also provide food for bats, and our long-eared bats regularly hunt over the woundwort patch (also the nettle patch, we have a very messy garden, although we claim that it is intentional).

Exotics!

2009-07-08T15:44:00.009+01:00

Something quite special this week. One of my favourite gardens is at Hill House Nursery in Devon. Much of the attraction for me is that it feels like a family garden - it's not very big, but it's great for plantlovers, while the greenhouses combine working space for propagation with a wonderful collection of stock plants, some of them truly exotic. It's a proper working nursery, too, run by people who know about plants. It's no good me going there to shop, everything is much too tender for Northumberland, but I love to wander around the garden and greenhouses with a camera, before visiting the tearoom, but my mother sometimes does quite well out of a visit, if I find something utterly irresistible.

I thought this passion flower (Passiflora x caponii 'John Innes') truly lovely, and was intrigued to discover later that there is a story attached to it.

The embothrium at the back of this bed is the offspring of one in my mother's garden nearby. There's quite quite a long history of two-way traffic between the two gardens. If you look hard you can see its cousins in this view from my bedroom window:

The hydrangea walk is a recent addition at Hill House. I want this one!

And this is just glorious! A deutzia, I think, but I don't know which variety.

Flower of the Week

2009-06-22T16:49:00.001+01:00

Convolvulus cneorum, or silverbush, June 2009

This is a plant which likes warm, dry conditions, and should be struggling here, but I've got this one through two winters in this pot, and it flowers quite prolifically. It's in the most sheltered part of the garden, and protected by reflected warmth from both the woodern deck on which it stands and the wall behind it. Unfortunately, the ophiopogon in the pot beside it is not thriving here, but it does better elsewhere.

Flower of the Week

2009-06-15T16:47:00.002+01:00

Water lily, June 2009

The joys of compost!

2009-05-31T15:52:00.008+01:00

Common thyme, May 2009

Last weekend we emptied one of the compost bins. Some of it will be used to enrich the mix I use to pot up the tomato plants, some has gone around the newly-planted courgettes, and one container-full has been used to plant some salad leaves for cut-and-come-again cropping before other salads are ready. With such a rich growing medium I am hoping to get two crops out of a deep container.

Most of the lovely friable compost has gone towards building up the raised beds. Our soil here is heavy clay, and frustratingly difficult to break up, so a lot of effort goes into trying to improve it. It's only recently that we started a vegetable garden again so there's along way to go, but there's already a full compost bin ready to provide the next batch. And this year, for the first time, I am hoping to have the liquid from the wormery to feed the tomatoes and courgettes. I can't wait!

I suppose I might spare a little compost for OH's fuchsias, too.

Wordless Wednesday

2009-05-27T17:24:00.003+01:00

Precious things

2009-05-24T17:20:00.001+01:00

I've been away from my blog again recently because my grandmother died, aged 98. She'd been in a nursing home for some years, and I hadn't seen her since last year, but a couple of weeks ago her health deteriorated and we were warned that she wouldn't last long.

She was a woman of considerable character and it's strange to think she is no longer here. For some years I lived with my grandparents and she was very important to me while I was growing up. Her ashes are now interred in a woodland burial site, not too many miles from the Isle of Wight which she remembered and loved from girlhood.

When she had to part with her household possessions to move to the nursing home she was pleased that I wanted the willow pattern china which was part of my early memories.

Wordless Wednesday

2009-05-13T10:58:00.000+01:00

Cherry blossom.

Flower of the week - cowslip

2009-05-07T17:55:00.008+01:00

Cowslips (primula veris) on the dunes. Not in quite such profusion as last year, but you can see they grow quite thickly in places. Once upon a time, people must have made excellent cowslip wine around here, but I'm glad that we just enjoy them for their beauty now. Some of its old names are Fairy Bells, Paigle (which I've heard it called) and St Peter's Herb, as well as Palsywort because it could cure paralysis, it was thought. I can't find much reference to a Northumbrian name, but a Notes and Queries from 1898 says it was known as cow-stropple (throat). A charming habit was to make cowslip balls from the golden flowers, thus:

Down we sate...to make our cowslip-ball. Everyone knows the process; to nip off the tufts of flowerets just below the top of the stalk, and hang each cluster nicely balanced across a riband, till you have a long string like a garland; and then to press them closely together, and tie them tightly up. We went on very prosperously, considering; as people say of a young lady's drawing, or a Frenchman's English, or a woman's tragedy...To be sure we met with a few accidents. First, Lizzy spoiled nearly all her cowslips by snapping them off too short; so there was a fresh gathering; in the next place May overset my full basket, and sent the blossoms floating, like so many fairy favours, down the brook; then when we were going on pretty steadily, just as we had made a superb wreath and were thinking of tying it together, Lizzy, who held the riband, caught a glimpse of a gorgeous butterfly, all brown and red and purple, and skipping off to pursue the new object, let go her hold; so all our treasures were abroad again. At last, however, by dint of taking a branch of alder as a substitute for Lizzy, and hanging the basket in a pollard-ash, out of sight of May, the cowslip-ball was finished. What a concentration of fragrance and beauty it was! golden and sweet to satiety! righ to sight, and touch, and smell!
(Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village)

I think you can judge from the description that the grass was thickly carpeted with the golden blooms. I am trying to establish it in our garden, without much success until this year, when I found a seedling flowering in a pot that usually holds a hosta. It is very welcome there, and encourages me to persevere.

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers...

2009-04-21T09:38:00.008+01:00

If Spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year,
or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake,
and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would
be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change!

So says Longfellow. My own heart, however, never fails to lift a little at this time of year, and I am constantly aware of a sense of purpose all around me, the air of full of twitterings and the rushing of wings. It's another bright sunny day, albeit with a chill wind, and I would much rather be out in the garden than working. My plan is spend some time outside this afternoon, if only I can get ahead with everything I need to do - faint hope, I suspect. It will be necessary to do some watering, though - we've had no real rain for some time, and things are getting very dry. That's the downside of growing plants in containers, I suppose.

In the woodland around the farm the gorse is out, and warm evenings are filled with an unexpected aroma of coconut. Around here it isn't too invasive, and can be enjoyed for its rich colour and long-flowering period - I don't think there is any month in the year when there isn't a whinbush flowering somewhere about the place - but I've noticed that on Dartmoor in recent years it is becoming all-pervasive, no doubt because the numbers of grazing sheep have been been reduced since foot-and-mouth.

The woods are full, too, of the delicate blossoms of gean, or bird cherry. Alongside the blowsy cultivated cherries, this native tree has a tendency to pale into insignificance, but it can be un unexpected joy in northern woodlands and, later in the year, the birds enjoy the small fruit. It's one of the native species I want to plant in our paddock.

Thinking vegetables

2009-04-12T17:38:00.004+01:00

Choosing a gardening book is a very personal thing, I think. My mother quite often gives me books she thinks I will like, and I now have several very attractive books that lurk, unconsulted, in dark corners. She got it right last birthday, tracking down a copy of Roger Phillips' Roses, which delighted me. The odd thing is, I can't find it, and am now beginning to think I imagined the whole thing! My current favourites, though, focus on vegetables, so it's not surprising that they are both within easy reach at this time of year, as I plan how to amuse the pigeons and deer for another season.

Joy Larkcom's Creative Vegetable Gardening is a visual delight. A large format paperback that will almost lie flat while you browse through it, and written in a chatty tone of voice, it take its inspiration from gardens all over the world to create pretty vegetable gardens and potagers. There is a brief (I want to say, potted) history of growing for the kitchen, before moving on the Elements of Design, with guidance on how to plan your potager, and Dramatic Effects - how to make it even more beautiful. There is a whole chapter on fruit, which is followed by a useful one on Management, with good advice on improving soil fertility and watering. Even this chapter makes me itch to get outside, with its picture of the feathery green manure, phacelia tanacetifolia, glorious in its own right, or a potager bed with brick paths, covered in rich manure for the winter. There are an excellent sections on container gardening and small potagers, making this a book for those with limited space, full of ideas about how to cram in the most you possibly can, while creating interest with texture and colour, contrasting plants with dramatic supports and edgings, or choosing between hedges and fences. Photographs are sumptuous and inspiring. The final section is where I spend most time, especially at this time of year - the A-Z of vegetables, fruit, herbs and edible flowers. This is just as wonderfully illustrated as the rest, with an eye always to looks as well as taste - vegetables as objects of desire.

