I thought I’d participate in this weeks Sunday Sevens devised by Natalie. Here’s some of the things I filled my week with.
Gardening: David and I spent three hours in the yarden yesterday, it was tiring work. I replanted some bulbs and re-potted my honeysuckle into a bigger pot. While David pruned the jasmin and passion flower, I sowed wildflower, poppy and borage seeds for the pollinators come summer. We also planted some maris bard chits in the hope of harvesting (once again) our own grown potatoes. While we worked, the song of a blackbird was a joy to hear.
Hyacinth multiplying
Honeysuckle
Reading: This March as part of my continued participation in the Year in Books, I have been reading The English Girl by Katherine Webb. I may not be on course for my 40 books in the year but I am managing at least 1-2 books a month.
The English Girl
David Tennant with Olivia Colman
TV: The third series of Broadchurch has recently started on ITV. David Tennant reprises his role as moody detective, Alec Hardy. It’s made me realise how much I have missed seeing him on the small screen!
Walk 1000 miles: My tally for this past week has been 18 miles, bringing my total from 1st January to 12th March to 230 miles. My miles are mainly made up of city walking and exercise. I’m very much looking forward to long summer walks in the countryside which should boost my final total come December.
Eating out: This week has seen me out and about in Liverpool. On Tuesday I met up with my ‘boss’ for a catch up at Leaf, (you can read the post here,) and then on Thursday after a Dr’s appointment I enjoyed a nice tea-cake and coffee with Mum at Costa.
Where there’s tea, there’s hope.
Mum at Costa
Baking: David has taken over the kitchen! He has been baking cakes! He attempted a lemon drizzle cake, the result was a very moist cake! I added fruit with mine, blueberries being my favourite at the moment. 🙂
Lemon Drizzle Cake
So there you have it, my week in pictures. Did you get up to anything fun? I wish you a good week ahead.
Sharon from the wonderful Sunshine and Celandines suggested the topic for today’s post. I already do a yearly video compilation (watch out for that in the new year), but I thought I would post 12 pictures (or video) that give an impression of the year 2016!
So here goes!
January:
The year began with a little trip to North Wales. On a cold, drizzly day David and I visitedRhosydd Slate Quarryat Cwmorthin. The weather made the scenery even more atmospheric! Who knows how many ghosts wander the rugged, unforgiving slate scattered landscape?
Rhosydd Slate Quarry, Cwmorthin
February:
On another of David’s days off work, we visited the Lake District and took a leisurely stroll along Derwentwater. Little did we know, we would visit the shores of Derwentwater several times in 2016! I had discovered a new hobby!
Derwentwater
March:
With spring just around the corner, March was all about the yarden! I busied myself with planting free packets of seeds that I’d requested from Grow Wild, a Kew Gardens initiative!
April:
The much anticipated Hans Zimmerconcert in Birmingham came and went in a blink of an eye! A good time was had by all that night! Hans himself introduced film classics such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Inception and The Dark Knight trilogy.
May:
In May, David and I returned to the shores of Derwentwater. This time I bravely stripped to my swim suit and slipped over rocky stones to embark on my first ever wild swim! It would be the beginning of many swims undertaken in 2016 in scenery that is nothing but inspiring!
Facing Blencathra
June:
For the second year running I took part in The Wildlife Trusts, 30 Days Wild. This year I packed even more wild into June. We built a pond, harvested our first crop of maris bard potatoes, grew borage for bees, and I even went without technology for a day!
Maris Bard Potatoes
July:
In July, David and I took a day trip to Sheffield to see their herd of colourful elephants.
August:
The year wasn’t all fun days out and wild swimming! There was lots of hard work to be done on the house. With detritus clogging up the space under the hallway and sagging/rotten beams found under the dinning room, the long summer days were filled with the sawing of wood and hours of reconstruction.
Dining room floor
September:
At BrownsLiverpool, I partook in my first, but very rich afternoon tea. The red velvet cake was delicious but the whole afternoon was a sugar overload!
Afternoon Tea, Browns, Liverpool
October:
Autumn became centre stage in all its colourful glory as I participated in Wild October! I watched a garden spider spin its web, relived childhood by kicking fallen leaves, turned 40 and holidayed in the Lake District.
