Going Nuts again

Once again we have a super-abundancy of nuts.  I can't believe it is a year since I wrote about collecting the nuts from my garden, but here I am again, happily collecting up the fat little bodies - this is yesterday's haul...

Aren't they beautiful?   As fast as I walk along picking up the nuts I hear a gentle plop behind me and know that if I turn round and walk back the grass will be strewn with even more.  And if you are thinking I ought to be leaving them for the dear little grey treerats with big tails and good P.R. (squirrels) well, I cannot get easily behind the trees and don't scrabble in the undergrowth, so I reckon there is still plenty of food left for them.  Anyway, stupid creatures just bury them all over my garden and then forget where they have put them and dig up my bulbs!  You will gather I am not over fond of squirrels.

When I take the husks off, this reminds me of the vinyl floor covering I had  years ago which looked like a pebbly beach!   Incidentally,anyone who lives near me and wants little nut trees - well, I dig them out by the score!

I have also made MORE bramble jelly. This time I squeezed the jelly bag!  I hope my mother wasn't watching from above, but I don't think with blackberry jelly you are aiming for a clear translucent W.I. prize winner and I am happy to have a cloudy jelly and more of it - especially the way senior grandson eats it! 

  I have fitted in  some sewing - a friend asked me to do a picture for a neighbour who is having a significant birthday and is a keen bowler.   I think I can show the picture in advance of the birthday as I am pretty sure she is not a blog reader!

Anyway, it was quite fun to do although anatomically I don't think she works !

Sutton Hoo

It has been a really busy week somehow, going here and there but I have managed to spend some time in the garden and  just look at this lovely purple  morning glory amongst the clematis - magical!

The clematis (which I call Tanganyika but of course I know that is not the real name, it is Tangutica   ) is in quite the wrong place and grows rampantly.  Every year I cut it right back and wish I had the courage to remove it altogether and every year it comes back twice as strong and grows all over everything.  

We have had some beautiful days this week - I call them God-given at this time of the year, when autumn is coming and yet after a cool start we get a warm sunny day with clear skies and the warmth is so precious when you know it is not going to last.

And I am very proud of this aeonium which I bought at East Ruston - I think the colour is superb.  It has a little baby plant  which I am going to take off and try to grow on.  I believe that if I cut the top off this (it is a good 18" tall) I can replant the top piece and the bottom will sprout again.  Yes?  Anyone done it?

We have been saying that we don't use our National Trust and English Heritage cards often enough, so after breakfast we sat down with the books to decide where we should go.  And we chose Sutton Hoo, I cannot believe that  we have not been before!  After a lovely drive throught the beautiful Suffolk countryside, we arrived at Woodbridge and then on to Sutton Hoo where we immediately had lunch.   That was a clever move because it saved me cooking when we got home. I was fascinated by everything and spent ages poring over the exhibits,although   I must confess I was disappointed that there wasn't a complete reconstruction of the boat. The quality of the  metalwork in the 600's was amazing- such fine and intricate work.  And we call it the Dark Ages! 

This is a copy of the famous helmet for children to try on.  I was sorely tempted!  And this is the HUGE

image over the door of the exhibition.  We had a walk out to see the burial mounds and then of course we had to have a cup of tea and drove home to get caught up in the exodus from the flying display at Duxford.
We have had an unexpected vacancy at the Almshouses, of which I have been a Trustee since 1976!  The result is that we have to do a refurbishment before we get a new tenant and intend to strip out the kitchen and bathroom and refit them - so this week it has been meetings and site meetings and discussions with  builders and decorators.  It is quite a blow because we had a vacancy only  two years ago and did a huge £25,000 renovation on that unit, followed by a completely new roof and chimneys, and now this has cropped up we can only afford to  do a partial refit.
All this is a far cry from textiles and I have a commission to do a picture for the 17th of this month.  Guess what I shall be doing tomorrow!

Travelling again...

Guess where we have been this time !

another clue....

Yup, we've been staying with our lovely friends Inki & Toine in Maastricht - or more precisely in Landgraaf.   We go there every year - George used to work with Toine and we have known them for many many years .  The weather was kind and we did lots of exciting and interesting things - even though we have been there so often we still find fresh things to see and do.  We always have to  go into Maastricht - such a civilised town - and the smartest street is Stokstraat where I spotted this very stylish dress shop where  all the models had their skirts hitched up like riding habits.