2009-03-19T17:14:00.000Z

I'm so busy at the moment that I am reduced to near wordlessness, but there are still moments of pleasure in a day, often triggered by my admiration for this blowsy pair. The butterfly orchid has been in flower since before Christmas, and keeps getting more dramatic. I'm also delighted that another orchid (also a phalaenopsis) that I was given last April is coming back into flower for the second time. I had been very disappointed that I accidentally broke a flower spike on it last year, reducing its total flowering time to a mere six months or so. I've given it special liquid orchid food and its leaves are a bit shabby but I am getting more confident with them, and have hopes of keeping them all going - I suspect this puts them into to "idiot-proof" category of houseplant.

Spring flowers

2009-03-15T15:26:00.002Z

I can't take any credit for this hellebore, having just bought it, but I think the double flowers are lovely, with a greenish tinge on newly opened ones.

Flower of the Week

2009-03-11T08:16:00.004Z

Just because it's pretty, and seasonal.

Spectrum days

2009-02-16T17:30:00.000Z

Some time after, according to my OH, the rest of the world became interconnected via the Interwebs, he is groping to join the world of geeks.* Now, for him to be in this position is grossly unfair, because back in the dark ages, he was the one who dragged the entire family into computing. It happened thus:

First, my great-auntie Marie left me a diamond ring. My grandma told me about it when I was 12 or so, but that she would look after it until I grew up. Well, I remembered the story, but I never entirely believed in the ring (I hadn’t seen it) so I was quite surprised when, after Grandma died in the early 80s, my father said, “Oh, by the way, there’s a ring for you. I’d sell it if I were you” and handed me something enormous with 3 diamonds set in white gold. I couldn’t really imagine wearing it, and it sat in a shop window in Carlisle for several months, so that I was completely staggered when we received an offer for it: I’d never really believed that it represented money, in the same way that I hadn’t really believed its existence. But we left the shop in Carlisle on a Saturday morning with a large roll of £50 notes, and a couple of hours later we were the proud owners of a ZX Spectrum with 48KB RAM, a tape cassette player, a television set and a large yellow teddybear for younger son, who was too small to get to grips with BASIC.

I think it became clear early on that I had no talent for coding, but OH and elder son took to it happily, and my proofreading years began as I waded my way through pages of machine code looking for a missing colon. Meanwhile, OH was writing his dissertation with the aid of Tasword, an early and primitive word processing programme, younger son was helping Paddington to transport small animals across rivers, and the entire family quickly became au fait with computerspeak. In fact, we even attended an early computer fair and drooled over such unlikely objects as microdrives and, oh wonder of wonders, an early mock-up of the Sam coupé, a computer mostly famous for barely existing. Later we upgraded to an Amstrad word processor and the fact that I had learnt to use it was largely responsible for getting me my first post-childcare job.

So it is ironic that a household which took enthusiastically to personal computing from its earliest days has for so long had one member who was barely literate. I had put my old iMac at OH’s disposal, but it was hardly practical to bring it out for occasional use, and pre-broadband, it was quicker for him to ask me to type a letter, so nothing really came of it. But for the past year or so he has been nagging me to hand over my retired laptop, and I kept putting off, partly because it meant clearing everything off it, partly because it meant making time to be helpful. With a deep intake of breath at Christmas (which brought on a coughing fit), I duly reinstalled the network card, plonked it on the dining table and announced it was ready to go. It’s at moments like these you realise how complex some of the repetitive tasks performed daily actually are. When it’s a struggle to remember how to save a Word file to My Documents, setting up Headers and Footers becomes considerably more time-consuming. “Where did Google go?” he said this morning. A perfectly good question, if you haven’t got into the habit of always opening links in new tabs. Just to add to confusion, sons and I all use the same browser, but in different ways, so three sets of advice are available. I foresee conversations which go thus –

OH: I don’t think that’s the way I did it last time.
Either son: well, that way won’t work very well, why were you doing it like that?
OH: because your mother told me to.
ES: well, she’s wrong.

Bloodshed may easily ensue.

*geek: if you want to find whether you qualify, you can try this quiz, which made me laugh. My results?

You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator.

Many waters

2009-02-15T16:12:00.014Z

Around us is the sound of many waters - trickling down drains, squelching underfoot, dripping from eaves. A thaw is underway, and suddenly it appears that spring is, too. The rooks are flying back and forth with an air of purpose, no longer searching out food in unlikely places, but making determined forays into the ash branches at the top of the garden, and then struggling out laden with ungainly twigs. The ivy is full of rustlings and twitterings as birds and other small creatures seek out possible homes and the hens are preening and stalking round their run looking plump and self-important. I hope that all this confidence isn't misplaced - the late afternoon sky is full of geese, and seven whooper swans have just flown over, a sign that for some it is still winter.

Today's view of the Cheviot shows just how much it has thawed in the last twenty-four hours, and I have only now got round to downloading these pictures taken on Thursday by my younger son. The first two tell the sad story of a fox and a pigeon (and show why our chickens live in a run):

And here the girls seem to have found someone's hiding place. Senior Dog is supervising, as befits her age.

But, as usual, she takes over. It needs an experienced nose, you know.

So The Bolter may as well enjoy the snow. This second fall was lovely and soft to run in.

A deer in the next field:

And a winter sunset.

In the snow

2009-02-11T16:24:00.010Z

I wanted to share some pictures of the Cheviot while it was still completely shrouded in white, it has been so beautiful. This was taken the other evening:
It's very hard to take good pictures in the evening; my camera isn't really good enough. Despite the difficulty, I'm trying to take pictures of it in all its moods.
And here it is this afternoon.

All the snow on the trees and hedges has gone, but there is still some lying on the ground. And here, from the sublime to the faintly ridiculous, is our resident pheasant, taken by my son on a miserable day last week. Actually, he is exceedingly well fed, picking up any corn the chickens have missed and a wide variety of snacks from the bird table.

Deer in flight

2009-02-06T18:37:00.002Z

I know that the record numbers of deer in Britain are causing concern, and over the last 10 years I have become aware that, from being a rare sight on my train journeys, I now see them from the train almost every time I travel, and not only in the north. Last week it was dark, so I couldn't look out for them but, on turning the last corner of our track before we reached the cottage, there was a young roe deer in the headlights. We often see them on the edge of the woodland that borders the track, and I may have mentioned here how indignant I was when they trampled my baby cabbages! The necessity for some sort of control does nothing to alter my pleasure on seeing them at close quarters, however.

When I read this poem, I see the hinds poised for flight on the edge of the wood, or ofJapanese paintings.

They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek

THEY flee from me that sometime did me seek,
With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek
That are now wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown did from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small,
Therewithall sweetly did me kiss,
And softly said, "Dear heart, how like you this?"

It was no dream, I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness,
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served,
I would fain know what she hath deserved.

Sir Thomas Wyatt

Adieu, sweet Amaryllis

2009-02-02T18:20:00.000Z

For a couple of weeks this beauty has been gracing our sitting room. It catches the eye every time you enter the room, so huge and splendid is it. Although it's nearly over now, this is the fourth time this hippeastrum has flowered in the couple of years I've had it, and I think it deserves some loving care and attention during next summer, so I shall be feeding it assiduously, along with the two new bulbs which haven't yet started into growth. When they do start, they grow so fast you can practically watch it happening – there will be a perceptible increase in the length of the flower spike at the end of a good, sunny day, and then the bloom emerges, luscious and velvet-y, the richest colour imaginable. Next year I have promised myself one of the newer varieties, if I can find it – somewhere I am sure I've seen a deep plum coloured flower – and one of the multi-stemmed ones. You can be sure I'll post pictures if I'm successful.

Mistletoe

2008-12-22T16:32:00.003Z

Mistletoe growing in Oxford Botanic Gardens

Travelling south on the train near Bristol I was surprised to see trees festooned with quite large quantities of mistletoe (Viscum album). I don't know why I was surprised, since it's not uncommon in the south of England, but I've spent so much time in the north that I just don't expect to see it, I suppose. With my interest in folklore it's not surprising that I've always rather wanted to grow it, and always lived in the wrong places.

I think most people know about its pagan associations and have a mental picture of it being sought by druids in oak groves for use in their rituals, where it had to be cut with a golden sickle to preserve its qualities. Such images probably arise from Europe, since in England it's rare for it to grow on oak, being much more common in old apple orchards, and therefore somewhat under threat, as our old orchards are a dying breed. Mistletoe is difficult to get established, which is why I'm not wasting my time trying to persuade it to adopt one of its alternative host plants, although I would be happy to see some of our hawthorns supporting this particular parasite. Not, I might add, that any plant in our garden is allowed to bear its berries for more than a day or two, before hoards of marauding blackbirds descend to strip them.

Here for your delectation is a link to a mistletoe blog – who would have thought there was such a thing? It, and the accompanying Mistletoe Pages will tell you far more than I ever could about this fascinating plant. As usual, though, Christmas in our house will be mistletoe-free.

What I like about Christmas...