November:
The iconic Weeping Window from the Tower of London poppies came to Caernarfon Castle, just in time for Armistice. The poppies are touring the UK, thanks to 14-18 Now, and are a fitting memorial to the fallen.
The Weeping Window at Caernarfon Castle
December:
Christmas Tree
December is all about Christmas and spending time with family. My little 3ft Christmas tree, adorned with birds and polar bears always goes up on the 1st. Artie once again had an Advent calendar to count the days to Christmas, and this year I managed to get a Christmas wreath for the front door!
So there you have it, my 2016 in pictures!
For some this year has been a harsh year, but for David and I there have been more happy times than sad. Indeed we have made many wonderful memories out of new experiences this year.
I wish you all good health and happiness for 2017! Let’s make it a year to remember!
No sooner had I published Sunday Sevens #15, when more pet news occurred.
It was a lovely start to the week, with bright warm sunshine (much needed if you ask me!) When it is warm I like to sit out in the yarden, I take Artie with me. Being outside gives him more stimulation than being stuck inside the house. However I have created a nature yarden, meaning I have lots of visiting bees and butterflies, lots of stalking opportunities for Artie! While I was digging up my second crop of maris bard potatoes for my vegetarian roast dinner that evening, Artie was sitting amongst the flowers watching the bees.
I acted too slowly. I was busy marvelling at all the potatoes I had grown! From the corner of my eye I saw Artie lunge at a bee who had entered a foxglove. He must have knocked the poor bee down into the foliage as I couldn’t see her. I left Artie sniffing in the undergrowth while gathering my harvest.
On coming back into the yarden, Artie suddenly darted from the greenery, rubbing his paw against his nose. Jumping about like a jack in a box ‘You’ve been stung!’ I cried, scoping him up and taking him into the house. I called for David’s assistance. Then proceeded, a half hour long endurance, of trying to hold Artie down while David tweezed the bee sting from his nose. I got covered in scratches for my endeavour.
Afterwards when Artie was sting-less and enjoyed some cooked chicken, seemingly none the wiser for the upset. I stood shaking like a leaf. My nerves had been shot! ‘Pets are worse than kids!’ David exclaimed while I tried to regain my spirits.
Needless to say Artie is back to his ‘wild’ self again. He is siting in the last rays of the Sunday sunshine.
Have you had a pet who has had a too close encounter with a bee?
Forgive me for returning to the great British obsession, the weather, but the UK saw its hottest day of the year (so far) on Tuesday! In the NW of England the temperatures soared to a very sweaty 31°c! The Spanish Plume the meteorologists had predicted had finally arrived! Though only for three days! On Tuesday evening as I wrote my post about the numerous animal sculptures that have graced the UK’s cities, David and I sat in the hottest room of the house. Outside the window I watched as the sky darkened as the last rays of the sun dipped beyond the horizon!
During this little snippet of summer, I was out counting the butterflies that visited the yarden, in the Big Butterfly Count. The count runs from 15th July to 7th August 2016! I don’t know whether it is because the alleyway between the houses has become overgrown with wild flowers/weeds but I have seen more butterflies flutter past this year, then any other! Predominantly the most common butterfly has been the small white. There has often been two (I don’t know if it’s the same couple) twirling in their dance of attraction before the male attaches himself to the female! They are a joy to watch!
One evening David and I were giving sugar water to this tired bee when in quick succession a small white and a red admiral fluttered crazily past! I quickly noted my sightings on the phone app before watching the satisfied bee fly off energised!
This week saw me finish my latest book, Sam Baker‘s The Woman Who Ran, inspired by Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. At first I struggled to get into the story. It seems to me that many published novelists nowadays are or were journalists. I don’t know whether that is a good thing or not! I persevered and soon the story warmed up. The narrative was atmospheric in its description of the Yorkshire Dales. The characters were a little difficult to understand but you got to like them in the end. The finale, touted as being explosive, ended more like a whimper. I didn’t understand why the main character would act like she did in the face of opposition! Anyway, it was enjoyable. I’ve not read this author before, perhaps I will in future?
Have you read this novel? Any thoughts?
