Being Creative

Using my loaf

I find it an interesting concept that when I was working full-time, one of the most cherished of my - largely domestic - fantasies was to have the time to bake my own bread. Even then, I had long since given up on the cheap supermarket sliced loaf in favour of something we sliced ourselves that tasted better but with being out all day we wasted a lot of part loaves that went stale in our absence. There are only so many times that one family can enjoy bread-and-butter pudding to use it up! More than that, I was concerned about what we were asking of that bread: to look appetising, yet sit on a supermarket shelf for a couple of days and what extra ingredients had to be added to enable it to do that. In my grandparent's day - and still, very largely, in continental countries I've visited, like Greece or France - bread was bought, or made, fresh every day. My mother's generation were encouraged to leave behind the domestic drudgery of preparing three meals a day and to pursue full-time employment outside the home as a form of liberation. Labour saving gadgets -  like the huge chest freezer that lived in our garage - were purchased with that extra income and could be filled with a week's worth of 'economy white sliced' until the next big shop. Taste and quality were exchanged for the cheap and expedient. One of my fondest memories of visiting my grandfather's house as a child was that he still bought proper Hovis loaves - with the name on the side - which tasted delicious! So although bread can still be bought for a song, it is rather like the jam I mentioned in my previous post, Jam today. If you want to have the best quality, it is cheaper to make it yourself than to buy it. Speciality rye bread in Tesco costs £1.38 for a 400 gram loaf. I reckon I made two 500 gram loaves at home, with a greater percentage of rye flour and including cooking costs, for less than the price of one of the Tesco loaves. You also have the added benefit of knowing exactly what has gone into it. We ran out of home-made bread on Sunday and bought a loaf of the said rye bread from Tesco to tide us over. As we were eating it for our lunch, I noticed it had a much stronger flavout than the home-made sort I was becoming used to and I asked Si' what he thought made it so strongly flavoured. I expected the reply to be something like the inclusion of more caraway but his answer was that it was probably sugar. It really put me off my lunch.

I decided that if I was going to go to the trouble - as I perceived it - of making my own, then I was going to invest in top-quality ingredients. We are lucky to live within striking distance of two windmills that produce stoneground organic flour. One is at Tuxford, in Nottinghamshire, whose flour we've bought at Retford farmer's market and the other is Mount Pleasant Windmill, at Kirton Lindsey in North Lincolnshire, that we buy from the mill itself. It is also available by mail order and is on my list of Sites to Inspire, Inform and Delight. The miller at Kirton Lindsey is very knowledgeable about what he produces and has been very generous with his advice, when we've sought it. I'd struggled to get my head round the best time of day to bake, that wouldn't compromise my daily routine. His suggestion - which has worked amazingly well for me - was to bake in an evening. I start mixing the ingredients and kneading the dough before starting on the dog's tea, so at about five o'clock. I then put it in our rear attic - which is warm and draught-free - to rise, whilst I start our own meal and Lucy and Si' walk the dogs. By the time we've finshed our meal, it has usually risen enough to be knocked back and placed on it's baking sheet, or in a tin, to rise again. I either wash up, water the garden, or both, while this is taking place. It goes in the oven whilst I read, or catch up with stuff on the computer. The miller said he left his out, to cool, overnight, ready for the following morning but I find it depends on the type of loaf and that some can dry out a little much on the crust for our liking. I tend to let it cool and bag it up to keep the moisture in. I've also gleaned a lot of useful information from three books I ordered through the library, Bread, from ciabatta to rye by Linda Collister, Dough, simple comtemporary bread by Richard Bertinet and The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard. I have found the first of these most useful for getting started and have only used it's recipes thus far.

The other two seem more advanced but I have adopted some of their tips. Richard Bertinet suggests weighing your water as it is more accurate than measurement alone. I'd wondered why my first wholemeal loaf was so dry and when I weighed the water subsequently, found my plastic measuring jug to give a wholly inaccurate reading. Always on the look out for a bargain I bought this book, which contains an accompanying DVD, from The Works, for £4.99, a quarter of it's original price. As I don't have access to fresh yeast, I bought the Dove Farm dried quick yeast from Tesco. You mix it in with the flour and salt, before adding the liquid, and it's worked really well for me; much better than I ever achieved by starting dried yeast in water first. For a while, I toyed with the idea of getting a breadmaker but what I really enjoy is the kneading, so I decided against it. Kneading dough can be very energetic and is certainly less costly than the gymn for improving the muscles in your arms! I also find it therapeutic, working away the stresses of the day as the dough comes together to become springy and elastic. Apparently, it's not necessary to chuck loads of flour in with dough whilst kneading; as it's worked, and the gluten develops, it will stop being sticky of it's own accord. This gluten allows the dough to expand or stretch during fermentation and to trap the resultant gases to create a lighter loaf. The first bread I made was New York Rye with caraway seeds in it which gives it a lovely flavour. I was thrilled to bits when it rose to resemble those in the book and had great fun slashing the top of the loaves with a sharp blade to produce the slits in the crust. Being used to shop-bought bread, I initially thought it lacked enough salt but it provided the perfect foil for smoked salmon or toasted with slightly salted butter. My white bread looked as if it had spent time on a sun bed, being a slightly golden colour. This was because the flour is unbleached and it certainly made very tasty sandwiches with some boiled ham from our local butchers. Yesterday, I tried The Grant Loaf, invented accidentally by one Doris Grant in 1944. Linda Collister recommends it as the first recipe in her book to try as it requires no kneading and only one short rise in the tin. It uses more water than most recipes and in mixing it I was reminded of the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby from my childhood. Each time I tried to mix it with my hands, the mixture stuck more and more firmly to them! Eventually, I managed to get it into the tin but the recipe said to leave it to rise for longer than the suggested 25-35 minutes if dried, rather than fresh, yeast had been used. I went to look after 40 minutes and it had risen clear out of the tin and had begun to casacde down the sides of the tin. To make matters worse, the cylinder had run out for our gas oven and I'd already had to ask my mother to pre-heat her oven, to cook it, in readiness. I decided to trim off the surplus dough and keep it back for a future sourdough starter.

I sprinkled the top with sesame seeds, which gave a lovely nutty flavour, but you can use whatever seeds you have to hand. Once in the oven, the dough rose over the edges once again, making it very difficult to remove from the tin to see if it was cooked. Luckily, I managed to remove it in one piece and the resultant loaf was like nothing I'd seen before in wholemeal bread. It was well-risen and light but more than anything it was thoroughly moist. Having had so many problems producing it, I was going to warn readers against it but I must say it is thoroughly worth the effort. I think next time I will put the dough into two 2-pound loaf tins, rather than one, as the recipe suggests. It is still wondeful this morning and I am toying with the idea of some toasted for my breakfast, smeared with the new batch of gooseberry jam. What better way to start the day?