2008-12-16T17:28:00.006Z

A simple thing, but I was enjoying my contemplation of this basket of goodies, and reluctant to end the pleasure by actually starting to wrap presents. However, final posting dates loomed, as does my imminent departure for southern climes, and yesterday I thought I had better make a start. Now, thank goodness, various parcels should be en route to friends and family, a bag sits ready for the Devon visit, and even the family packages are enveloped in tissue and tasteful silk plissé ribbon (well, apart from those that are still on their way from Amazon). Because, of course, I have been utterly stupid, in committing myself to a filial visit the weekend before Christmas - what was I thinking? When am I going to make the mince pies and sausage rolls required by my own dear children? What about the Christmas cake? (Yes, indeed, it's much to late to even contemplate now, it should have been steeping in brandy for the past month.) Because on Christmas Eve, when I get back, I am going to be hoovering, making beds, tackling endless quantities of washing and cleaning out the chickens. The gentle ritual of making cheese straws while listening to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols - you're joking, I shall to be rehanging the bathroom curtains. Ho hum (bug).

The Children of Lir

2008-12-05T15:00:00.002Z

These creatures of the mist are whooper swans - cygnus cygnus - the Children of Lir, and winter visitors from Iceland and Scandinavia. I first saw them in Perthshire when I was eleven or so, when we walked across the hills to see them on Loch Moraig (you can see a photo of them on the loch here). It was a special day, and I fell in love with the romance of the swans on the water, and their wild wailing.

Last weekend, however, it was on a misty loch in the Scottish Borders that I took this picture. Sadly my camera battery was failing, and I was too slow to photograph the group that flew past mere yards away, just as I was too slow some days later when five flew past our kitchen window, honking mournfully. Nearby Berwick is famous for its huge wintering flock of mute swans, and I love to see them, but the whoopers are special, second only to unicorns. Fated to spend 900 years as swans, the Children of Lir were transformed by their stepmother Aoife, but were allowed to retain their human voices when she felt some remorse for her dreadful act:

And the Sons of the Gael used to be coming no less than the Men of Dea to hear them from every part of Ireland, for there never was any music or any delight heard in Ireland to compare with that music of the swans. And they used to be telling stories, and to be talking with men of Ireland every day, and with their teachers and their fellow-pupils and their friends. And every night they used to sing very sweet music of the Sidhe; and every one that heard that music would sleep sound and quiet whatever trouble or long sickness might be on him; for every one that heard the music of the birds, it is happy and contented he would be after it. (Lady Gregory, The Fate of the Children of Lir)

Happy dogs

2008-11-24T17:18:00.006Z

I woke yesterday morning to that peculiar silence that denotes snow. It didn't last long: two delighted dogs announced their intention of spending as much time as possible playing snow ploughs, so could I please get up now, and get my boots on?

Admittedly, it wasn't a great deal of snow, but the dunes were almost deserted, and the girls rushed about like puppies. I honed my tracking skills - lots of activity here at Rabbit Central (a large windswept thorn bush): while no-one had been up the main path before us except for a solitary fox:
By the afternoon it had all thawed, and there was the sound of dripping all evening. The Cheviot, however, remains white, and today there have been several squally hailstorms. Brrr. I hope the fingerless gloves I've ordered arrive soon, my hands get cold when I type. The dogs, meanwhile, are stretched out in front of a warm stove, basking.

Flower of the week

2008-11-14T17:10:00.001Z

Not much time this afternoon, but it's wild and windy, exactly the sort of weather I dislike most, so I thought we might briefly revisit some of the best moments of the past year:

Made with Slideshow Embed Tool

The Prize Cat

2008-10-31T11:25:00.004Z

Franz Marc, Two Cats

This is the day when Cat Musings, usually a rather doggy site, celebrates its namesake, the Cat. This is on behalf of T., and since I can't put flowers on his grave, this year it's a poem.

The Prize Cat

E.J. Pratt (1882-1964)

Pure blood domestic, guaranteed,
Soft-mannered, musical in purr,
The ribbon had declared the breed,
Gentility was in the fur

Such feline culture in the gads
No anger ever arched her back--
What distance since those velvet pads
Departed from the leopard's track!

And when I mused how Time had thinned
The jungle strains within the cells,
How human hands had disciplined
Those prowling optic parallels;

I saw the generations pass
Along the reflex of a spring,
A bird had rustled in the grass,
The tab had caught it on the wing:

Behind the leap so furtive-wild
Was such ignition in the gleam,
I thought an Abyssinian child
Had cried out in the whitethroat's scream.

Yarrow

2008-10-24T15:39:00.005+01:00

Photo by haledavid1@msn.com

This week's flower is yarrow, mainly because at this time of year it is one of relatively few plants still blossoming on the dunes. Also known as milfoil, for its feathery leaves, achillea millefolium is named for Achilles, as this has been a wound herb from early times, used to staunch bleeding (it may also help that, like willow bark, it contains salicylic acid). However, it is also supposed to promote bleeding – one of its common names is nosebleed, and this characteristic led to it being used as a cure for migraine – I don't know, having a nosebleed might take your mind off a mild one, I suppose, but I don't think I'd want to try it as a cure when suffering from one of those three-day affairs. A kinder local tradition says that if you stuff the leaves up your nose, you will bleed if your love loves you – a bit more dramatic than picking the petals off daisies and, presumably, all the truer for it. Alternatively, just place it under your pillow and you may dream of your lover.

The word yarrow comes from Old English, gearwe, and its use in medicine is discussed by Dioscorides in his De Materia Medica. Not surprisingly, perhaps, for such an old and valuable herb, it has magical properties too, for divination (yarrow stalks are used in casting the I Ching) and as a protection against evil. Hang it up on St John's Eve (23 June) to ward off illness (oddly, there is a folk story that says there is a fern which flowers only on that night, which can give the power of second sight – it occurs to me that yarrow has very ferny leaves, though it flowers a good deal more prolifically). In Scotland, where it's also called Moleery tea (from the French millefeuille, perhaps?) it's also a dye herb, giving a pale yellow colour. Gardeners should plant to attract useful predators like hoverflies and ladybirds, but it also has a reputation for soil improvement so it makes a good, and attractive companion plant. There are cultivated varieties in deep pinks and oranges, but one of the things I like best about the wild white plant is the occasional rose pink flower, unexpected amongst its white sisters.

I will pluck the yarrow fair,
That more benign will be my face,
That more warm shall be my lips,
That more chaste shall be my speech,
Be my speech the beams of the sun,
Be my lips the sap of the strawberry.

May I be an isle in the sea,
May I be a hill on the shore,
May I be a star in the waning of the moon,
May I be a staff to the weak,
Wound can I every man,
Wound can no man me.

from Alexander Carmichael's Carmina Gadelica

Just looking in

2008-10-19T17:01:00.004+01:00

I wish I had been able to capture the moment of her arrival but I was quite surprised, as I sat here at the desk, when this young person arrived on my window sill. I think the windy weather may have had something to do with it - I was very glad it was a successful landing.

Quick, before it goes...

2008-10-17T17:26:00.004+01:00

Where we have had autumn colour there are now very few leaves left, but for a couple of weeks the view has been brightened by splashes of russet, yellow and orange. This combination of planting isn't necessarily permanent, not least because the eupatorium (the thing with mauve flower heads, known in the US as Joe Pye Weed) is a bit of a thug. It was planted there for the butterflies, but it comes out so late this far north that they have all gone by the time it's in full bloom. In Devon it's a joy in late summer, a living mosaic of red admirals, peacocks and silver-Y moths. For Nan's benefit, that straggly bit of grass in a pot bottom right is a day lily - pathetic, huh?

I'm annoyed with myself for forgetting what kind of spiraea this is below, and I haven't been able to find it online. Back to the old-fashioned book for a bit of research, if I can lay my hands on it. This is its second appearance here: in June I photographed it covered in frothy white blossom. You'll note from the picture, incidentally, that my gardening style is "riotous". The potentillas are still flowering determinedly - I do approve of their fervour.

Flower of the Week

2008-10-10T16:32:00.003+01:00

Since some of the posts on this blog which have provoked most comment have been of a botanical persuasion, I thought we'd have a new feature here, a plant of the week. I'll try to make them seasonal, and either native, or garden cultivars of native plants, although in winter that may need some lateral thinking. And, having decided this, I made a rather poor first choice, in that I expected one of my favourite plants to have a more accessible history!