I was going to end today’s blog with an update on Troy but there hasn’t been much improvement. Then I remembered the lovely selection of bramley apples given to us by one of David’s friends. So I decided to finish with them. I have acquired all the ingredients so next week I shall be busy cooking apple pies, or variants on a theme!
I can’t believe how quickly the first week of 30 Days Wild went and now I am finalising this post at the end of the second week! I am enjoying reading other bloggers’ adventures, and The Wildlife Trusts, 30 Days Wild app, of 101 random acts of wildness, is really inspiring me to learn more about the nature that I see around me.
Day Eight: Wednesday.
Wednesday was World Oceans Day. Highlighting the plight of the seas and collaborating for a better future. I was unable to get to the coast but I still managed to celebrate the diversity of the oceans. It was a day of cooking and baking bread. I shaped these granary loaves into sea turtles (recipe here). I’m no artist but I am pretty happy with how they turned out. What do you think?
In the afternoon I opened the app for the Great British Bee Count. I thought with the amount of bees flying about the yarden that I could do a timed count. I set up alongside a popular plant and started the one minute timer. Sadly, all the bees must have known and only one mason bee made an appearance! Typical!
Day Nine: Thursday.
I turned to the wildness cards for inspiration. I downloaded the cards from the email pack The Wildlife Trusts sent when I signed up for 30 Days Wild. (I wish I had asked for a mail pack as they sent a cute little ‘I love wild’ badge! But such is life!)
I picked the sketch up close card. If my sea turtle bread rolls were any indication, then this activity could go horribly wrong, but I had to try. So I grabbed a piece of paper and sharpened a pencil and sat down to draw one of my favourite garden birds. The dunnock.
Some interesting facts on the dunnock (hedge sparrow):
Has a fine bill due to preferring insects and beetles than seeds.
Is a ground feeder.
As their diets are similar to Robins, can come into conflict if food is scarce, usually losing out to the more aggressive Robins.
Their nests are often parasitised by the cuckoo.
Most are polyandrous (female has more than one male mate) or polygynous (males have more than one female mate).
Day Ten: Friday.
I let David chose today’s ‘wild card’. He chose keep a note of wildlife. List the species that you see from your window. I decided to spend an hour watching the yarden after the evenings dinner. Here’s what I saw.
House Sparrow (x1)
Pigeons (x4)
Bees (many)
Hover flies (many)
Flies (many)
Dunnock (x1)
Goldfinches (x2)
Small white butterfly (x1)
Cinnabar moth (x1)
Spider (garden) (x1)
Snails (x2)
Magpie (x1)
Herring gull (x1)
Day Eleven: Saturday.
During 30 Days Wild, I have also been setting up my camcorder to record for an hour a day. Below is the ‘highlights’ video of the species, mainly birds visiting the yarden.
Day Twelve: Sunday.
With the flowers having fallen, it was time to haul up our potato plants. We have found that it has not been easy to grow our own vegetables. However, David and I were overjoyed that we got some kind of harvest! Below find pictures of us celebrating our maris bard potatoes!
Maris Bard potatoes
For the evening dinner we boiled some of our harvest and had them with a vegetarian roast. They were delicate and creamy. They tasted all the better for having grown them ourselves.
Day Thirteen: Monday.
Sadly the weather has taken a turn for the worse, even this poor buff tailed bumblebee was having trouble today. David rescued her/him from the yarden floor and the jaws of Artie and fed it some sugar solution. After a while it perked up and flew away. Later on I saw another bee busily enjoying an oriental poppy.
Ornamental Poppy
I also managed to do another bee count, in between the showers. Within a minute I got a tally of three!
I decided to write a short creative passage around wild swimming. I didn’t intend for it to become so morbid… sorry!
On a frosty winter’s day. Erin dipped her toe into the water and shivered as the delicious cold touched her skin. She often wondered if her sister had felt the same sensation before she slipped eternally into the dark abyss. Perhaps her depression had steeled her against the cold? Either way Erin gasped as she stepped in.
‘What torments brought you to these waters?’ She thought, finding herself waist deep in the lake. ‘If only I could have helped.’ She swam through the icy water towards a small island, a tangle of tree branches and sandy shores.
During the summer holidays, Erin and her younger sister, Elise used to swim out towards the island. The warm waters suspended their sun kissed limbs as they splashed headlong towards an adventure of exploring over rock and under root.