Into the bargain

Any time now I expect to see the first of the signs going up in shop windows, announcing the single word - SALE. Given the current financial environment of spiralling prices on the necessities of food and fuel, I imagine the non-food shops have been feeling the pinch and will announce their reductions earlier, rather than later, to offload their current season's stock. All this so that, should the fancy take us, we can buy our winter coat in August or a picnic set in February! Such are the quirks of the retail industry in an effort to maximise profit. I used to really look forward to sale time when I was working. I had money to spend - or at least the plastic version - and I could spend a happy day trawling through rails and piles of goods on display, returning home elated at the end of the day with my haul. The larger the reduction, the greater the thrill in bagging the item. Perhaps it is the modern evolutionary take on hunting and gathering? With all our basic needs of food, warmth and shelter taken care of, maybe this is where survival of the fittest is taking us now. Potentially, the reason behind the media trend for women to be stick-thin is so that they can have sharper elbows with which to jab other potential stalkers of their prey in the sales!!! I digress. Over time I have bought a lot of stuff, some in the sales, some not and it got me thinking about the nature of a true bargain. My dictionary describes 'bargain' as, "something acquired or offered cheaply" but I feel that there is probably more to it than that. On my Elegant Frugality page, I mention Martin Lewis's maxim for potential purchases made at all times of year, not just in the sales. It is "Do I need it? Can I afford it?" If you haven't got the money to buy it then arguably you can't have it anyway and, if you do, it will come back to haunt you later. The question of 'need', though, is rather harder to define. Very often, I find, it can boil down to 'want'.

So this is the first of my thoughts about getting your hands on proper bargains:-

It must be something you will use. I bet everyone has items languishing at the back of their cupboards and wardrobes that they just had to have because the price was reduced. Perhaps the cost of them is still burdening your credit card? If you never use it, does it still count as a bargain or is it just a waste of  storage space and your hard-earned cash? I bought the beautiful Designers Guild fabric, pictured at the top of this post, in the summer sale in London last year. I have to confess that I carted such a weight of it down the King's Road, on my way back to the tube, that I thought I'd dislocated both my shoulders the following day. Yes, it is incredibly beautiful and, yes, some of it normally retails at about £90 per metre but I'm not sure I ever actually 'needed' it, as such. I just had some vague notion of making beautiful cushions at a fraction of the cost. A year later, however, it is still carefully boxed up on top of my wardrobe! On the other hand, our local branch of Julian Graves had a half price sale last weekend. Having honed my bargain-seeking skills in the last six months, I only bought those things that I know I use regularly but that are slightly beyond my pocket at full price - jars of stem ginger, vanilla pods and three different sizes of Le Parfait storage jars. It's worth asking at your local branch as to when they are next having a sale as, to some extent, the store manager seems to have some say in it.

It must formerly have been on sale at a higher price or, have a greater value than you are paying for it. When I photographed the shirt and tie, above, I deliberately got close enough so that you could read the price labels. I want to talk about the quality of items in my next point so suffice to say that we made a big saving here. Last summer, we went to Cornwall on holiday and Lucy and her boyfriend, Siffy, booked to go surfing. In the Mini Boden sale, I had bought her two towelling beach dresses, for half price, to keep her warm before and after going in the sea. When they arrived, she didn't like either of them so, since they fitted me, I kept them and wore them after my wave-skiing sessions. I was very glad of them, too, as the weather was rather on the cool side. I have since worn them, instead of a dressing gown, to write my blog in of a morning and plan to take them to the caravan with us, to slip over my pyjamas for that early morning trip to the loo. Much more flattering than donning a fleece! This summer, Boden have them on sale in adult sizes with, of course, the additional VAT. So they were not just a bargain but are proving to be good value for money as well. By the 'greater value' aspect I am talking largely about goods bought secondhand. Some time ago, I picked up a hardback copy of Daniel Butler and Bel Crewe's book, Urban Dreams, Rural Realities for a pound in a charity shop. When I came to buy my sister a copy from Amazon, I was horrified to see that it was now out of print and that the cheapest copy on offer was seventeen pounds! In my fridge, I have a mini stockpile of butter. My butter of choice is Anchor Spreadable but the price has gone up and up of late. I noticed that at Morrisons, on Thursday evening, it is on offer at two packs for £3.00. That's only £1.50 each instead of the normal £2.14. I also noticed that the offer is on until the 8th of July. Plenty of time, then, to create a butter mountain of your own!!!

What you buy must be of decent quality. I have a theory here that if you opt to buy poor quality goods, then you will actually end up paying more in the long run. They are usually cheap for a reason, i.e. the materials used were of an inferior standard or less care was taken in their design. Either way, they don't last as long and you have to buy more of them, so ultimately the cost is greater. It certainly does not make them a bargain. Cheap and shoddy goods are in no way the friend of those living on a tight budget. We buy Si's shirts and ties for work from TK Maxx and get good value for our money. I have laundered a fair few shirts in my lifetime and the poorer quality ones just don't wash well or stand the test of time. I find that it's just false economy to buy them in the first place.Yesterday, I made my first home-made lemon curd. The ingredients were the juice and rind of four lemons, sugar, butter, eggs and a spoonful of cornflour. Afterwards, I remembered that I still had a jar of supermarket lemon curd in the cupboard, bought when I thought I might need to supplement a home-made jar I'd been given, for a particular recipe. I was quite shocked to read the list of ingredients; not only did it include a raft of stuff to preserve it's shelf life but the major constituents were the cheapest imaginable. I am loathe to taste it but it would seem that the old adage is true, in that -  unless you manage to bag a bargain - you generally get what you pay for.

Although a decrease in income levels has made me increasingly thrifty by necessity, it has actually improved our quality of life. Seeking out genuine bargains is much more of a challenge than endless spending ever was and I have the satisfaction of knowing how much money I am saving 'into the bargain'!

And the winner is ......

Here it is. The moment you've all been waiting for. A hush descends as the envelope is torn open and camera flashes are poised at the ready. Ok, so it's not the Oscars here but I have been very excited about this bit since launching my first, ever competition. I decided to award two prizes in the end, for equally encouraging comments, from Cally and from Helen. Thank you to both of you for taking the time to let me know what you enjoy most about the Being Creative blog. I'm looking forward to being able to send you the first professionally printed copies of my photographs. Cally chose the walnut picture, above, and Helen the shot of Hector, on the forbidden settee, shown at the top of  'A dog's dinner'. Writing a blog - or a letter for that matter - is like half of a conversation. Yes, you get the chance to say what you think but it's also about engaging the reader, posing questions and trying to find out what they think in response. The comments section at the end of each post is not designed to make bloggers feel flattered or big-headed, neither is it to let us know how many people are reading the blog (I have statistics for that)! Rather it is an invitation to contribute to the conversation. Writing without a response is rather like sending a present and not getting a thank you letter. It's not that you're depending on the thanks, but you do need to know if the present was something the recipient enjoyed and/or was useful. If you never find out, then it could be a waste of time and effort all round over and over again. Some readers send me recipes, so that I can make them myself and add them to the Tried and Tested page but whatever you want to say only requires your name and e-mail, no complicated log-in here. I double-dare you to give it  go!!!