I was determined to write about the flower that features in the header on my other blog since its blooms have been giving us pleasure for so much of the summer: the cottage garden plant, Astrantia major or great masterwort (this one, I think, is Ruby Wedding, though a rather inferior specimen - they can be very variable). Common names are Hattie's pincushion, mountain or black sanicle, and melancholy gentleman. The name "masterwort" (meaning a universal cure-all) is actually applied to a range of the umbelliferae, and the plant that Gerard refers to in his Herbal was a different one, Peucedanum ostruthium; there doesn't seem to be a great deal of evidence for the use of astrantia major itself as a specific, though it was thought to be a diuretic and various constituents have been identified by modern analysis, including steroids, which may mean it will yet prove to have potential as a medicinal herb.

Astrantia major is not included in Geoffrey Grigson's Englishman's Flora, but Keble Martin (Concise British Flora) lists it with its English name of melancholy gentleman, as naturalised in Shropshire, giving a bit of credibility to the claim that it has been cultivated in Britain since the 16th century. The flowers, which are papery like everlastings, dry well, and it's a good cut flower, relatively unfussy about growing conditions. The subspecies "involucrata" has long bracts, giving rise to one of its varietal names, "Shaggy" while, in recent years, the reds have become deeper and richer, some with crimson stems. It's possible to cut them back just before flowering, to give late colour, but I find that they have such a long flowering period that I'm not sure it's worth it. Perhaps further south, where they would normally flower earlier, it may be more effective? All in all, a thoroughly desirable plant, even if its apparent place in the pharmacopeia turned out to be undeserved.

Aga saga

2008-10-08T16:48:00.002+01:00

Last week I visited the Aged Parents (not an appellation that they would approve but, since I came down with a cold while I was there, I'm not feeling exactly spritely myself). Every afternoon I retired to my room to sniffle and catch up on my email, or a bit of typesetting, only to find that the super high speed connection which should be provided by my Vodafone gadget would only offer something akin to the speed of light through treacle. So instead I spent a good deal of time gazing out of my drafty attic window and watching the rooks, jackdaws and the occasional raven in trees that have achieved quite terrifying proportions in the 100 or so years that the grounds became a proper garden. On each of my visits my mother and I embark on a sort of Royal Progress: she with stick for swiping the "brimbles", and secateurs to stem the encroachment of the laurel bushes (a losing battle), while I follow behind like a footman, carrying any other necessaries (bag for fir cones destined for kindling, camera to record goodies, the odd armful of prunings destined for the compost heap) and murmuring agreement to such pronouncements as "I think that branch needs to come out" or "That azalea has done very well since I rescued it". The weekend Progress was limited by awful weather and, by Sunday, a pathetic disinclination on my part to move from the warm spot by the Aga.

The greatest treasures at this time of year are the cyclamen which carpet the ground, to be replaced in spring by crocuses and snowdrops. In a garden which still contains the occasional plant so exotic that no one can remember what it is, these tiny jewels still give the most pleasure.

Distant hills

2008-09-26T17:14:00.006+01:00

Over the years we have lived here I have found it enormously difficult to photograph our view from the garden – it's all wide and flat, with lots of fields and few features. Today, in the lengthening shadows of late afternoon, I have a picture I am reasonably pleased with, recording the autumn landscape, with the Cheviot in the background. On many days each year, the Cheviot is simply not there, hiding behind rain or snow clouds, and its smooth green curves are rarely sharply defined; usually, as here, it's a misty presence against an expanse of sky. A good Protestant upbringing has left me with a store of psalms that are in my head whether I want them or not, and my favourite begins:

I to the hills will lift mine eyes
From whence doth come mine aid...

It was the luscious red of this cherry that drew me away from the accounts today. It's very tiny – both in habit and in size, so the impact is relatively small, but I'm growing very fond of it. In spring it has delicate bronze-tinged leaves and a scattering of tiny pink flowers, so it's a delight all year round.

(prunus incisa Kojou-no-mai)

A-Z of Homemaking

2008-09-14T16:21:00.001+01:00

I found this meme on Codlins and Cream, where it had arrived from allybea's blog. I always enjoy these little insights into other people's lives (I find it very hard not to look through windows as I'm passing houses – at the very least I content myself with a good stare at someone's garden), so I thought it would fit here, though I don't think I would ever have described myself as "homemaker". "Slut" would be more to the point!

If you decide to have a go, do please leave a comment and a link here.

A ~Aprons--y/n If y, what does your favourite look like? If I can find it, red and white stripes; more often these days it's a teatowel tucked into my waistband.

B ~ Baking--Favourite thing to bake? Puddings, although we don't eat them very often, maybe once a month. The thing I make most often is apple crumble, both at home and at my parents' house – my stepfather loves puddings, but the range is limited because he is diabetic. Oh, and I love making soufflé, it's just so satisfying to take it out of the oven all golden and risen.

C ~ Clothes line? No, it's usually too windy. I hang things over the fence on good days.

D ~ Donuts--Have you ever made them? Once, and they weren't bad, but I resent using all that fat once only, so I haven't made them again.

E ~ Everyday--One homemaking thing you do everyday? Bleah, washing up. My husband cooks, so I have to do the clearing up after a meal, it's only fair. Oddly, if I cook, I still get to wash up.

F ~ Freezer--Do you have a separate deep freeze? Just a fridge-freezer, and it's always so full I can't get anywhere near it, which is a pity, because I make passable ice-cream.

G ~ Garbage Disposer? Yes, 5 chickens, 2 dogs and a compost heap. Oh, and a bin full of reluctant worms.

H ~ Handbook--What is your favourite homemaking resource? That depends. I have various favourites among my cookery books – Mary Berry's Fast Cakes is one of the most frequently used, and there are several books of farmhouse cooking I like very much. Best of all, I think, is a gardening book: Creative Vegetable Gardening by Joy Larkcom. It has beautiful pictures and she's an inspiration.

I ~ Ironing--Love it or Hate it? Or hate it but love the results? Hate it, don't do it, except for absolute necessity, i.e. for work.

J ~ Junk Drawer--y/n? Where is it? Junk everywhere. I'm quite tidy, my husband categorically not

K ~ Kitchen--colour and decorating scheme. Our kitchen is tiny, and open-plan with the living-room, so it's cream walls to match. Which reminds me that I never finished painting the cupboards. I'll get round to it one day.

L ~ Love--what is your favourite part of homemaking? Cleaning out the chickens! Obviously, I prefer it in good weather, but they are so appreciative, and sing delightful little crooning songs to me while I do it. I used to like making butter, but I don't do that any more because we can't get farm milk.

M ~ Mop--y/n? No, dog towel.

N ~ Nylons, machine or hand wash? Only wear them when I'm in the office, so they mostly get handwashed in hotel rooms.

O ~ Oven--do you use the window or open the oven to check? Using the window would mean cleaning it first.

P ~ Pizza--What do you put on yours? Tomato, basil and mozzarella.

Q ~ Quiet--What do you do during the day when you get a quiet moment? Usually, read, or if it's warm I take the dogs to the other end of the paddock and just sit quietly.

R ~ Recipe Card Box--y/n? What does it look like? Yes, my card index box has been on the go for over 30 years, though these days it is supplemented by a file on the computer. My sons and I share recipes with each other, so if one of us can't find something it just takes an email.

S ~Style of house--What style is your house? It's a farm cottage and much too small for 3 adults, but I would rather put up with lack of space than move because I love where it is. We did some refurbishing a couple of years ago, and there is still work to do, but it causes so much upheaval (my husband has chronic fatigue and finds the process very stressful and tiring) that we can't face finishing it, so we live in a degree of chaos that I can't quite cope with. Ho hum.

T ~ Tablecloths or Placemats? Tablecloth.

U ~ Under the kitchen sink--organized or toxic wasteland? Tottering piles of baking tins and trays, but sort of organised.

V ~ Vacuum--How many times per week? Not often enough. Senior Dog sheds constantly and I sometimes wonder if the dust clumps won't spontaneously transmute into a third dog.

W ~ Wash--How many loads of laundry do you do per week? At least one a day.
X's--Do you keep a daily list of things to do that you cross off? No, but if there is anything urgent I have to leave myself a reminder. List-making is reserved for work.

Y ~ Yard--y/n? Who does what? Husband does the grass-cutting and hedge-trimming and has sole access to the garden shed, so obviously he's "in charge". This extends to the pruning because he thinks I don't cut things back hard enough, so he always does it when I'm not here and can't protest (come to think of it, that's true of anything he thinks I won't like). I do the vegetable garden, with help from both sons, and all the fiddly stuff – sowing seeds, potting on, planting out and so on.

ZZZ's--what is your last homemaking task for the day before going to bed? In summer, letting the dogs out and shutting up the chickens. In winter the chickens can be shut up much earlier, so it's just the dogs.

One fine day...

2008-09-10T16:51:00.003+01:00

...and only one. Amid the rain the sun emerges for the occasional brief spell. Monday afternoon offered a brief respite, during which I planted spring cabbage and winter lettuce, praying that the ground - which I had protected with black plastic - would not be too waterlogged. We shall see.

