Big bottling bash and Enid

My neighbour's free gift of plums transformed into pretty food for winter.

The challenge: to fill all of this recycled glassware with fruit, jam or sauce

As you can see, the big bottle-up has started for this year. I've done a fruit medley of peaches, nectarines and plums, and three large jars of plums. I've still got to do pears, red plums and more nectarines when they ripen. Plus plum sauce, pear ginger and fennel-seed and pear chutney. Phew!
    Also watched a movie about Enid Blyton starring Helena Bonham-Carter as Enid. I hope she wasn't quite as horrible in real life as she was portrayed in the movie, but... One daughter thought she was a good mother and the other loathed her, so I guess the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Enid Blyton is probably the most unsympathetic character that Bonham-Carter has ever played; even Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd has a kind of insane charm compared to this portrayal of Blyton. 
     I can honestly say that I never liked her books when I was a child. In fact, I remember kicking a whole set of Noddy books around the living-room when I was about 4 years old, partly because thought Noddy was a nasty, silly little twerp and partly because I wanted to see what happened when you kicked a lot of books across a living-room. (The spines break). Surprisingly, Mum wasn't as angry as I thought she'd be; perhaps she also thought Noddy was a nasty little twerp and was sick of reading to me about him. 
  And the Famous Five? I was always skeptical about how many summer holidays they seemed to have, (they were always on holiday) and why they always had adventures that no other child ever had on holiday, with secret agents and spies, etc, etc. It's a bit like that with Miss Marple too - wherever she goes, someone always turns up conveniently dead. Probably best never to agree to go on holiday with a literary detective or the Famous Five!

Blog list edited

Hi there, I've just edited my blog list, as sadly most of the bloggers that were there don't blog anymore. Elephant's Child, you are still going strong, my dear, so you are still there, and hopefully will continue. Simply so Good is really just recipes, so it's not really a personal blog, but it does continue to produce good stuff. I'll have to look around for some more interesting blogs, but alas, many bloggers have now gone on to Instagram or have stopped blogging entirely. There are a lot of silly blogs too, which have no appeal at all for me; mommy-blogs ("look how many poos my darling did today") and some of the indie travel blogs ("look how rad I look in this Bolivian serape") are the worst. And also some of the fashion blogs; I came across one that had twenty photos of some narcissistic woman in a pair of oh-so-artfully ripped jeans. Twenty photos! Of the same woman in the same jeans! Why?
    Of course, I know that this blog is probably boring the artfully-ripped jeans off someone somewhere in the world right now. ("Why does she always post pictures of her freaking garden. Twenty pictures of the same garden. Why?") To each her own, I guess. It's just one way of communicating, a way of shouting "Here I am!" to the great big world out there.

Many shades of orange

The garden is full of orange flowers at the moment:

Yay! Holiday!

First day of my holiday today. This is the view from my conservatory (note Kiwi in prominent position).

"Chat Noir" dahlia

"Brandon James" dahlia

Chocolate cosmos

"The Friar"

I haven't got anything planned for this holiday. Usually I have a number of chores to do, (clean garage, wash windows, etc.) but this year I'm going to play it by ear and just do pleasurable stuff. I started the day by going to my local cafe, having a coffee and the best Melting Moment I've ever had. Then I went to my local garden store and bought some new plants, just things I wanted, not things I needed; a yellow abutilon, some blue viscaria, French Cream marigolds and some cascading pansies for a hanging basket. I will do some gardening, but only when and if I want to. Self-indulgence, thy name is mine!

Meh

I haven't posted on here for a while, because there's nothing much happening in my life at the moment. And what little has happened has been bad. My dear little black cat, Jiro, was run over and killed last Wednesday, so things have been a bit doomy here. He should have had a longer life, he was such a sweetie. I still have my lovely Thomas, who has been a comfort, but it's very quiet without Jiro, who was a full-on little guy.
   We've had a terrible summer here, cold and wet. The farmers are overjoyed, because the countryside has been in a drought for some time, but for townies who wanted a summer it's been a disaster. The fruit is a sour, for lack of sunlight, and vegetables like tomatoes and zucchini, that normally go well, are non-existent. I have some tiny green tomatoes, but there's no way that they will ripen by summer's end, even if we have another five weeks of good weather. Our first frost is usually about the second week of April, so there's not much time left now. The pears are starting to fall, but they are tasteless; even the birds don't seem very interested.
  Ho hum.

Rediscovering tea

One of my New Year's resolutions was to drink less coffee. As I've got older and my digestive processes more delicate, coffee has become less palatable to me, and now gives me cracking indigestion. Much of my coffee drinking is habit, the same way a smoker smokes; get to the end of a task, sit down and have a coffee, get tired or bored, have a coffee, stumble out of bed in the morning, have a coffee. Going on the premise that it is easier to replace a bad habit with a better one, rather than just going totally cold turkey, I've been rediscovering tea.

I've put the coffee-making equipment away, and have given more open shelf room to teas of various kinds. My standard teas are Lapsang Souchong, Earl Grey and Irish Breakfast (tastier than English Breakfast to my palate). Lapsang is very refreshing after a hot, tiring day in the garden; its smoky taste reminds me of billy tea. Earl Grey is for when I want to go posh, with little sandwiches and tea-cake and amusing company. Irish Breakfast is my breakfast tea of choice, tastier and more nuanced than English Breakfast , reminding me pleasantly of Mrs Doyle and Father Ted. ("Ah, go wan, Father, will ye have a cup of tea, there?")

And then of course, there are the herbal teas. Lemon and ginger is refreshing and warming, peppermint and spearmint for the digestion, lemon balm when there's no lemon available, or you could use lemongrass. (Iced lemongrass tea is wonderful on a very hot day. I had some once when I had a day stopover in Singapore and was exploring the old fort, in filthy humid weather that made me feel feverish.) And I have Indian tea spice mix, which can be brewed on its own or added to ordinary tea. The great thing about the herbal teas is that you can grow them very, very cheaply in the garden. I'm growing some spearmint cuttings in my Bramble teapot at the moment, and  I'm pretty sure they've rooted so I'll pot them up soon and give them away. Teapots and caddies are also nice to have on display. I think there's a name for people who collect tea paraphernalia, but I can't think of what it might be. 

Of course, the other appeal is that tea is much cheaper than coffee, and I have less sugar in it, which will hopefully result in better health and a slimmer waistline. I'll still have coffee but not at the rate of consumption that has been my wont in the past. Or I'll have it at work where the company pays for it!

Happy Epiphany!

                                             One candle for each Wise Man