Six months on

Six months have now passed since I gave in my notice at work and committed us to a downshifted way of life. I think that half a year is a suitable juncture at which to look back and review the benefits of our new lifestyle but also to be honest about those aspects that are not quite so positive. Since new people are beginning to read this blog every day, I thought I'd have a quick re-cap on what led us to choose this course of action in the first place. I had been working as the manager of a secondary school library since we moved here nine years ago. I loved working with the books, the children and had made the space bright and colourful. The library became a popular place to be. Over time I took on more roles within the school, including charity fundraising - which I've undertaken wherever I've been - publicity and, since my degree is in drama, the front-of-house role for the annual Christmas production. As these roles had been added over time, I hadn't realised just how much I'd taken on until my father was diagnosed with a serious heart problem in the autumn of 2006, that would require major surgery. As work got busier, my dad got poorlier and I was desperately trying to be all things to all people. Dad was taken into hospital the day before the Christmas play began and for two weeks I was either visiting him or at work. The week before Christmas they operated but my beloved daddy never regained consciousness. There was more wrong with his heart than they could put right and he died three days before Christmas. I had never envisaged this happening and in the numbness that follows shock I tried my best to comfort my mother and my own children.

I returned to work at the end of January, gradually increasing the number of hours there but I couldn't cope with full-time work and the doctor signed me off repeatedly through the summer, as I failed to recover. I was desperate to get back to meet the new intake in September and could just about manage a few hours but full-time was more than I could bear. I found that once I returned, most people - apart from those closest to me - thought I was better and assumed I was fit to take up where I'd left off. I'd been having counselling since July and although, on the one hand, I felt a failure for not being able to cope at work, it had helped me to think outside the box and realise that there were, in fact, other options. Long discussions followed, between Si' and myself, about whether we could actually manage on one income and we weighed things up very carefully indeed before taking the plunge. I would strongly advise anyone who is thinking of downshifting themselves to do the same; I see it as creating firm foundations on which to build your new life. Martin Lewis has some excellent advice on all things financial at Money Saving Expert, in the list on the right of this page.

So then, what would I describe as the pros and cons of six months of downshifting? I've decided to list them, in separate paragraphs, so that I don't get carried away. It's very easy to wax lyrical on a lovely sunny day like today as the world buzzes by outside!

We are both feeling so much less stressed. I think this is quite interesting given that Si' continues to do the full-time job he has done for the last nine years, with an hour's commute each way, daily. However, our weekends used to be spent trying to 'get everything done', catching up with washing, shopping and the like, in readiness for the following week. Now I'm at home, these things are taken care of on a daily basis. If it's a nice day, Si' can join me on the allotment for an hour when he get's home from work before we see to the dogs and the evening meal. We feel less rushed now and are less likely to argue as a result.

Food has now become a source of enjoyment and we are eating a much better diet. If I look in the fridge, or freezer, now there is always something to make a meal from. Of course it helps that often I've bought the things with meals in mind in the first place but it was certainly not the case when we did a weekly shop. Today, I've brought fresh feta cheese from the farmer's market, to make a Greek salad, and mushrooms from the regular market to add to some souvlaki. The chicken breasts for the souvlaki were bought on Sunday from Tesco at a massive reduction. We bought six packs and the rest have gone in the freezer. The chicken will marinade while I plant courgettes at the allotment this afternoon! Si' takes a pack-up to work each day and it means that he can eat it when it suits him, rather than having whatever is left in the canteen at the tail end of lunchtime. His lunch box always includes some fresh fruit and something home-made, too, if I've been baking.

We get much more exercise. I always walked the 15-minute journey to work and back each day but now I walk the dogs, individually, each morning and Si' and Lucy walk them at tea time. In addition, I am doing an awful lot of digging on the allotment. As many of our new allotment holders keep reminding me, it's cheaper and much more enjoyable than going to the gym! I only realised a couple of years ago, after having physiotherapy for a badly sprained ankle, that I have very short hamstrings in my legs. This has led me to have repeated back problems but now that I'm able to do stretching exercises for them first thing in the morning, my back (fingers-crossed) has been fine. This is a far cry from leaping out of bed in a rush to get to work and then sitting at a desk for most of the day. Getting such a lot of exercise helps us to sleep really soundly, too, and once again this reduces our tension levels.

I am my own boss! Apart from the regular daily jobs, i.e. dog-walking, washing-up, etc, the jobs I do depend largely on the weather and the season and I plan accordingly. At the moment, if the weather is fine, at least part of each day will be spent on the allotment, digging, sowing seeds, planting out or watering. Wet weather, at any time of year, will see me catching up with things in the house but last Tuesday, when it poured down all day, I made two lots of jam. The first was rhubarb and ginger conserve, to use up some of my bumper rhubarb crop, and the other was blackcurrant. We had actually used up the last of the blackcurrant jam but I was also bearing in mind that I would shortly be needing the freezer space to accomodate this year's crop!

I am enjoying the psychological benefits of downshifting. I now feel I have time to do both a proper job of the tasks I embark upon and to tackle those jobs that I've never had time to start, let alone complete, in the past. In one of my early posts, 'Digging for dahlias', I described how I felt about buying dahlia tubers each year and then never having time to do anything with them. Well, don't tell everyone, but last Friday I planted the first of my dahlias out on the allotment, having first grown them on in pots and hardened them off first. I cannot describe the sense of achievement that this has given me. I get a similar feeling from making provision for the future when I cook jams and chutneys, or when I come to store quantities of food, and other necessities, that I've bought for bargain prices. My husband's pet name for me is Rabbit - because I'm small and like to dig - but perhaps he should change this to Squirrel, given my propensity to hoard things for a future date!

I have less desire to go out and spend money. Wow, that's something I never thougt I'd hear myself saying. I think we have all read the magazine articles that ask " what is missing from your life that you try to make up for it with shopping?"; we must all assume that it doesn't apply to us, as we carry on regardless. For what it's worth, I think the answer is contentment and being able to recognise when you have enough. I used to go on 'cheer-myself-up' shopping trips, armed with my flexible friend, and come back with bags full of 'must-have' lovely things. The high they gave me would last pretty much until I'd unpacked them and put them away. I understand that this I was not alone in this and that it is due largely to the success of the global marketing machine in trying to coax us into buying more to make up for our various shortcomings. Well, I'll always be 'short' and I'm not 'coming' to the shops for recreation now, even if you paid me, so there! To be honest, I actually rather resent the time spent shopping for things other than food, now; I'd much rather be doing something productive instead, like writing this blog. Also, there's nothing I actually need now. Strangely, a lot of my former purchases were along the domestic fantasy line - fabric, books, plants, towels, clothes and small items of useful kitchen equipment were my particular weakness. Perhaps now that I am able to indulge that particular fantasy, the desire to continually purchase has disappeared. It has left me with rather a lot of lovely things, though, and now I have the time to enjoy them. 

