Drying out

I have spent the last few days engaging in all manner of old-fashioned housewifely activities.  By that, I don't mean spending three days boiling water, shaving soap flakes, scrubbing and mangling linen sheets, or having to walk 5 miles to the shop just to get some sugar. 

No, I have been dicking about with roses.  I'm turning into some sort of delusional Marie Antoinette type, I think. 

Our garden looks gorgeous at the moment; all the roses are in full bloom.  I have spent quite a lot of time and effort over the last 10 years getting some traditional scented varieties to grow out there, and it has paid off.  Rather than simply admiring the roses outside, or cutting a few for a little vase in the house, I have been harvesting them.

Yeah.  Harvesting. Like a farmer.  Hence my Marie Antoinette delusion.

I am going to dry them all out and make delicious smelling pot-pourri and shizzle. 

I started with the dark red roses, which have almost black buds and smell amazing.

Then I got a bit carried away and added some Rosa Mundi stripey ones and pale pink Chaucers.

Then some yellow and pink ones.  I have no clue what they are called. 

Some of them have already dried out, and I am keeping them in a dish till the others are ready too.

The others are shrivelling up satisfactorily, and ought to be ready in a couple of days.

In my head, I am an Eighteenth Century lady of leisure, in a huge country house.  But with a washing machine.

To keep up my bucolic dream, I made some bread the other day.  I had a go making a ciabatta, rather ruining the traditional English country house dream by adding Italian trendiness.

It was shite.  Look.

That's a teaspoon - yes, a TEA spoon next to it for scale.  Laughable.

So yesterday, in an attempt to revive my flagging bread making reputation, I made some by hand, not in the machine.  It turned out alright.

Mmmmm, bread.

Here's a porn-style close up for you to enjoy.

Fwoar...look at the flour on that.