Opposite that is one of my favourite florist shops - walk through the shop to the back and there is this smart selection of garden ornaments.  And of course I had to go to a garden centre!  We were going to a  

party later that day so I bought flowers for the hostess....

and we had to pay another visit to the historic Dominicanerkerk - an ex Dominican church which has been turned into a fascinating bookshop.  The cleverly converted 800 year old church retains its dignity

and is really impressive and there is a huge section of English literature.  There is also a coffeehouse  there and it is a popular meeting place for young and old alike.  I feel as if I am writing a travel brochure-  but I am passionate about Limbourg!    We went to visit the Textile Museum  in Tilburg, housed in an old woollen mill.  This is both a museum and an exhibition space and a learning centre.   Both George and Toine spent a lifetime with textiles and were fascinated by this woven cloth -  very difficult to see where the repeat comes and one of the weavers told us that it was a difficult one to set up.  Some of the looms they are working on are two or three hundred years old.  I bought a cloth in this pattern.

Then another day we drove to Valkenburg where we had lunch at the very beautiful Chateau St Gerlach. Mussels - yummy - with chips served Belgian style in little paper cornets sitting in their own  wooden holders with mayonnaise at the side.

The Chateau has been very sympathetically restored as a five star hotel and, as well as looking round the pretty frescoes in St Gerlach's church we saw the display of sculpture in the grounds,

including this very wet looking cow - as you can see, by this time the weather had caved in and it was raining - so we went back to Landgraaf and sat & watched the DVD of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - in Swedish with Dutch subtitles !!!  However, having read the books the characters were JUST as we had imagined them and we had no difficulty at all in following the action.

Home to Cambridge and a visit to Shakespeare's As You Like it in the the grounds of Trinity College - a picnic with more rain !!!  It was a delightful performance and the actors ploughed on manfully (and womanfully) to entertain us.   When we got home, DD1 and the two grandsons had arrived for the week and we packed a lot of visits and sightseeing in.   This is Jeremy James  in the Museum of London Docklands - if you haven't been there, do go.  It is most interesting and it was hard to tear  the boys away, although mention of lunch soon moved them.  When we arrived at Canary Wharf I had lost my bearings, but spotted two young policemen and asked them to point me in the right direction.  "I'll do better than that, madam, I'll take you there."  So off we set, me in the lead with one policeman then the other four and a policeman with a dog bringing up the rear.  The boys were very amused - they thought it looked as if we were being marched off for questioning.  Later we went to St Pauls then over the wobbly Millennium bridge to Tate Modern - the boys were NOT impressed by the art but loved the building!

So now they have all gone back and it seems as though the summer is over.  The garden is full of greengages and blackberries just asking to be made into jam, we cannot keep up with the tomatoes and beans,  the weeds are growing apace and there was a mountain of washing to tackle.  I haven't had time to any sewing or drawing, must try harder!

A bone of contention !

This is a PILE

and this is   A   NOTHER    pile

who would think that an innocent thing like a pile of weeds could cause dissention in a marriage?  George doen't like my piles, but I say that if I didn't leave piles, he would never know just how much gardening I actually do!  Does that make sense?  It does to me.

In my own defence, I will say that if I go out on an Official Weed I use a trug for the weeds, but most of my weeding is unofficial, i.e. I go out to do something else and get distracted. I was checking on the greengages and spotted some phlox that needed to be cut down.   It is a bit late after all these years to hope that I will change, so there.   Anyway, my lovely Echinacea 'Green Envy'   is in bloom - isn't it glorious !

I'm off now to finish  a fruit salad for eight  - it has taken me ages  to cut up all the fruits and none out of the garden I am afraid.  The greengages are not ready nor are the blackberries and I'm not sharing my figs!   I'm just waiting for the  caustic comments about the piles when George comes in !  (He's a pussycat, really)

FIG uratively speaking...

Just look what I picked today in my garden!   A beautiful plump,  ripe, juicy FIG.   And there are lots more on the tree. To think that for the better part of my life I thought I hated figs - and that was because my mother used to give me a dose of Syrup of Figs every Friday night when I was a child.  I hated it so much I turned my back on figs but oh, how different a ripe fig straight off the tree is from the sickly sweet syrup I remember.    I cut it in half and George and I  enjoyed it after dinner - one of our five a day.  And all five today came from the garden, tomatoes, runner beans and a handful of gooseberries cooked with a couple of fallen apples and served with a crumbled digestive biscuit and a spoonful of Greek yoghurt.  Yummy.

And following Gina's instructions in her Blog Drawing Tutorial I had coloured some pages in a sketchbook ages ago, having been told that was the way to overcome the terror of blank pages in a new sketch book.  Having painted them, I then did not know what to do with them!  But there they were, ready and waiting for a little painting done with a kebab stick dipped in bleach.