We have both developed an ability for lateral thinking. It's amazing, when you're short of cash, just how quickly you begin to see alternative uses, or cost-cutting measures, for almost everything. A surplus wooden pallet becomes your next compost bin or garden bench, a discarded wool carpet is a useful weed suppressant and empty pop bottles are potential mini-cloches to germinate courgette seeds under and to protect them from slugs. Before we buy almost anything now we ask ourselves if we could make it, or get it cheaper, or even, for free. We've applied the same principle to holidays and instead of travelling abroad twice a year, we spent the cost of a years holidays on a little touring caravan instead. Now we don't need to worry about the cost of kennels, airport parking or even bikini waxes! Last year we took it to Norfolk, North Yorkshire and even to Cornwall and although it's in for a little TLC at the moment, we plan to make full use of it this year, with both of our 'boys' in tow. I have lots I want to write about it in the future, so watch this space.

Ok, I hear you say, so there are lots of positives but what about the things that haven't gone so well? There are a couple of things that, while they have not put us off, I feel are important to mention.

Be prepared for the unexpected. Although we were very careful in working out a budget that took most things into account, I think it is important to have a contingency fund for the unexpected things. Although we put money into a motoring 'pot' each month, there was not actually enough in the pot at the time when the car needed two new tyres and we had to 'borrow' the money from elsewhere. This is not so bad if it's a one-off, but the financial side of things could easily become stretched if several things like this happened at once. I read somewhere that when you calculate your original figure for a contingency fund, you should then double it, just to be on the safe side.

Some people assume that you have nothing to do all day. Despite the fact that I get up earlier than I did when I worked full-time, go to bed later, and work physically harder than I've probably ever done, there are those people who assume that I have lots of time on my hands! They drop in without warning and pretend to be - or actually are - oblivious to the fact that I am in the middle of something. By the time they've left - to resume their very busy lives - you have metaphorically torn out your hair or given up what you'd started as a bad job. Someone once told me about a friend of theirs who always put on her coat before she answered the door. She was then at liberty to say that she was just going out, or just coming in, depending upon whether she wanted to invite the caller in or not. I think I shall just have to stick a sign on my front door that reads, 'Blogging - do not disturb!' and hope that it puts them off. Or perhaps I will just have to work on my ability to say a firm 'no'.

With hindsight, one of the very best things to have happened to me since downshifting is writing this blog. Looking back now, I can see exactly how far I've come, and how much I've achieved, both in my own words and in pictures. I always knew that I would never make the time to keep a paper diary on a regular basis so this blog has given me opportunities I thought I would never have: to distill and record my thoughts, to learn to take photographs digitally and to make new friends, both in this country and abroad. Today, I've been buzzing with new ideas for posts so perhaps it's just as well that showers are forecast for tomorrow. One of the things that most prompted us to downshift now was that none of us knows what is just around the corner in our lives and, therefore, that we do not have the luxury of tomorrow, only today, in which to put our dreams into action. My father's untimely death has spurred both my sister and myself into more positive ways of living; it just makes us rather sad to think that he's no longer here to enjoy our new-found freedom with us. What a wonderful legacy he has left us, though!

The 30th post competition finishes at midnight, tonight. You don't have to create an account or sign in to leave a comment, just enter your name and e-mail address, along with your comment and click 'post'. You could win an 8" by 10" print of one of four of my photographs (scroll down to the bottom of the post, 'A dog's dinner', for details). Remember to state which photo you would like to win, along with your comment.

 

Weathering the weather

I considered calling this post 'Singing in the rain', as I was so delighted that we'd actually had some at last, but decided against it on sensitivity grounds. Readers living in the south and west might have sent me to Coventry, or to Hay-on-Wye, to stand on the festival site minus my wellies, as a punishment, after they've been subjected to a month's rain in a  single morning! We had rain here at the end of April, in the form of an enormous thunderstorm, and then nothing again for a month. Admittedly, the soil did stay quite moist for a couple of weeks but since then we've been watching the weather forecast in quiet desperation as all the rainclouds sailed in another direction. Such are the vagaries of the British climate, that while one half of the country drowns, the other is dried to a crisp. Peonies are temperamental plants at the best of times, and I just managed to capture the one above while it still had all it's petals. The poor thing struggled to flower through drought conditions and then the rain arrived and doubtless it is not looking so lovely this morning! The weather of the Mediterranean, with it's months of continuous sunshine, must have a certain appeal for those in the damper regions just now, but imagine all that watering? One of our allotment holders spent the first part of his retirement in southern Spain but one of the things he most missed about England was the variation in the weather and he came back here.

Our part of Lincolnshire is very forgiving with it's weather. Having lived in the north of Wales, where 'wet' was so often the default setting, rain here is usually followed by sunshine and a drying wind. This year, it seems to be accompanied by enormous fluctuations in temperature and unpredicted mood-swings. Yesterday morning, it was bright when I walked the dogs and reasonably warm; in the afternoon, I went to the allotment and could feel my skin burning within 20 minutes. As the temperatures rose, so did the humidity and it was a great effort of will to keep digging as my t-shirt slowly became sodden with the exertion. Later on, it clouded over, with a lovely cooling breeze, and in the evening it rained heavily for five hours. This morning the sky is overcast and, although the customary wind is absent, the pavements outside are almost dry already. Although the soil where we live is, historically, the silt of a floodplain, the further you go up the neighbouring hill, the denser the clay becomes.The allotments have better soil on the lower plots but the clay needs a lot of working to stop it turning into a rock-hard pan in the summer months. After heavy rain, like last nights, I always feel a desperate urge to rush up there and dig over as much as I can before the surface hardens again.

 

 As you can see here, the gooseberries have benefitted from the rain. The fruit seems to set if the weather is dry but the bushes need a really good soaking if the fruit is to swell and ripen properly. Last year, as the summer was so wet, we had an absolutely bumper crop and I made most of it into jam. The blackcurrants, on the other hand, which normally give a reliable yield of 20lbs plus, provided half a bowlful! I've given them some wood ash this season, and manure, so I'm hoping they'll be back to normal now.