Erin, felt her teeth chatter as she breaststroked through the choppy waters. Erin didn’t mind, she was a strong swimmer. Elise too, but on that fateful day she chose to succumb. ‘It’s very easy to get cramp,’ their swimming instructor had prophesied. ‘If you don’t respect the water or your ability, tragedy can happen.’ Erin swam on until a man’s voice from the lakeside beckoned tensely.
‘What are you doing?’ She turned, noticing her funeral garb heaped on the shingle shore. The waters caressed her breasts, stroked seductively between her legs. She saw Josh standing at the lakeside. In his hand he held the length of his black tie. His shoes discarded.
‘I’m okay!’ Erin called through the drizzle. She looked at Josh as she treaded water. She felt the love Elise had felt for him. Watched as he disregarded his mourning clothes and lunged into the lake. His arms were strong as he crawled towards her, while she felt cradled in the waters embrace.
Erin recalled the last time she and Elise swam together in the lake. Elise had been no older than eleven. They both lay on their backs looking up at the blue cloudless sky. Swallows skirted over the water catching flies, and laughter tinged the air with joyful exuberance. Elise had been so full of life. Her death remained inexplicable.
‘Come back to shore.’ Erin felt Josh’s arms embrace her. They were becoming shrouded in a mist that rolled down from the mountains. ‘You’ll get hypothermia.’ Josh reached for Erin’s hand. They swam alongside each other back towards the shore.
Erin’s body ached with the cold as she walked out of the water. She looked into Josh’s dark eyes that searched her face for a reason. ‘I just felt like a swim.’
‘In this weather?’ She felt Josh’s warm lips on hers. ‘I don’t want to lose you too.’ He threw his jacket over Erin’s shoulders before hurrying her towards their hotel where Elise’s wake was winding down. With luck, Erin’s disappearance had gone undetected and they could creep inside unseen.
A warm light flooded from the hotel doorway, and bathed their heads in a golden glow. Josh took Erin’s hand in his and they both walked into the light.
Summary:
I have taken things much slower this week. Perhaps a bit too slow. Most days haven’t been really ‘wild.’ I have enjoyed doing the creative activities, like molding bread into turtles and even drawing the dunnock, I found relaxing.
I wonder what discoveries week three of 30 Days Wild will uncover? At some point, I am hoping to go looking for moths and perhaps a wild swim will feature, who knows? I hope you will join me in my forthcoming adventures…
The Wildlife Trust’s, 30 Days Wild 2016 dawned on a cloudy Wednesday, a hump day! I must admit it was difficult to find my ‘get up and go!’ However the sun made an appearance in the afternoon. It shone down hotly, as I slowly eased into this June by doing the usual pottering about the yarden (yard/garden)!
I participated in 30 Days Wild last year and thoroughly felt enlivened just by noticing the nature and wildlife around me.
I do try to help the wildlife in my area. It started off by putting out feeders for the birds. Then it progressed to planting for bees, butterflies and other insects. And this year David and I have built a small pond in the hope of bringing even more wildlife to the urban back yarden.
Day One: Wednesday.
Like last year I will blog about my 30 Days Wild in weekly installments. Thanks to Annie Irene from Trails&Tails who wrote about the many bloggers featured on The Wildlife Trusts, My Wild Life website. It is always good to read what other’s are getting up to this June, so if you are interested like I was, then follow the link and get reading!
One of the positives about reading other people’s experiences of the ‘wild’ is that you learn something new almost daily. Today, I learnt that a ‘weed’ I have ashamedly been pulling up out of the yarden (oops), is called Herb Robert or geranium robertianum. This wild flower is apparently edible and has many therapeutic properties.
Day Two: Thursday.
Today, David had a day off work. I suggested we go to a park in search of wildlife. We decided on visiting Liverpool’s Festival Gardens. We seem to make an annual pilgrimage here, but really should visit more often. It has lakes and woodland walks. It also features the restored Moon Wall and Pagodas that featured in the Garden Festival of the 1980’s!
Wetlands Area
Moon Wall
On our leisurely walk, there were coots with chicks on the lake. Alongside the paths David and I spotted orchids and oxeye daises, and in the woodland we saw several butterflies, one was a Speckled Wood.