Today there has been a drying breeze, and the grass could be cut, though not the paddock, which is too wet. The chickens are sick of the rain and welcomed the chance to get outside and luxuriate in a bath of dry sawdust.

I expect rain at this time of year anyway: my hibiscus Blue Bird has struggled all summer to produce a few buds in our northern climate, and as soon as its flowers open, so do the skies, battering it into a bedraggled blue wisp. This year I thought I would celebrate its efforts by sharing a picture with you. There are more spectacular blossoms in the garden, but nothing else has tried so hard.

2008-08-10T16:17:00.018+01:00

After yet more rain, the morning dawned bright and welcoming, even if everything underfoot is soggy. I celebrated the last day of my holiday by setting off once again with the dogs for a walk on the dunes. Since much of my normal route was going to be underwater (I know this because I have had wet feet every day for a fortnight) I decided we would be dropped off to walk on one direction only, and mostly along the track. I've been walking on my own for several weeks as OH is going through a bad patch and is resting up to take over again next week while I'm in London.
The most dramatic of the wildflowers are over but the burnet rose is still pretty with its dark hips, especially growing - as below - amongst the delicate eyebright, and red clover, harebells and bloody cranesbill provide colour, while lousewort makes pinky-white drifts which are much more attractive than its name suggests.
Creamy froths of meadowsweet scent the air on hot days (if only!) but I must admit I like this golden invader:

I must try it in the garden! Walking on the dunes one is less conscious of the dire state of our butterflies and moths, as the air of full of furry brown skippers, and the striking six-spot burnet. I wish I could photograph these, but they all move too fast, especially when a canine nose comes into view. Fortunately the canine nose missed this early morning walker on the narrow path:

but when I spotted a common lizard sunning itself on the stile the girls arrived as I raised the camera and it was gone in a flash! There must be snakes, too, but the closest I've seen is this wonderful viper's bugloss. The London streets will seem greyer and grimier than ever, I fear, after my brief spell of freedom!

Bridle Paths by A.F. Tschiffely

2008-07-20T18:00:00.000+01:00

This recent acquisition is in the nature of a historical document since it describes a countryside that, even in the Highlands, had disappeared before I was born. I count myself lucky to be able to remember a local farmer ploughing with horses, while one of the great treats of childhood was the arrival of the smith to shoe a horse, which he did using the equipment in the smithy that we owned (we bought the property with resident elderly blacksmith, who lived out his days brewing tea at the forge and chatting to his elderly cronies; we inherited the smithy cat, too). In Bridle Paths, my childhood hero, A.F. Tschiffely, set off in the early 1930s to ride round the rural byways of England and Wales. He made the journey with a bay mare Violet, "of no particular breed" who, coincidentally, since he borrowed her for the occasion, shared her name with his wife.

My admiration for Tschiffely began when I was about 10, and read his book A Tale of Two Horses. This recounted the story of his famous ride from Buenos Aires to Washington (1925-28), from the point of view of his two Criolla horses, Mancha and Gato. Pony-mad, I absorbed every word of their story in countless re-readings. So this later book was irresistible.

I said that it is a historical document – this is true not only in its depiction of Britain, but also in the author's opinions and writing style. His habit of surrounding with quotation marks anything "slangy" nearly drove me "mad", though happily he stopped doing it with "Violet's" name after the first chapter (possibly because he came up against the same punctuation difficulty that I have just done!) Anyway, "pub" is treated so throughout and, as he stayed in many, it was pretty irritating. The following passage is representative of his writing (both here and elsewhere):

Let poets write about balmy tropical breezes, waving palms, silvery moons and myriads of [sic] bright twinkling stars reflected on tropical seas with their phosphorescent flashes, in their fits and spasms of "inspiration," or owing to total ignorance of facts, omitting to glorify mosquitoes, gnats, sand-flies, suffocating heat, poisonous plants, fever and disease. Let them forge words and juggle with them, but give me the cool breezes and clear streams of temperate zones, fields of green and gold; the only paradises fit for gods, and the men who made them.

Actually, I can't argue, though I wouldn't express it quite like that. The photographs, incidentally, are wonderful – six tiny black-and-white images to some pages, showing virtually indistinguishable features of English countryside (my particular favourite is three bands of grey, indicating foreground, distance and sky, captioned The South Downs). There is an account of a local carnival in Evesham, attended by 'Char-à-bancs filled with thirsty people from the "Black Country"' and a considerable number of complaints about the increasing traffic on roads and through villages – Tschiffely was generally very conscious that England was undergoing rapid change. At times, though, he underestimates just how fast:

Here I must remark that if road engineers took the trouble to study the question carefully, a great deal of unnecessary animal suffering could be avoided if roads were built of suitable materials.

Thousands of horses are still hauling loads over roads throughout England. Since most of the pavement is very hard and slippery, the unfortunate animals' tasks have not only been made extremely difficult, but also a veritable torture.

I remembered, reading this book, that I had preferred A Tale of Two Horses to the book commonly published as Tschiffely's Ride, precisely because it focused on the horse's point of view; while commentary on human characteristics is ever-present, it is quirkier in its expression. I would have liked more about horses and the countryside in Bridle Paths, though there's a good passage on Fell Ponies – he would have been delighted to see the work of the Fell Pony Society in keeping the breed going today. In case his readers would care to emulate his journey, at the end of the book there is a list of the equipment he took, and an exhortation to pony clubs to produce maps of local bridleways and back roads. I don't know whether this was ever done, but a bit of googling tells me that there is an organisation which promotes long distance riding.

Bridle Paths was a diverting – and quick – read, and I thoroughly enjoyed the sense that I was renewing an acquaintance with an old friend. While I don't think such a dated piece of writing would be everyone's "cup of tea" (oh dear, sorry, I'll stop doing that now), I think visitors who return to this blog – and therefore must share some of my interests - might be amused.

All fluffed up

2008-06-25T14:55:00.004+01:00

There was a tremendous kerfuffle in the garden this morning. OH had taken the dogs out and I was just switching on the laptop and thinking reluctantly about starting work, when I heard indignant shrieks and flappings from the Bluebells. I couldn't imagine what was causing such consternation but when I squinted out of the window there was a strange dog in the garden. I rushed out, wincing as my bare feet (I never wear shoes indoors) hit the gravel, shouting as I went, and a young and enthusiastic springer spaniel made a beeline for the gate. She belonged to one of the builders working on the farmhouse next door, and I am afraid I was distinctly frosty as he retrieved her.

The chickens had all disappeared into their roost (they were perfectly safe, they have a heavy wire run to protect them from the foxes, which would have no qualms about helping themselves during daylight hours), but when I looked in on them, they were all crowded into the nestbox in a heap of quivering feathers and dark mutterings: "Shouldn't wonder if no one can lay for weeks", they opined, "but yes, a little fresh lettuce may help. Mind you put the stalk in too, for a nice dose of its soothingly narcotic sap." They are well-versed in country lore, those girls.

You can be sure that I shall glower at the builder every time I pass, but I can't help remembering a very young springer who chased next door's ducks, and everything else he set eyes on, to my intense mortification. Lovely dogs, but fluff-for-brains and great sufferers from selective deafness, so I have never wanted another. Not that Senior Dog and The Bolter are saints, but TB is asleep under my duvet at the moment, so all is quiet.

Froth on a daydream

2008-06-02T10:23:00.004+01:00

Over the garden wall...

The lanes are bordered with foam – hedges here are mostly hawthorn, or may (bringing to mind the country saying about ne'er casting a clout till may be out, particularly apt yesterday, when wind and rain had moved in after Saturday's glorious sunshine), while along the verges a froth of Queen Anne's Lace dances in the gusts, its delicate heads weighted by raindrops.

My recent post with its picture of heartsease reminds me that country names here and across the Atlantic may differ. In North America Queen Anne's Lace seems to refer to the wild carrot (daucus carota) whereas I was brought up to use the name for anthriscus sylvestris, also known as cow parsley or, most unattractively, kecks, which according to Geoffrey Grigson in The Englishman's Flora, refers to the hollow stalks (presumably for the same reason that in some parts of northern England "kecks" also refers to trousers, and even knickers).

Anthriscus sylvestris is listed as a culinary herb, although not one of great value, with dire warnings about not muddling it up with the somewhat similar hemlock (conium maculatum) – though, since hemlock stinks of mice, it's hard to see how anyone could. Grigson points out that the similarity between umbellifer flowers has led to much overlapping of names, hence the different usage in the US, where they attach a legend to the appearance of wild carrot: Queen Anne was a great lacemaker, and challenged the ladies of the court to make something as delicate as the flowerhead – none except the Queen could, but she pricked her finger, and that's why the wild carrot has a drop of red at the centre. Grigson, more prosaically, suggests that the plant is named is for Saint Ann, sister of the Virgin Mary.