I've got about four redcurrant bushes, like the one above, spread over the two allotments, and they crop well every year. The trick with them is to catch the ripening fruit before the birds see it, or they strip the bush in a greedy frenzy, wasting half the crop as it falls to the ground. This week, Si' and I have bought some tanalised wooden posts that we're going to fix permanently around each bush and then just drape the net over at the last minute to keep the birds off.

 

Our neighbouring allotment is gardened by a delightful Italian gentleman, called Lorenzo, who has given me some much-needed encouragement over the years. This is his fig tree, which grows in a circular wooden 'collar', presumably with it's roots in the ground underneath. If you look carefully, about two thirds of the way up on the right, it already has a fig growing! Si' was inspired to plant an outdoor vine, as Lorenzo's grows so well, and Lorenzo prunes it for us each year. The grapes are quite tart to eat but perhaps we might try making wine with them this year if they fruit well.

 

This year I was determined to suceed with broad beans. I normally forget to plant them early enough and they go in with the other peas and beans and do very little. This year I prepared the bed most carefully with home-made compost, sowed two rows in late March and planted a row of Dutch iris - bought from Lidl for a song - down the middle.

They are flourishing after the rain and just coming into flower. Fingers-crossed, there is no sign of the dreaded black fly yet but I'm ready for them with the insecticidal soap if they put in an appearance! (The Organic Catalogue have the best deal I've found on this; sold as a concentrate it will make 50 litres of spray for £15.85, as opposed to the ready-to- use version at £6.95 for one litre!) During the hottest part of the afternoon, I took a quick break to visit my gardening friend, Kathy, only a short stroll away. She has the most beautiful garden, that she started from scratch when her house was built, and she has raised most of the perennials in it herself from seed, or has gained them by swapping her home-grown plants, for different varieties, through a garden exchange scheme. What an excellent way to fill your garden for very little outlay but with all the fun of growing and swapping plants with like-minded people. I came away with some cactus-flowered dahlia plants, a bergenia and a clematis tangutica (the one with yellow flowers). Her family enjoy my blackcurrant jam, by way of a swap!

This leads me nicely to another exchange and that is of names on blog lists. A very nice man called John Harrison, who has the site that's featured at the top of my blog list, 'Allotment Growing', has added me to his site, on the Green Living Information page. A warm welcome to you if you have reached Being Creative from that site. I feel quite excited to be included as John's is the most popular allotment website in the UK. I first discovered it when I had delusions about keeping hens in our handkerchief of a garden. Thankfully, there is plenty of good information on poultry keeping, enough to dissuade me from such a reckless course of action. John has also published a book on vegetable growing recently and you can order a signed copy from the site or see if your local library has it in stock. From the forecast, it looks as if everyone can expect a little sunshine over the weekend; I hope it shines on you!

While you're here, be sure to enter my 30th post competition. The prize is a professionally printed copy of one of my photographs. For details, go to the end of my last (30th) post, 'A dog's dinner'. 

A dog's dinner

In my last post, I mentioned that I was thinking of holding a little competition to celebrate this, my 30th post, with one of my photographs, printed professionally, as a prize. I asked for reader's thoughts on this and the response was an overwhelming, "yes, please!", so the competition details follow on below, after this dog tale (or should that be 'tail'?). I had hoped to launch it over the weekend and apologise if you were looking eagerly for it. Typepad - who host this blog - have made some changes to their site and I am trying to get to grips with them. I think I mentioned previously that I am not naturally gifted with computer software and, given that it took me quite some time to find my way around in the first place, I confess to being more than a little peeved that I have to re-learn several aspects of it now. In a few posts time, I will probably be singing its praises and wondering how I ever managed with "the old way". Until that time, please bare with me through the gnashing of teeth!

Looking through my most recent posts, it's been a while since I wrote anything about my 'boys'. I took the photo of Hector some weeks ago, whilst he was taking an illicit nap on the upstairs sofa. Hector and Zephyr have a sofa each downstairs and in an effort to maintain a hair-free seat up here, this particular settee is normally considered out of bounds. I was typing on the computer at the time and am not sure which surprised me most; that Hector had taken an interest in this settee, when normally he doesn't bother, or that I had completely failed to hear him climb up there. When I am upstairs, I can normally tell by the sound of their progress, which dog is approaching to seek me out. Zephyr is so gentle on his feet that sometimes I don't notice him at all until a wet nose is thrust under my elbow to alert me to his presence. Hector, on the other hand, has all the delicacy of a herd of stampeding wilderbeest, and has been known to collide heavily with the newel post from time to time, in his haste to get downstairs. Despite that minor shortcoming, he has maintained the sunny disposition he had on arrival with an "I'm-so-lovely-let-me-give-you-a-big-wet-kiss" attitude to life. He does, however, have grave misgivings over travelling in the car and about being brushed! To be fair, we took him with us to the car boot on Sunday and he never made a whimper, so I feel we are making progress there but the brush is quite another matter. When Zephyr first arrived, we brushed him regularly as his coat is thick and coarse and he parts with it most generously. Conversely, Hector came with such a sparse, silky covering over his pink skin that I was loathed to brush him for fear of scratching. His coat remained thin for quite a long time and then, suddenly, he was sporting a thick adult coat and needed an introduction to 'Mr Brush'. Even the mention of it is enough for him to vacate the room at speed. We have tended to give up in the past, as deerhounds are renowned for being terrible wusses, but now the writing is on the wall for Hector. We have recently received our copy of the schedule for 'Long Nose Day', the fun dog show held annually by Lincolnshire Greyhound Trust to support their work. Armed with a new 'slicker' brush and a bag of little dog treats - for bribery - we can get him to keep still for five minutes at a time now, if Si' holds him on his lead and I do the brushing. Deerhounds are supposed to be brushed every other day, so we're told, but we're making a start. Interestingly, Hector's dad has a similar hatred of the hairbrush, so he must have inherited it from him!

Zephyr, though, loves to be brushed and will stand, appreciatively, while you get on with it. Here he is, looking proud, with his collection of rosettes, at last year's event (photo, courtesy of Si'). Showing dogs on a regular basis has never really been our bag but we do like the idea of them mixing with other dogs and it gives us the opportunity to get to know other dog owners, with similar breeds of dog, in our area. In addition, we are helping to raise much-needed funds and enjoying ourselves into the bargain. A friend I used to work with first suggested we went last year when Zephyr - though you wouldn't know it from the picture - was still a puppy. She has a lurcher herself, whose party trick is being able to jump clean into her arms; fortunately he is not as weighty as either Zephyr or Hector! There are classes for other breeds - beside greyhounds and longdogs - and they can compete in novelty classes, such as 'Best Six Legs' and 'Nicest Head', in addition to the more standard ones. Each class only costs a pound to enter, so it is an ideal downshifter's day out and much more fun than spending Sunday at the shops. Hector's breeder is probably going to come along with Hector's mum and cousin and, quite recently, we discoverd that a deerhound we met there last year is actually Hector's half-brother. Lucy will come with us, too, so it could turn out to be quite a family day in every respect. I am hoping to make a few cupcakes - complete with fondant paw prints - to contribute to the refreshments. Later this week, we are hoping to extend Hector's car-tolerance further by taking him for his first trip to the seaside. As luck would have it, 'Seaside Capers' is one of the categories for the show's photo competition this year, so I shall be sure to take my camera. Given that Zephyr rushes about on the beach like a total loon, it will probably be much harder to get Hector to keep still long enough to photograph him at the seaside at all. Never mind; if the picture is a blur of movement it will be because he took the 'capering' to heart! 

