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.

Kneady

This week has been odd.

Monday I went up to London to the office, and that was fine, no problem. Saw the counsellor at lunchtime, which was helpful. The journeys to and from were fine, no major drama or incident, thankfully. I walked both ways to and from Waterloo, which felt like an achievement, and the weather was reasonable.

Fucking tourists though. Bastards. Why do they walk in long strung-out groups, all holding hands and blocking the pavement? It's like being a fish in the middle of a fleet of ring-netting fishermen.

On Tuesday morning I decided to work at home, as I wanted to make some important non-work-related calls that I didn't want the rest of the office overhearing. By lunchtime I had decided to cancel attempting to get any work done, and simply take the day as leave, then decided to take Wednesday as well, as there were a lot of things relating to the recent shitstorm from Hades to try and sort out.

Work, fortunately, have been, and continue to be, brilliantly supportive and understanding.

I think as a result of having to make all the phone calls, I had a bit of a delayed shock reaction, involving tears and vomiting (nice!) but thankfully once that passed I felt better.

Anyhoo, I decided to take the rest of the week off work, and try and get Hades shitstorm stuff sorted. Which I did, to some extent.

The cleaning team came back on Friday, and the house is starting to look really nice. I even did some more of the ironing, which felt like much less of a chore as the rest of the cleaning was already done.

Yesterday we spent a large chunk of the morning in the garden, before the heavens opened. Mr WithaY cut the front hedge, which looks much tidier now, and even managed to mow the lawns without lopping any appendages off. I pulled up an entire wheelie bin full of weeds from the front flower bed, which was hugely satisfying.

Mr WithaY also cut down the spiky bastard bush by the dog/log shed in the back garden, making the whole place look and feel much bigger. I want to plant some climbing roses somewhere in that area, but will have a think about how the place will look first. I don't want to rush into anything and then realise it was the wrong decision.

It's a shame the weather is so shite again today, I wanted to cut the back hedge too, but it's too wet and windy right now.

Might go and make some bread, I feel the need to knead.

Hot stuff

I had a pleasant surprise this morning when I weighed myself. Right up until the point where I remembered I'd had a nasty stomach upset for the best part of three days this week.

Still, I did the walk from Waterloo to Victoria on Thursday morning and it was lovely, especially as the weather had improved, and the sun was trying to shine.

In fact, at 0630 as I left the house to drive through the woods, up hill, down dale, under troll bridges and across Hobbiton, the sky was lighter in the East, and there were birds singing other than bloody owls for a change. So hurrah for that.

Mind you, when I left the office at almost six that night, it was snowing hard. Hah. However, by the time I got back to West Wiltshire it was clear, dry and much warmer. The remains of the snow shark are still in the garden, though.

Annoyingly, the local paper this week has a story about a much bigger snow shark in a local garden, but that was made by a whole team of people and it took them all day. Losers.

It also had a four page spread about The Snow, including a Snow Timeline. How useful is that, eh? I might cut it out and keep it so I can remember exactly how the Snow Chronology went, in years to come.

Other news: Today I made a Dundee cake, which looks quite nice. Also made a loaf in the breadmachine that looks like the bread Frankenstein. Not quite sure what happened, it is misshapen and wonky, but tastes fine. With Marmite, at least. And everything tastes fine with Marmite.

Bread

Forgot to say, I made bread again on Saturday. I am GOOD at bread, it seems. And it makes the best toast in the world, ever, which you then slather with butter. Mmmmm.

Also made vol au vents because I impulsively defrosted a packet of puff pastry that I excavated from the bottom of the freezer. They were less successful than the bread, but not bad. Not fit to feed to company, but Mr WithaY has been scarfing them back so they can't be all bad.

Might do a cake next. If I can be arsed.