Anthriscus sylvestris has strong associations with the Devil and witchcraft, too, reflected in some of its other names: devil's oatmeal and hare's parsley, oldrot and gipsy's curtains. Perhaps the prettiest, however, is its Wiltshire name of moonlight - think I might start calling it that. The maytree too, has attractive alternatives, but I'll save them for another post.

This pretty spiraea echoes the effect of the Queen Anne's Lace and mayblossom

A long weekend

2008-05-26T16:53:00.007+01:00

I was particularly glad that in the north we escaped the bad weather this weekend; the funeral of a close relative last week left me feeling exhausted and demoralised, and desperate to get out into the garden, and it was with a sense of relief that I woke each morning to sun. Despite a cold wind that limited work on the vegetable beds (netting broad beans in a high wind is a thankless task, but the thought of all those pigeons waiting until I gave up kept me going) a reasonable amount was achieved: the tomatoes now stand in regimented lines in the greenhouse, accompanied by aubergines and peppers, while trays of salad leaves have been sown. The intention is to keep not just the family supplied with leaves, but those voracious eaters of greens, the chickens.

The enthusiasm of sons for gardening is limited to edible plants, but they can be persuaded into a certain amount of heavy work, so I managed to mix compost for various pots and containers so that I could at least start the planting of pelargoniums, fuchsias and annuals for summer colour. I am pleased with two strawberry pots, one of which contains a convolvulus cneorum in flower above what will become a froth of dark blue lobelia (the convolvulus will be long over by that time, but its arching silvery branches are attractive in themselves). The other pot has more of the lobelia, and a single sky blue brachyscome, or Swan River Daisy, at the top. Not very showy, which is how I prefer it – I'd rather fill pots with a single species as a rule, but that doesn't work so well with strawberry pots, and OH has a tendency to bring home trays of mixed plants. I think I talked my mother into pots of white osteospermum this year (I love the darker underside to the petals), but couldn't get any myself, only some rather brash orange ones which I passed up on.

By today, the Bank Holiday, though, my energy had run out. I feel as though I've been through a wringer, for those old enough to remember such things, over the past couple of weeks, and the thought of being chilled for another day had lost its appeal, so I decided that reading about plants would be enough. I have a book to review, Salal by Laurie Ricou, and am amazed to discover the extent to which a plant I had barely heard of is being grown commercially in British Columbia. As well as being offered by nurseries as a native plant for groundcover (it has lovely deep green leaves and black berries) it is used in huge quantities by florists, who like particularly appreciate the way its foliage will display a bunch of roses). It can cause problems in southern England as a garden escape, apparently, though I don't think I've ever seen it there. British gardeners may be more familiar with its close relative Gaultheria procumbens, the wintergreen. The book is unusual in choosing a single, relatively unremarkable, plant as its subject, and three chapters in I'm intrigued to see where it will take me next.

Heartsease, May 2008

Chelsea season

2008-05-18T14:36:00.004+01:00

Gardens R Us

As Gardener's World on BBC2 has already embarked on the flower show circuit, I found myself wondering how a dog would design the prefect garden. It would be interesting amid the wire daisies and softly splashing water features, I thought, to create the ultimate in canine cool. Perhaps the Dogs' Trust would like to sponsor it for Chelsea next year? I consulted the experts...

It begins with an enclosed space – any self-respecting dog has got to have something to defend. The girls reckon a mailbox at the gate is ideal, you can both shout at the postman not to come in and wag at him approvingly for obeying instructions. A 5-bar farm gate is perfect, by the way, convenient bars for resting the front paws on combined with good visibility. A mixed boundary is handy – hedges make good habitats for various creatures as well as handy gaps for quick and unpredictable exit, while fences can be jumped or tunnelled under. Continuous walls are far from ideal unless you are very athletic, but can encourage ivy, which is good for snuffling about in. The next priority is a good big lawn. This mustn't be too tidy, you want your people to throw lots of balls about, and overlong grass is excellent for cooling tummies in hot weather, and for a good roll in any weather.

For the male dog an ornamental conifer bed is always a plus, plenty of uprights for widdling on, while for any dog a nice dense shrubbery comes in useful when brushes or flea powder are mentioned. The Bolter, who likes a little privacy at certain moments, advocates hedges within gardens. Senior Dog doesn't care, she'd rather it was obvious that she's ready to come back in now, especially in wet weather (when gravel is the surface of choice).

Planting within the garden may be largely left to the whim of humans, provided they realise that wilderness and trees are preferable to the manicured look. A little control is necessary though - nettles, for instance, should be controlled, since they cause itchy paws, but a nice patch of long grass can provide cover for rodents, and offer hours of gentle exercise. For a work out first thing in the morning, a patch of catnip should be considered, while a well-dug vegetable bed, or even a child's sandpit, provides the ideal repository for bones. An accessible water feature, if there is space, is desirable, but Senior Dog advises that a boggy patch will do at a pinch, especially when you are hot at the end of a game (mud sticks well to the undercarriage and offers better cooling properties).

Finally, both dogs recommend that fashionable accessory, an area of decking: wooden planks warm up quickly in the sun and are reasonable comfortable to lie on for long periods. If you are very fortunate, your people may regard deck railings as a handy place to air bedspreads and similar items, in which case they can be readily pulled down for extra comfort. They point out that the dog-designed garden is low-maintenance (most of the work can easily be done with one hand while throwing a ball with the other), wildlife-friendly (did you know that woodpeckers like bones, too?) and organic (the only garden pests are cats and squirrels and they are FUN). In short, why would a human want any other kind of garden? You haven't got a dog? How sad for you, but we can soon sort that out...

Game, anyone?

Booking Through Thursday: Manual Labour Redux

2008-05-15T21:48:00.002+01:00

Following up last week’s question about reading writing/grammar guides, this week, we’re expanding the question….
Scenario: You’ve just bought some complicated gadget home . . . do you read the accompanying documentation? Or not?
Do you ever read manuals?
How-to books?
Self-help guides?
Anything at all?

There are three adults in our household, and three completely different, and largely incompatible, approaches to a new piece of "kit". My husband settles down with the manual before he unpacks anything else, reads it in depth and, if necessary, identifies every component part of the purchase, counting screws and checking boxes. I will have a cursory glance at the manual and then embark on setup, following the instructions reasonably closely and despairing almost immediately because it won't work. Younger son leaves the manual in the box. If you gave us the same object simultaneously and told us to get it working, he'd probably win hands down.

How-to guides? Well, if you count cookery books, then we all read – and use - them. I like gardening books, too, and wouldn't contemplate pruning a fruit tree without reading up\ on it first. When I was growing up my parents had a wonderful book, passed round as a great treasure, which was a compilation of handicraft leaflets published by Dryad Handicrafts (an interesting offshoot of the Arts and Crafts Movement, see here for information). We learnt to make all sorts of things from these: lino cuts (potato cuts for the children), raffia mats, stencilling, french knitting – there was even a leaflet on bookbinding, and one Christmas my stepmother made me an elegantly bound marble-covered notebook, possibly the beginning of my stationery addiction. I often borrow how-to books from the library, particularly books on petit-point and lace knitting. And there's the Access manual, of course. I've spent hours with that. Aargh!

Lastly, self-help guides. These don't loom large on my horizon. I'll borrow them from the library to find out how to deal with something specific – migraine, for instance, and browse them, making the odd note of anything that might prove useful. Really, I use them in the way I use all reference books, to find the solution to a specific problem. I know some people find them irresistible, but I lack the staying power for self-improvement.

Pass the dictionary, please

2008-05-09T17:13:00.007+01:00

I missed this week's Booking Through Thursday but since it seemed made for me, I decided to post on it anyway. The question was:

Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?

I think I've only got one "writing book" on my shelves, Philosophical Writing: An Introduction, which was a set book for my Master's course. I don't think I would have bought it otherwise, but I did read it, and you never know, it may come in handy one day, if only for swatting wasps.

As for the others, there are too many to list, but my copy of The Chicago Manual of Style is my treasure. I can't tell you how often that gets taken down. It's regarded the The Book in this household, and when I gave a copy to my elder son last Christmas he was delighted. It sits beside Fowler's Modern Usage, Roget's Thesaurus (a fourteenth birthday present from my parents - we're a funny family, I suppose) and a line of dictionaries: for work there are the Oxford English and Harrap's New English/French, for fun there are various dictionaries of slang, quotations and symbolism, pocket Italian and Latin dictionaries, books on grammar . . . I use online versions too, with a subscription to Merriam-Webster, and shortcuts to Chambers and several others. And they are only the tip of the iceberg of the books I regard as essential aids to writing, the stack of encyclopaedias and other reference books I couldn't live without - on science, mythology, heraldry, history. If I could only rescue one from a fire it would be Chicago, which is daft, because it's online now, but I know the layout and can find what I want in it, and anyway, it's there, just where I need it.