The 30th Post Competition

I am really excited about launching this - my first - blog competition but since I sometimes miss things out in my eagerness to get started, do let me know if I forget to include any vital information. The prize is a 10" by 8", professionally printed matt photograph of one of the four choices shown below. It will be sent to you in a rigid cardboard envelope as quickly as the printer's workload allows after the closing date, which is Tuesday June 10th.

To enter:-

All you have to do is post a positive comment on the site and select which of the four photos you’d like to receive if your name is pulled from the hat first. 

Your comment can be about:-

• any of the thirty posts, not just the most recent
• your own favourite post/category and what you would like to see more of
• whether the blog has been particularly helpful to you in any way

Please choose from the photos below:-

A) Centaurea in jar

B) Walnuts

C) Tulip, close-up

D) Hector on forbidden sofa!

You've got two weeks and counting, so 'be creative' with your comments now!

 

 

        

    
  

Be Nice to Nettles Week!

Given that I missed writing about 'National Composting Week', as it's timing coincided - most suitably - with the busiest part of the gardening calendar, I was determined not to let 'Be Nice to Nettles Week' slip by in a similar way. Nettles get a bad press. We all remember being stung, inadvertently, as children and the resulting nettle rash seemed to last - painfully - for hours. As I recall, there was never a dock leaf around when you needed one! Even Kenneth Thompson - who wrote the book I recommend on composting - has a title on wildlife gardening called No Nettles Required. I freely admit to not having read it but think I might do now to find out just why nettles are not required in a wildlife garden! Nettles are routinely noted as the Big Bad Wolves of gardening and are about as popular, yet as unwelcome visitors go, they are surprisingly useful.

The BBC Breathing Places project has an article in the Spring issue of Countryfile magazine about nettles. The aim of the project is to get people involved in creating havens for wildlife in their local area and, they argue, nettles have an important role to play:-

• Red admiral and small tortoiseshell butterflies rely on the common nettle for breeding as their larvae feed on it's leaves.
• The plant also supports over forty species of insect and a full-grown nettle can produce up to 40,000 seeds during it's lifetime, to provide food for seed-eating birds.
• Nettles make an excellent food for other plants as they are rich in nutrients. No wonder they need those stings to protect themselves! Like comfrey, they are a valuable activator for home-made compost. You can just pick them - wearing thick gloves - and add them to the heap. If you are careful not to pull the root up with them you can have your own sustainable cut-and-come-again patch that will keep providing you with new stems throughout the summer. Equally, you can make a liquid feed that's high in nitrogen. Pick your nettles, put them in a plastic bucket and cover them with water. Stir them well each day for a fortnight. The liquid is then ready to be diluted at ten parts water to one part nettle fertiliser. Strain it first or it will block up the rose on your watering can!

I have two patches of nettles on my allotments, one on each. The first grows around my plastic compost bins and when they begin to look a bit unruly, I just pull the tops off and add them to the current bin. If they look as if they are spreading, I pull the root up and add that as well, to keep it under control. They are not deep-rooted and are easy to remove as long as you are well protected from those stings. My other patch is the width of the allotment, and about 6ft deep, and grows at the far end of my first allotment, where it butts up to the path. When all the allotments at that end were disused, people would come onto the allotments from the neighbouring public footpath and just take the quickest route through to the gate at the bottom. To stop them cutting through mine, I left this nettle barrier; no-one willingly walks through nettles and I'm providing my own wildlife snack bar at the same time!

As weeds go, nettles are actually a blessing in disguise. Even couch grass can be dug out, with persistence. Just don't let me get going about bindweed ...

While I remember, I want to say a big thank you to those people who've been so complimentary about my photographs. To celebrate my forthcoming 30th post, I'm thinking of holding a little competition, with one of my photographs, printed professionally, as a prize. Do let me know what you think?

Spring food

Years ago, when our children were young, we lived in Wales and kept a small flock of sheep. From the beginning of March onward, they would start to lamb and this meant visiting their field every three to four hours during the day, starting at about six in the morning, with the last visit at ten at night. Many gave birth perfectly well by themselves but the shearlings - those ewes lambing for the first time - or those with difficult presentations, often needed our help. Since we never knew when these difficulties might occur, these frequent visits were, indeed, necessary. Three to four hours does not, in itself, sound too taxing and if we got down there and nothing was happening, we were back up the lane in no time. But if you'd only rolled into bed, exhausted, at 2.00a.m., after helping with an awkward breach birth, you still had to go and check on the rest four hours later. Two or three nights like that on the trot and you were definitely in need of the proverbial matchsticks! Having said that, lambing was my favourite part of the shepherding year and the thrill of helping to deliver a lamb safely was beyond words (even for me). Our chidren, on the other hand, were not quite so impressed. Yes, they loved seeing the fluffy little lambs gamboling in the fields and each year we usually had a bottle lamb for them to help feed. What they really hated was the food, or rather, the mundane repetition of quick meals. Food shopping became very hit and miss as the nearest supermarket was seven miles away and you had to make a quick dash between rounds, hoping that nothing was amiss on your return. Equally, you couldn't plan to cook anything that took very long to cook, or that needed constant attention while doing so. Sod's Law determined that you would be called away to an urgent case in the middle of preparation, and it would never make it to the oven, or else your meal was cremated because you couldn't be spared to go home and turn the oven off. So meals, at that time, consisted of a lot of dishes made with eggs - we had our own hens then, so didn't run out of those - or something 'on toast'. Over the years, the children coined the phrase 'Spring food' to refer to any kind of dish that they were forced to consume during lambing time and offers to serve it up at other times of year were met with howls of injustice. It has taken quite a number of years for them to get over this but Carrie's quick tea of choice, if she calls in unexpectedly, is two 'dippy' eggs with toast fingers, so I feel that I have not inflicted lasting psychological damage. The phrase, however, remains firmly embedded in this family's vocabulary!