Coot chicks!
Oxeye daisy
Speckled Wood Butterfly
We had a picnic alongside a stream, where under a strong beaming sun we sat listening to birdsong. I’ve identified (using British Garden Birds) the song of a chaffinch and maybe a wren, but is there a third song? Can you tell?
Day Three: Friday.
If you are struggling to find something ‘wild’ to do in June, then why not download the 30 Days Wild app for 101 random acts of wildness? I did and the first act suggested was something blue. So here is a picture of one of David’s rockery plants, lithodora ‘heavenly blue.’
Lithodora ‘heavenly blue’
Day Four: Saturday.
This March we planted some seed maris bard potatoes in the hope of growing our first vegetables. Today I noticed that the first flower has opened. I read that it will be soon be time to harvest these earlies! Isn’t the flower very strange looking? Well I thought so!
Day Five: Sunday.
Naughty Artie!
Today was World Environment Day. Nicky on her blog Too Lazy to Weed, highlighted that it was also The National Garden Bioblitz weekend! So we spent the whole day in the yarden. I busied myself with counting the flora and fauna that we have in our small space. My fellow ‘spotter’ Artie was watching the bees and butterflies for a very different reason!!!
I counted about 60 plants. Of that number we have two trees and many shrubs, alpines and perennials. I used the Pl@ntNet app to ID some annuals and I was surprised at the results! One of the wildflower seedlings has roundish leaves so I used the app and found out it is a nasturtium!
Of the many insects that visited the yarden, a number of them were bees. Those identified were: common carder bees, a dark variant of the tree bumblebee, mason bees and white-tailed bumblebees. Thanks to UK Bees, Wasps and Ants Facebook page for help with ID-ing the bees. My skills are still not great! Below are five useful facts on each bee.
Common Carder Bee on Lithodora Blue
Tree Bumblebee (dark)
Garden Bumblebee
Mason Bee
Common Carder Bee:
Found widely in the UK.
On the wing from March to November.
Nests above ground, such as cavities, hedges, plant litter or birds nests.
They gather moss or grass to cover their nests.
A social bee, can have a colony of up to 200 workers.
Tree Bumblebee:
Came to the UK ten years ago, under own steam.
Not reported to have damaged native bumblebees
Prefers wide open flowers, i.e. daisies.
Nests in cavities or birds nests/boxes.
The males are sting-less.
Mason Bee:
One of the solitary bees, (there are no worker bees).
Nests in cavities, i.e. walls.
Uses mud to close their brood cells.
Are non aggressive.
Are just as good pollinators as honey bees.
White-tailed Bumblebee:
Is another group of social bees.
Nests underground, i.e. rodent nests.
Has a short tongue, so prefers wide open flowers, such as daisies.
Are accomplished nectar ‘robbers’. By boring holes, means they don’t have to enter the flower.
On the wing from March to November.
David, Artie and I were also given a spectacular mating dance from two, small white butterflies. It was truly uplifting to see the two flutter delicately about on a hot summers day!
Day Six: Monday.
I don’t know if it is due to tiredness or the heat but I have been feeling kind of tired and low today. So it was going to be a lazy kind of day. After the midday heat had passed, Artie and I headed out into the yarden to sit quietly. I took out my library copy of Roger Deakin’s Waterlogged, (a tale of ‘wild’ swimming around the UK), and relaxed while the yarden hummed with bees. I am finding the book hard reading. I simply can’t get into it! I usually like history but the historical passages in the narrative just bore me. I will persevere though!
Day Seven: Tuesday.
I have always wanted to try my hand at writing a Haiku (traditional Japanese poetry.) You may have guessed that I can go on a bit while writing the blog, so you’d think a three lined poem would be easy for me! Wrong! I have been racking my brain trying to get syllables to come together. Below is my best attempt. What are your thoughts? Have you tried writing a Haiku?
Bees, buzz, drunk on nectar (5)
Flowers’ scent, enticingly (7)
Pollen baskets, full (5)
Summary: The problem with this years 30 Days Wild is that I have wanted to do everything all at once! And that is not plausible. I have felt like a daemon possessed! Panicking if I don’t do something to the extent I want. For the second week, I think I need to ‘chill’ a bit more and enjoy nature instead of forcing it!