When I was first married and we were poor and had to make our own entertainment, we used to play games with the dictionary - usually just "I'll pick a word and you guess what it means" but occasionally a version of Call My Bluff, where you actually invent definitions - very good for the vocabulary, and great for playing with children, too.

Back again

2008-05-06T17:22:00.002+01:00

Well, the conference happened, the potatoes got planted, and I plunged into weeks of typesetting and grant applications, from which I'm only gradually re-emerging. I spent one of my regular weekends in Devon, where there was both joy and sadness in the garden: some lovely flowers and much glorious greenery to enjoy, while sympathising over the azaleas and camellias which had come out only to be blasted by frost. I took my mother to the garden centre and bought her two orchids on special offer to cheer her up - the wonders of micro-propagation! My retiring President sent me one, too, pictured above and still being enjoyed, though I have no confidence that I will ever manage to make it flower again.

The high point of the weekend past was moving the bird feeder. For over a year it has been in the same place in view of the sitting-room window, attracting a flock of "regulars" while affording them good protection from cats, kestrels and sparrowhawks. My resident flock of sparrows appreciate the hawthorn hedge just behind the pole, to perch in while they wait impatiently for food to arrive, to scold me from while I fill feeders, and to flee into if a sudden threat interrupts their feeding. The woodpeckers like the corkscrew willow near the pole, varying their diet with insects while they await their turn at the peanuts. The collared doves, woodpigeons and blackbirds all feed on the gravel underneath, amply supplied with seed by the sparrows who fling most of it out while searching for particular delicacies. The robins help with the filling of the feeders, perching in the garden bench until I put a tiny handful of seed on the seat for them. Happily, the feeding station could be moved to a similar position near another willow, and the residents have adjusted without difficulty.

At this time of year the day-long clamour of birds just living their small lives is staggeringly loud. Recently a small flock suddenly swooped into a tree next to me, all following two sparrows who were oblivious to everything but their conflict over, I imagine, some especially lovely lady. The noise was tremendous – I am sure that the followers were all shrieking "Fight! Fight!" like the "big boys" who used to scare me in the school playground. At night I have been surprised by the noise made by lapwings, nesting for the first time just over the garden fence – they swoop and squeal until well after dusk. As soon as they stop the owls take over, and sleep is punctuated by screeches. Elder son, enjoying a brief respite from the honking taxis and pubs of Edinburgh, commented that it was pleasant to enjoy the comparative quiet of the country, but those sparrows did make quite a racket!

Displacement activity

2008-04-02T13:17:00.003+01:00

Photo: Rob Waterhouse

Two minutes free before lunch to air my frustration at not being out in the garden! It's a beautiful day and if it weren't for the now-looming conference I would take an hour off to go and plant the potatoes. As it is I may have to send a son to plant them, as my weekends for the whole of April are all taken up: conference this weekend, then as soon as I get back I've got a book to typeset – 13 days for 16 chapters, and the punctuation has to be anglicised too. Then a Devon visit, and that's April over. No time to garden, and very little time to tend my blogs, or to read other people's. Please forgive me, all you lovely people who comment here, if I am neglecting you, I promise to catch up with all your news whenever I can.

This morning, sitting at my desk in the window and looking out at a bright – and untidy – garden, while I'm supposed to be creating hyperlinks in a book to be viewed online, I admired two goldfinches in the ash tree, and tried to avoid a pair of collared doves which were full of the joys of spring. They look so prim in their Quaker plumage, too.

Ah well, back to the grindstone – last year's AGM minutes to be done for next week (heaven only knows where my notes are...)

Colours

2008-03-30T16:00:00.005+01:00

My new colour scheme reminds me of these lovely hellebores seen recently at the Oxford Botanic Gardens – that slightly washed out red is so subtle and alluring. It's perhaps not so readily associated with spring, but for me is as characteristic of this time of year as the deep yellows of daffodils.

A quick trip to check out potential conference venues had offered enough time between visits for a leisurely, if chilly, walk in the gardens and glasshouses, recalling a visit many years ago when my infant son decided that the water hyacinth was insufficiently labelled, the sign being beside the barrel within which the plant dangled its roots into rather deep water. We removed him before the gardeners realised that the label was now at the foot of the barrel. We must also have seen these lovely mulberries – black and white – but on this occasion early spring showed them in all their sculptured glory. I also had time for a quick coffee with Simon from Stuck In A Book, which was delightful.

At home there are leaves appearing on the trees (apart from the old ashes which dominate our garden). There are delicate buds on the amelanchier, indicating that it will soon disappear under a flock of happy blackbirds, who strip them off with great glee. Later in the year they repeat the process with anything that escaped their springtime attentions – last summer was the first time I had ever found a ripe berry on the poor thing. No Saskatoon berry pie in this house!

Yesterday, to celebrate my son's birthday, I sowed tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and courgettes. Three varieties of potato are chitted and ready to plant, though goodness knows when I'll get it done. I hate to go away at this time of year – by the time I'm free of work demands everything has already run riot and I spend the entire summer trying to catch up.

Easter eggs

2008-03-25T16:35:00.008Z

Today's "new look" post is specially dedicated to Nan, of the wonderful Letters from a Hill Farm which I always read with pleasure.

I think I have mentioned before that one of the Bluebells approaches egg-laying with a good deal of enthusiasm. This was her Easter offering: you can see beside it a normal egg, which weighs 68 grams. The big egg weighs 102g and has a shell which looks as though it might suitably house a baby ostrich. Recalling Walter Wangerin Jr's Book of the Dun Cow I wouldn't be surprised if it would hatch a basilisk – be prepared to read in the newspapers that Northumberland has been laid waste!

Faced with such largesse I have been baking. I had been planning to whisk up a few peanut butter cookies, as recently made by Cornflower, but my son – briefly home for Easter - mentioned peanut butter brownies so, between cleaning windows, watering houseplants and generally trying to prepare for a frantic week, I went for speed, and measure-not-weigh.

Being so proud of the Bluebells' achievements, I had to photograph the eggs as I added them:

Turning the mix into the tin I got carried away: the chocolate sprinkles happened to be in the cupboard, although I can't imagine why!

The end result was greeted with approval, and I still had time to do some serious work. I'll try the cookies next time.

An Eeyore moment

2008-03-12T10:30:00.001Z

He often thought what a good thing it would be if the wearing of masks or animal's heads could become customary for persons over a certain age. How restful social intercourse would be if the face did not have to assume any expressions – the strained look of interest, the simulated delight or surprise, the anxious concern one didn't really feel.

This excerpt from Barbara Pym's Less Than Angels struck a chord, as her lines so often do for me. This is a book full of sly digs at the foibles of academics and, since I am preparing to run a 3-day conference in April, I find it easy to identify her types among my delegates. It's a small conference – under 100 people – and so relatively easy, but it's three days of being at the beck and call of people who find their bedroom too close to the lift or to the place where staff gather to smoke, or who wrote their PowerPoint presentation on a Mac and find that the college's PC won't read it, or need to print their paper 10 minutes before their presentation is due. Relatives are taken ill, luggage only turns up on the last day; I hope it's not tempting Providence to mention it, but I've never had the ultimate horror of a death during the event, although it's happened to a colleague.

The current preoccupation is simpler. Apart from being ready – programmes and abstracts printed, badges bought and prepared, menus decided, rooming lists compiled, wine ordered (of vital importance!)- and checking the box of things every organiser should have - scissors, white tack, pay-as-you-go mobile (surprisingly useful), spare USB stick, marker pens etc - I am trying to prepare myself, practising the expression of open friendliness and interest, the warm and welcoming voice, the alert listening face I glue on at the conference dinner when I am so exhausted all I want to do is crawl into bed with a glass of whisky. And I'm hampered: my natural expression is just a touch on the gloomy side, I'm told, even when I am at my most tranquil, while my thinking expression tends to be a slight frown. Conscious of this, by the end of a conference I feel as if I've been grinning manically for days.

My inclination, like that of Pym's Alaric Lydgate, would be to retreat behind a mask. However, I shall try to channel the 3am frets into consideration of what I am to wear to alleviate the Eeyore tendencies; I remember arriving at one conference venue, hanging my clothes for the event in the wardrobe and thinking, "Goodness, it's a positive symphony of black!" Perhaps I'd better just pop out to M&S next week.

Booking through Thursday - Hero

2008-03-06T16:25:00.002Z

You should have seen this one coming … Who is your favorite Male lead character? And why?