A couple of little chicks - in this case the early bird didn't get the worm .    And then a couple of aliums picked from the garden, it is  fascinating to watch the bleach taking effect, I know Gina said it would ruin a paintbrush but I bet you would get some better effects . I got a bit carried away with the daisies

Whilst I was painting the aliums, some hover wasps came into the conservatory and clustered around the flower head.  Notice my illicit Campari - I am on a promise to myself not to drink during the week, but it has been a hard day.

and I deserve it!

A nice day out !

Today George and I went off to Audley End for the day.  It is on our doorstep, and when we first came to the area some 47 years ago we went several times with various visitors, but I don't think we have been for about 20 years (apart from the odd concert). The Telegraph were offering 'two for the price of one' to Telegraph Subscribers and as they were doing a Recreation this weekend we decided to go.  It is of course a lovely sight -

and when they are playing cricket  it just looks SO quintessentially English.  But this morning we headed for the kitchens, first the laundry rooms -

When we moved into Lordship Farm we found one of these dollies, exactly the same as this, and DD2 now keeps it in her ownstairs loo with toilet rolls on the handle!

I have to say that English Heritage have done a first class job with the films being shown on the walls, here showing a laundrymaid doing the ironing.  Life must have been so hard for those girls, up to their elbows in water with none of our easy washing powders and detergents. Then we saw the kitchens where they were recreating a meal from 1861, with a very stern cook directing the kitchen maids.  This reminded us that it ws time to go and have some lunch!

Then we attacked the house.  Very grand, and when it was built it was twice or three times the size it is now.  All the room stewards were very pleasant and happy to chat to us and we saw some portraits of George's Howard ancestors.......I think.      There is an enormouse collection of stuffed birds which made me feel a bit squeamish but it was amazing to get right up close to huge eagles with frighteningly sharp beaks.   But the little song bird were pathetic, I thought.  This is looking down into the main hall - I don't think I should have taken it but I truly did not see a sign saying no photography. 

This was a stable boy grooming Smiler, one of the good tempered horses they keep there and he was letting some of the children help him .    The 16th century stable block is delightful.    We walked round the kichen garden and into the glasshouses where we saw this lovely display of geraniums (or should I say pelargoniums)

Then we had a pot of tea and one piece of coffee cake between us (saving ourselves for dinner) and as we left for home the field behind the house was already packed with the picknicking audience for tonight's Prom in the Park.   It would have been nice to stay but it was getting very overcast so I think they were in for a chilly evening.   But we had a very pleasant Derby and Joan day out.

China town

                                      After the launch of the Carlini wine  on Saturday I had PILES of china to put away. I kept putting it off, on Sunday I was washing glasses and too tired, on Tuesday I went to Saffron Walden, on Wednesday it was the U3A leaders lunch and today I just HAD to knuckle down.  George said I have far too much china and should throw half of it away!   He is sort of right, of course, but what happens when you have 30 people to feed?    As you can see, this cupboard is already full and I  still had all that to pack away.....

But I did it!   Well, almost, just a few things on the floor which I really cannot squeeze in.  What to do?  Where did it all come from?  Many years ago we bought a mediaeval farmhouse with ALL the contents which included lots of china, much of it quite old. There were two big dressers in the farm which were loaded with plates. I had a dinner and tea service as a wedding present - 18 of everything (and I seldom break things) and then I had all my mother's Golden Wedding china (a real pain because I cannot put it in the dishwasher)!  And of course, here and there along the way I have bought the odd plate or bowl in foreign parts. But I have to  confess it IS a bit excessive.  I  must have about 36 ramekin dishes,  about 72 dinner plates, 60 small coffee cups  etc, etc - I am not boasting, I am asking for sympathy!  They are all part of my life and it would feel like throwing old friends away dispose of them. Heaven knows what I shall do if we have to downsize again!   Hanging on the door, by the way, are bags with Halloween witches, Easter bunnies and so on.  I want George to put narrow shelves on the door but he says that is just encouraging me......

Now if that isn't a masterpiece of packing it all in, I don't know what is. And what about the crochet edging then, Gina?   Echoes of your crochet bunting!  I have done enough for two shelves and  there are five altogether, but it is a good travelling-in-the-car task.   After all that hard work I found half an hour to take Gina up on her drawing challenge.   I hunted for the Indian Ink which had gone solid in the bottom of the bottle, it is so long since it was used!  I put some water in but unsurprisingly it was not very potent.   I found a pigeon feather in the garden and picked a hydrangea head and had a go,  then I found an old felt tip pen which the grandchildren used to use and tried again, that was much easier to use.

Then I put on a bit of colour and it looked better......... 

Thak you, Gina, I enjoyed that - it was a good exercise and much more fun than packing plates away!