I hope you will come with me on this next week of discovery?!
I’ve begun compiling this week’s Sunday Sevens (devised by Threads and bobbins) early. It’s Thursday and I am eagerly dipping into my loaned library copy of Kate Rew’s Wild Swim. I am particularly interested in the section featuring lakes and tarns. I am looking for suggestions on where to do my next swim. My first being in Derwentwater on Sunday!
Wild Swim by Kate Rew
Monday saw David having a day off work. So we headed to our local park, Sefton Park to walk the family dog Riley. I think by the look on his face, Riley enjoyed himself!
This week has been National Vegetarian Week, which has been all about ‘celebrating the stories and the traditions behind the food we eat.’ David joked that it is vegetarian week in our house all of the time! Of the dishes I have made this week, this Italian flavoured Quiona and Bean Soup was healthy and surprisingly filling.
Quinoa and Bean Soup
Ingredients (serves 2):
1 bay leaf
1 can of beans, rinsed, I used Pinto, but you can use any
1/2 white onion, chopped
1/2 pepper, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped,
1 chilli, chopped
1 tbsp oregano, fresh, chopped
1 can of tomatoes and juice
500 ml of vegetable stock (I used one stock cube)
50g of quinoa
Salt and pepper to taste
Method:
Heat oil in a medium saucepan, over medium heat. Add the onions, pepper and chilli and sauté until barely tender, about 5 minutes.
Add the beans and garlic and stir for 2 minutes.
Stir in the tomatoes and their juices, and vegetable stock.
Add the quinoa, oregano and bay leaf. Cover and simmer until quinoa is cooked, 12 to 15 minutes.
Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove bay leaf and serve.
Earlier in the week mum showed me the ‘wild’ flowers that had seeded themselves in the alleyway behind our houses. Among them was a yellow poppy, which I later researched and found out was a Welsh Poppy. Also the yarden seems to be blooming, even if the weather has been grimy this week. Everything has suddenly become green and lush. The maris bard potatoes are huge and I’ve discovered that the clematis David’s mum had given us, has flowered!
Welsh Poppy
This Saturday has been a busy one! After the weekly shop, David and I headed to Harefield Water Gardens, a family run business in Widnes. We visited in a ‘monsoon!’ At least we tested out our new waterproof coats! Harefield Water Gardens have a farm shop and cafe where you can look out towards their herd of alpacas. Unfortunately they were all huddled together by their barn when we visited. We manged to purchase some pond plants and then headed towards Dobbies to get some alpines.
In the past week, we (or should I more truthfully say David), have been constructing a small pond in an area of the yarden that had once been a rockery but the plants had all died and was looking a bit sorry for itself. I suggested creating a small pond. We followed the tips on the RSPB site, used a washing up bowl and placed soil around it. We are both proud of the new instillation and hope that the plants survive and maybe one day small insects will make it their home. What do you think?
It looks like Sunday is going to be a lazy, rainy kind of day. I’m watching David play on his PS4 while planning the evenings dinner and dreaming of warmer, sunnier weather!
This past week has been very uneventful! I have been scraping the barrel, trying to find things to post for this week’s Sunday Sevens, devised by Threads and bobbins.
This week our yarden has been graced with the arrival of not one but two dunnocks! At the beginning of the week we could hear a male singing for a mate and near the weekend he brought his conquest to the yarden! It has been lovely watching them flit about the plants, sifting for insects and grubs. I hope they bring their fledglings in the following months.
Below you will find two videos of them both. The video of the female shows her shaking her tail in preparation for mating, she seems a right floozy, although the male seems to just want to look for food!
Okay, I know I am cheating by posting videos but I really don’t have many photographs to share with you.
I’ve been doing a lot of cooking this week. On Monday I made a carrot and lentil soup and on Friday I made a chickpea and vegetable pilaf. Both of which I never took a photo of! Then on Saturday I remade a One Pot Mexcian Quinoa but I have already blogged about this, here. However I did take a picture of David’s dupiaza which he cooked last Sunday.
On Tuesday I fell in love.
David and I visited his brother and sister-in-law, who have a delightful son, Ewan. I was surprised when he crawled over to sit on my knee and then proceeded to poke me in the face. lol.