I'm using the term 'Spring food' here quite differently and also somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as the food I'm about to describe is not really meant for Spring at all, but for the summer, when the hot weather we've been having recently usually arrives! We began making souvlaki after visiting the beautiful Greek island of Crete, on holiday. When we first saw them, we recognised them as what we traditionally thought of as 'kebabs' - meat grilled on a skewer - but kebab is the Turkish word, and as Crete was occupied by the Turks for centuries and there is no love lost between them, they would like to use their own word now, thank you! You can use chicken, pork or lamb equally well but I find that pork tends to become dry and that lamb - even in such small quantities - is prohibitively costly. Chicken breasts are not cheap either, so I wait until I see them on the reduced counter in Tesco and stockpile them in the freezer for the warmer weather. They need cutting into one inch chunks, for marinading; this is all very well, you might say, if chicken breats were square, but what about the thinner bits at the edges? I usually cut those a bit longer and then double them over as I thread them onto the skewer. To get the best tasting souvlaki - and to keep them moist under the grill - it is essential to marinade the meat for a few hours first. I've done a bit of reasearch into this and most souvlaki marinades consist of oil (preferably olive), then a pick and mix approach with ingredients such as garlic, lemon, white or red wine and wine vinegar. Herbs, such as oregano, mint and thyme are included in all recipes, as is black pepper. Olive oil is one of those subjects that 'foodies' can sometimes get a bit sniffy about, so I'm going to stick my neck out and say that I buy my oil for cooking from Lidl. It's a brand called Iliodor, is extra virgin, comes in 750ml bottles and costs just over £4.00. Best of all - and we discoverd this quite by chance - is that it comes from the Chania area of west Crete, where we used to visit, so we feel a certain sense of loyalty in buying it. Sniffy, but financially-strapped, foodies can console themselves with the fact that this means more money left over to buy smaller quantities of more expensive oil for salads! Lidl frequently have special offers on their fruit and veg, so you could stock up on your peppers, cherry tomatoes and button mushrooms for your souvlaki while you're there. I'll be putting a recipe on the Tried and Tested page in the next few days, as soon as I have a minute spare, aside from the current extensive Growing programme. When I grill the souvlaki, I find it helps to keep the meat from burning if it can sit in a little marinade as it cooks. This means either using a double sheet of tinfoil, or, I suppose, you could sit them in a shallow baking tray on top of the grill pan. They need frequent turning, as the veg cook more quickly and can burn, but you get to enjoy the heady fragrance of the herbs as they cook. We eat them with whatever bread we have to hand but pitta bread, served warm, is a traditional accompaniment. A Greek salad, topped with some nice crumbly feta cheese is also ideal.

The lemon ice cream, that we had for pudding, came about when I needed to use up some cream - that was originally intended for a birthday pavlova - and the lemon curd that our friend, Ivy, so kindly gave us. The recipe is from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries and if you haven't got a copy, but enjoy lemon recipes, get it ordered from the library double quick! (There's even a second recipe called Lemon Ice-Cream Tart with Gingernut Crust, that sounds equally delicious and doesn't need lemon curd. Must try that next). When I costed the lemon ice cream recipe out this morning it came in at just below £3.00, not counting the lemon curd, which was free. It did include two thirds of a pack of M&S meringue nests, though, included for their crisper texture, rather than my own whose forte is their gooey centre. However, it does make enough ice cream to serve six people generously - or an endless number of ice cream cones - compared with a small tub of Ben and Jerry's at £3.95, which would be lucky to serve two! The recipe says to stir occasionally, as it sets, but I forgot until it had gone too hard and it didn't seem to suffer for it. You will be relieved to know that we didn't actually eat the narcissi pictured with it above. That was just included to bring out the colour in the photo. We did, though, eat the lemon zest and the sprig of lemon balm, which surprised me by tasting just like it smells. Sounds like just the thing to include in ice cubes to go with lemony summer drinks.

My personal recipe for today is to plant my courgette seeds in pots, to give them a head start on the slugs, and another health-promoting bout of digging in readiness for my sprouting dahlia tubers. Thank goodness the weather is cooler!

Special delivery

Isn't it lovely to get a letter? I don't mean bills or the reminder from DVLC that your road tax is due soon. I mean a proper letter where someone you are fond of takes the time to write - or type, if their handwriting is as illegible as mine - and share all their news as to how how they are getting on with life. Texts and emails are very useful in their way but somehow a letter smacks of another person investing their precious time in preparing something personalised and then taking the trouble to go out and post it. Quite literally, it tells you that their thoughts are with you. I had just such a letter from my sister this week, telling me lots of positive stuff about her new life in Wales, and it really made my day. I waited to read it until I had finished all my busy jobs, first thing, so that I could take my time and savour it. The post arrived just as I was arranging a huge bunch of cow parsley in a vase - picked, for free, from the path above the allotment - so we could enjoy it's frothy texture. It was one of those defining moments when I realise just how much my life has changed for the better. To have time to pick flowers and arrange them - and the pleasure is multiplied when I have grown them myself - and to sit down and enjoy reading a letter, without dashing off to do the next thing, both bring me such unhurried pleasure and are such a contrast to my former workaholic existence.

Equally lovely, is to receive a handmade card and the two pictured above are my birthday ones from my niece, Lily, and my sister. They have truly embraced the concept of re-using here, by using only those materials to make them that were already destined for the recycling bins! Also, making your own cards give you the chance to personalise your designs to suit the recipient's interests. Hence, Lily has drawn me a dog (probably Hector, as he's grey) in a lovely garden, embellished with sparkly bits and my sister has made me a butterfly, amongst the flowers, from coloured foil. The foil adds a wonderful texture to the card and if you are lucky enough to be presented with fancy chocolates, or biscuits, now and again, it's well worth smoothing out the wrappers carefully, as you eat the contents, and saving them. If they are a bit sticky, a quick wipe with a warm, slightly soapy, cloth should remove it. It can become quite a challenge to see how many different colours you can collect. Given that cards like this are one-offs, they are usually kept and treasured afterwards, which makes them truly worth the effort of creating them in the first place!

Accompanying the cards was this parcel and it was so beautifully wrapped that I just had to take a photo of it before unwrapping it. I really enjoy wrapping presents beautifully myself and so I appreciate the effort that had gone into preparing this one. Can you see the tiny butterfly stickers on the right that perfectly complement the colour of the tissue paper? I didn't unwrap it until much later in the day so that I could enjoy it's sense of promise.