It's a good thing I've had all week to anticipate this question – heroines were so much easier! I suspect that I'm much less loyal to my heroes, a serial monogamist perhaps.

The first, and much the most enduring, is Winnie-the-Pooh. It's funny that a poor memory, a sweet tooth and an inclination to stoutness is so much more endearing in a Bear than a husband, but Pooh still makes me smile. My loyalty is strictly to the A.A. Milne and E.H. Shephard characters, though –later incarnations have never really appealed to me.

Now we get to the serious stuff. Hamlet is next, and the first of a list of Byronically mad-bad-and-dangerous-to-know types. He's followed by J.P. Donleavy's Balthasar B, he of the Beastly Beatitudes, and a young man of very loose morals. Next is Francis Crawford of Lymond, from Dorothy Dunnett's 6-novel series, The Lymond Chronicles. A sixteenth-century Scots noble, Lymond is very much in the Hamlet vein, exiled and hunted down by his family, living by his wits and sword, and rampaging across Europe and the Ottoman Empire to the detriment of friends and enemies alike. Lymond was to some extent followed in my affections by another of Dunnett's heroes, Niccolò, his great-grandfather, who has a similar capacity for both humour and destruction. Swashbuckling at its most entertaining. In this category I must also include Albert Campion, who just beats Lord Peter Wimsey for me, although I know many won't agree. You'll have noticed that I like my men to be funny, erudite and not entirely responsible. And they need to be better than average dancers (I'll exempt Pooh on grounds on girth). Loyalty demands that I include Titus Groan, although he's singularly lacking in a sense of humour, and it's a bit strange being in love with a man you've known as a baby!

Happily, a more mature taste brings me to Mr Knightley, my favourite of the Austen men, despite his infuriating tendency to be right. Nonetheless, he's the one I'm spending most of my time with these days, a serious, well-read man, and above all, restful, a quality under-rated in one's youth, but which I've come to appreciate.

Spring purples

2008-03-01T17:23:00.005Z

I picked this glorious selection of leaves for dinner, and we had them just lightly steamed, with roast chicken and Rooster potatoes roasted in goose fat. The outer leaves went to the Bluebells, who greeted them with their usual enthusiasm. We were rewarded with five eggs, one of them the largest I think I have ever seen from a chicken - it will be a double-yolker for sure.

Booking through Thursday - Heroine

2008-02-28T17:41:00.001Z

Who is your favourite female lead character? And why? (And yes, of course, you can name more than one . . . I always have trouble narrowing down these things to one name, why should I force you to?)

My intermittent attempts, during my teenage years, to launch my career as a novelist, were always first-person narratives, so I suppose it's not surprising that my thoughts immediately turned to three narrators. They have a good deal in common, including period. The first is Fanny Logan, quiet observer of the comings and goings of the Radlett family in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. From the perspective of middle-age, Fanny relates the story of her cousin Linda's "relentless pursuit" of love, and Polly Montdore's disillusionment with it. The second, who ought to be another cousin of Fanny's, since she has much in common with her, is Amy Savernake, in Joyce Windsor's A Mislaid Magic and After the Unicorn. I suppose Windsor's writing is too really sub-Mitford to be well-known, but I find Amy's "voice" appealing and her comments on her thoroughly eccentric family are not without asperity. Last of the three – perhaps you've guessed by now – is Cassandra Mortmain. As an aspiring writer, she actually sets down on paper her desire to "capture" her family (and the castle, of course), and she's been like a sister ever since I first discovered her in my teens.

Less self-effacing would be Georgette Heyer's eponymous heroine, Frederica. She's witty, efficient, unfazed by irritable cousins and manages the affairs of her orphaned brothers and sisters with humour and commonsense. Of course, I like most of the Heyer heroines: like Austen's, you can imagine settling down with them for afternoon tea and a giggle at the foibles of the world, and Cassandra, Fanny and Amy would fit right in. I'm sure we could budge up on the sofa, too, for Lizzie Bennet, and Flora Poste and...

Incidentally...

2008-02-27T14:17:00.003Z

I saw this meme at Stuck in a Book (where you can find its pedigree) and liked it so much I was halfway through my answers before I'd actually decided to do it. I was sorry to find that Simon doesn't like the word "Onyx" since it's rather in the same field as my favourite. But then my father was a lapidary, which is also a good word, and I spent much of my childhood sorting gemstones. The relevance of the photo, which is an old one, is simply that it's two contented dogs.

What is your favourite word? Chalcedony.

What is your least favourite word? "Incidentally"...it always bodes ill when my husband starts a sentence with it.

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? Ah, baroque church music.

What turns you off? Reality television. And breakfast television.

What is your favourite curse word? Hell's bells and buckets of blood. I'm old-fashioned.

What sound or noise do you love? The unique silence that happens when you wake up in the morning and it's snowed heavily overnight. The contented noises my dogs make.

What sound or noise do you hate? Loud noises, especially when made by a high wind. It makes me nervous.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? I could be an anchoress on a suitable country estate, perhaps, as long as the library van visited regularly. With a chicken or two for eggs and a vegetable garden I could be quite self-supporting. And a dog to guard the vegetables. Oh dear, perhaps I'm missing the point. Actually, I'd rather like to be a textile conservator.

What profession would you not like to do? Dentistry.

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? "The library is that way...".

Lark Rise to Tea Bread

2008-02-25T15:41:00.002Z

I've been – belatedly – catching up with Lark Rise to Candleford on BBC1. Having reached episode 3 I'm quite enjoying it, but I was a bit surprised to find that it started about 3/4 of the way through Flora Thomson's memoir, with young Laura's move to Candleford to work at the Post Office. Having seen how the stories for each episode have been created from incidents a few lines long in the book, I'm not surprised that there doesn't seem to be a credit for the author at the start (or am I missing it?), or that a second series of feel-good Sunday telly has apparently been commissioned. Oh well, it's all quite pretty, and there's little enough to watch otherwise.

I've been hunting for tea bread recipes on the internet. We don't each much in the way of cake or pudding in this house, though muffins sometimes happen when both sons are home. When they were small I baked almost daily, and tea bread was a staple for days when I was in a hurry, for instance, if it was a butter-making day, as that was time-consuming. My preference in baking has always been for the "hearty" kind – I can't do light-as-a feather sponges, and never really felt much urge to, but a good solid fruitcake packed with sultanas and raisins, an applecake all unctuous and sticky in the middle or a classic gingerbread were all turned out regularly and disappeared about 10 minutes' later. My tour de force, I reckoned, was a date loaf served with home-made ice-cream. Unfortunately, a vital ingredient of the loaf was Kellogg's bran buds – at some point during the 80s, these were changed, and never produced the right result again. I think they subsequently disappeared in the UK, though they seem to be available elsewhere. I still make good ice-cream, though, on the rare occasions there is any room in the freezer.

The most unusual tea bread recipe I've found uses lavender; I shall have to try making it when the lavender comes into flower, even though I shan't be able to eat it (lavender makes me wheeze). This is one of the kind which is simply a loaf-shaped cake which might be served with butter, as is The Dormouse's excellent banana and date loaf. The other kind is made by soaking the dried fruit in tea – I rather favour this type and plan to experiment with different kinds of tea, Russian caravan for starters, I think. The huge advantage of the breads-made-with-tea is their speed. Soak the fruit in advance (overnight if possible), chuck in some honey or muscovado sugar, flour (not forgetting the baking powder if you're not using self-raising!) and a beaten egg or two, turn it into a tin and shove it in the oven. Go and watch an episode of Lark Rise..., and it should be about ready by the end.

Booking through Thursday - Format

2008-02-21T15:54:00.002Z

All other things (like price and storage space) being equal, given a choice in a perfect world, would you rather have paperbacks in your library? Or hardcovers? And why?

For most purposes I prefer paperbacks, they are usually lighter and more portable, which is important to me. I have huge affection for the old Penguin and Pelican covers, orange, green or blue and cream, and would be happy to have rows and rows on my bookshelf, even if some of them were battered. For preference I buy paperbacks, waiting, if I can bear, for new books to come out in that format, but there's plenty of evidence on my shelves of the occasions when I couldn't wait, or when a special bookclub edition was, inconveniently, produced in hardback. Or, in the case of old books, that is simply what I found.

The main exception is when I am buying an old, collectible, book – in that case I may well choose a hardback, especially if it's an affordable first edition, or is illustrated by a particular artist, or possibly just has a cover I like. With new books that might become collectibles, I don't have strong feelings – a well-produced soft cover is as acceptable to me as the alternative, though I do enjoy the occasional beautifully produced coffee table book. Another occasion on which I buy hardbacks is at readings, generally because that's what is on offer. Finally, I also buy old leatherbound books from time to time, when they serendipitously combine beauty and a subject which interests me.