I can’t wait for him to start talking, there is so much I can teach him! 😀
I have recently, been enjoying the rerun of the BBC productions of The Hollow Crown. The four feature length films are adaptations of William Shakespeare’s history plays, comprising of Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 & 2 and Henry V. I missed them the first time they were aired in 2012. If you have not seen them, you can view then here, for the next five months. I would highly recommend them, even if you don’t like Shakespeare. I find that I appreciate his writing as I age.
Potatoes are growing!
Even though the weather has returned briefly to winter this week, the sun has been out quite a lot in Liverpool. On Saturday, we took stock of the yarden. The dahlia which I thought was dead has new shoots coming from its tubers and the clematis that David’s mum gave me has at least two buds on it, and still growing! We may have had failures with the french beans and spring onions (blame Artie for that!), but the maris bard potatoes are growing from strength to strength! Fingers crossed we have a harvest!
To be honest I’ve been in a grumpy mood all day, equally mirrored by the foul weather. Why is it that when a bank holiday beckons the weather turns dire? Anyway, I tried to keep the depression at bay by making a gorgeous dinner of curried red lentils. I’ll do a further post on this in the future.
To raise my spirits I took a snap of the daffodils I bought yesterday. They are unusual as they didn’t have the usual signature trumpet but I can’t find online what type of daffodil they are.
Last week, after a traumatic Saturday, in which my road witnessed a tragic, sad event. Sunday dawned bleakly. David and I decided it was time to sew the seeds I had bought. We planted sweet peppers, spring onions and green beans, in the hope that something will grow come summer. I am waiting for the frosts to end so I can plant maris bard potatoes and my dahlia tubers.
Now after a week of sitting in front of the window in the guest bedroom, we have shoots finally pushing through the soil! There is hope yet!
Mum decided to treat me on Tuesday with a little trip to Costa for a cappuccino and a toasted teacake. It was very restorative.
This was the final week of my Future Learn course: Literature and Mental Health. The six week course has been tremendous and I have loved reading an eclectic mix of poetry, novels and plays. The course has me reading again after a lull of some time and has inspired me to re-read Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.
Aura by David Evans
It was decided that we should capture our elderly and much loved, Lady Gouldian Finch, Aura to clip his overgrowing beak. Last November Aura had the same problem and we don’t know if it was connected but he became very ill. He had fits and lay about the bottom of the cage looking exhausted. It was by fluke that his beak was sheered to its proper size and we started him on vitamin supplements. I put it down to David having healing hands and Aura was nursed back to life. Perhaps it was malnourishment due to an inability to eat with an over long beak? Either way I didn’t want a recurrence. So David captured Aura, not without some stress as the other finches were flying about the room! I held him and David clipped the tip of his beak. He seems much better now!
On Friday I didn’t have a clue what to make for the evening’s dinner. To be honest I am feeling a bit fed up with cooking. I find it exhausting looking for new recipes. So David defrosted the final serving of his curry base and made a vegetable karahi. It indeed had a kick to it!
The weekend was spent doing the usual, shopping, cleaning, cooking. Artie was exhausted!
While Artie slept during the evening. I decided to dress up, even if it was just for a salad dinner at our house, Bistro No. 49!
What kind of foods do you enjoy? Have you read any good books recently?
This week saw me finish my latest book, 
I can’t believe how quickly the first week of 
I don’t know if it is due to tiredness or the heat but I have been feeling kind of tired and low today. So it was going to be a lazy kind of day. After the midday heat had passed, Artie and I headed out into the yarden to sit quietly. I took out my library copy of Roger Deakin’s 
I’ve been doing a lot of cooking this week. On Monday I made a carrot and lentil soup and on Friday I made a chickpea and vegetable pilaf. Both of which I never took a photo of! Then on Saturday I remade a One Pot Mexcian Quinoa but I have already blogged about this, 
Last week, after a traumatic Saturday, in which my road witnessed a tragic, sad event. Sunday dawned bleakly. David and I decided it was time to sew the seeds I had bought. We planted sweet peppers, spring onions and green beans, in the hope that something will grow come summer. I am waiting for the frosts to end so I can plant maris bard potatoes and my dahlia tubers.
Christine Lucas 