When curiosity eventually got the better of me, this is what I found inside. Again, my sister has thought carefully about what I particularly like when choosing what to include. I feel that so many presents are bought on impulse, in a rush, and that these can be a waste of both the buyer's time and money and the recipient's storage space! A little thought, in present-giving, goes a long way. Spots are a particular favourite of mine and the notebook will come in very handy for my thrifty shopping lists, which I usually make on bits of old envelope and then cannot tell one from another. The spotty tea towels are particularly welcome. You may recognise them as I have a couple that I use as a background for some of my photographs. They come from Sainsburys (in case you wanted to know) and I got my original pair from our nearest store, which is in Lincoln. That particular branch is an out-of-town one, and is difficult for me to get to unless we go in the car, so I have cursed myself ever since for not having had the forethought to buy two sets, so that we had some to use in our litle touring caravan. Thanks to my sister's thoughtfulness, I now have that magical second set! We are both keen gardeners and her choice of seeds reflects my love of bright colour and, as I have mentioned earlier, my delight in growing flowers for cutting. So I want to say a VERY BIG THANK YOU indeed for all the trouble they went to to make my birthday parcel really special and also to say how much I appreciate it. Next month, it's Lily's birthday, and I've been collecting bits to add to her Being Creative Box, that I made up for her for Christmas. What am I going to include? You'll have to wait and see!

Catching up

The last couple of weeks seem to have gone by in a complete whirl of busy activity and I find that I have been almost totally occupied with the urgent - getting things going on the allotment - to the detriment of the important - this blog! The time that I would normally devote to blogging - first thing in the morning - has been replaced with the cleaning and tidying before dog walking, thus releasing me for an afternoon of digging and sowing. The cold wind, that blew almost constantly in April, deterred me from getting started with the allotment then and now there are lots of tasks all clamouring equally loudly for attention. I have ideas for posts coming out of my ears at this, my most treasured, time of year but they are having to wait politely - in an orderly queue - to gain a place on these pages as time allows. National Compost Week is already upon us, I have been thinking long and hard about the recognised benefits of allotment-holding and Hector has developed a phobia about having his hair brushed. All part of my busy downshifting day! I'm aware that this last statement might strike you as something of an oxymoron. "Surely," you might reason," this downshifting lark should be about taking things more slowly instead of rushing about like the fly with the proverbial blue bottom!" For me, the list of things I try to do each day has grown considerably longer, particularly now that things I would formerly have bought in - such as greetings cards and biscuits - are being produced 'in-house'. What has changed is that I am now the architect of my own day. If I want to go out and take photos at 7.30 in the morning - as I did yesterday, while the light was good and there was no brezze - and catch up with my e-mails at 11.00 at night, then, within reason, I can. What has gone, for me, is the sense of running round endlessly on a stress-inducing hamster wheel, trying to do several tasks at once for no appreciable benefit. This can be especially so if you work for someone else and their idea of what is a priority in your working day differs from your own. So I like to think of myself as 'intensively occupied', rather than performing the dance of the decapitated hen!

For all our toil, there is not much to see on the allotment yet, apart from our annual rhubarb glut. I weeded the patch in March, gave it a generous sprinkling of pelleted chicken manure and 'voila!', we have enough rhubarb to supply a small shop. Everyone else is in the same boat, so I cannot understand the audacity of the major supermarkets, who still insist on charging £1.99 for four rather piddling little sticks. We spent our Bank Holiday strimming both of our own allotments and that of an elderly neighbour. The strength of the sun increased as the day progressed but I was lulled into a false sense of security by the steady breeze that cooled me as I raked up the grass and carried it to the compost bin. It was only towards tea time that I noticed the tell-tale itching of sunburn on my exposed and unprotected skin. By the time I'd had my bath in the evening, it was rather red and sore and, though I've spared you a photograph, I am now musing that it was not unlike the colour of the rhubarb, pictured above! The BBC weather forecast is predicting a UV index of five for the next three days so do take care. My own recovery has involved staying inside during the hottest part of the day but since Si' has taken some more holiday to act as Under Gardener today, I shall be wearing my rather fetching straw hat with a nice wide brim to shade my neck!

Given that my wings have been temporarily clipped since Monday, I've noticed a furious lot of tweeting and much fluttering about in the back garden this week. Since their numbers are apparently on the decline, we count ourselves lucky to have a pair of resident house sparrows that nest in a gap above next door's central heating flue, just beyond our bedroom window. In fact we are privy to all the comings and goings of Spadger and his wife as we can watch them whilst drinking our morning cuppa in bed. They have thoughtfully chosen this week to fledge their babies and, since there are high walls on all sides, they inevitably end up in our garden. In previous years I have worried about the welfare of those babies and their exposure to visiting cats. Now I have my own threat in the form of one lurcher with an incredible nose for a scent. Needless to say, his visits to the garden just now are strictly on an 'escort-only' basis. I caught glimpses of the fledgelings, scuttling for cover, as I was hanging out washing on Tuesday but as I was preparing to go out to the market, I noticed this one balancing on top of the gate, outside the kitchen window. I moved away, very gingerly, to fetch my camera and was delighted to be rewarded with these pictures.

I couldn't see any sign of her fluffy little self by yesterday evening so am hoping that she has flown and that we have done our bit to help house sparrow numbers. By Tuesday evening there was screeching to add to the general avian melee to mark the annual arrival of our swift population. They make their nests each year in the eaves of this late Victorian terrace and zoom fearlessly about in the early evening catching flies at high speed. They are always very welcome and their arrival makes me think that summer is well and truly on the way. The height of the houses on our particular road seems to bounce the birdsong around so that sometimes I am unsure as to whether it's coming from the front, or the back, of the house, especially when it's very still outside. When we first arrived, I was frequently spooked by the pigeons who would sit on our chimney pots and coo loudly, as the sound was transferred down the chimneys like a funnel. The big tree in the vet's garden is coming into leaf now and in the summer it can feel as if sitting in our upstairs sitting room is like being amongst it's swaying branches.

Finally, on Friday of last week I had an email from Cally, a regular reader of this blog, to say that I had won the book pictured above in a draw, after leaving comments on her own blog. Cally is a qualified surveyor and runs her own property finding business for people looking to relocate to her home county of Wiltshire. Her own blog is full of excellent information on all aspects of home-ownership, be it acquisition, renovation or reclamation. With years more downshifting experience under her belt than me, we share an enjoyment of allotmenting, photography and being 'keen greens'! The timing of the draw couldn't have been better as it was held on the day before my birthday. It's arrival coincided with a parcel from my sister, so it was just like getting an additional present!

It was only when I started writing this post this morning that I realised just what an important part of my life this blog has become and how much I have missed doing it recently. I have met some truly lovely people, several of whom have left such encouraging comments and, having never kept a diary before, it is wonderful to be able to look back and see exactly how much I have achieved over the last three months. The icing on my cake this week was a comment from a friend, who is a professional photographer. We went to the launch of his current exhibition last week and Si' mentioned that I'd been taking photographs for this blog. After looking at it he said that he thought I had "a real eye and talent for taking pictures" and that they were "so colourful and bright!" Isn't it strange that something that started as just a means to an end can result in something that earns praise in it's own right? Please do let me know which photos you like the best; I am going through something of a tulip phase at the moment, particularly the orange ones I've grown this year. More from me soon. Enjoy that weekend sunshine!