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.

Pigs etcetera

I think I might go back to work for a rest.

I know that's a cliche, but hey, I've been too busy to come up with anything original.

Last week was a whirl - yes a whirl - of gaiety. 

Tuesday was Mottisfont Day.  It's a big annual day out for me and my lovely Mum.  We go to look at the garden there, which includes the National Rose Collection, and is just beautiful. 

The house is rather splendid too.  Look:

I am pleased with the brooding sky in this photo.  The whole day was like this, sunny and warm, with "end of the world" weather potential. 

The gardens are just fab.  Go.  Even if you live in Texas or something, it'd be worth the trip, honest.  And there's a tea shop and everything, so you know, not a wasted journey.

They've put a fence round the spring now, so you can't fall in unless you try really hard. 

Unfortunately I am an idiot, and failed to check the battery in my camera, so these last few pictures were taken on my phone.  Sorry.

More impressively dark skies on that one. 

Mum and I took shelter in that little tiled hut thingy in the corner, waiting for the downpour. It never came.  But if it had, we'd have been dry.  Take that, weather.

Anyhoo, look.  Pretty.

Later that same week, Middle Sis and family came to visit for a few days.  We had a barbecue, and ended up sitting out in the garden with the fire lit till really quite late*.  Party animals that we are.

Being the evil thief that I am, I have nicked one of her photos for my blog.  Mwahahahahaaaaaaa.

Those are my new solar-powered garden lanterns.  Marvellous.

The highlight of the week, though, was the Bath and West Show.  It's not as brilliant as the Frome Cheese Show. To be fair, how could it be?  It doesn't have the same depth of character, the same terse notes left by the judges, and the same dazzling arrays of prize silage and unfeasible leeks, but it does have pigs.  Lots and lots of pigs.

Big ones.

Small ones.

Sleepy ones with a bucket on their head.

And my personal favourite, hugely tolerant ones which were being used to demonstrate "pig handling" by very young children. I did take some pictures, but won't post them on here, what with them being of other peoples' children and all. 

Believe me, a four-year-old in a teeny white coat, whacking a huge pig with a stick to make it walk in a straight line is a sight you don't easily forget. 

Other attractions included competitive sheep shearers.  Middle Sis and I watched them for a fair while, impressed by their skill and dexterity.  Nothing to do with the muscles and vests.  No no no. 

The sheep all looked faintly bored, the ones backstage jostling and peeking over the barricade, watching their mates being shorn.  Little did they know it was their turn next.

"Haha, your new haircut makes you look like a dick, Kevin..."

The Army were there, doing lots of fun stuff, including challenging people to run about in the hot sun carrying heavy weights.  There was a queue for this.  Really.

There was a giant mounted knight made from recycled rubbish.  I liked him a lot.

And there was this.  We wantssssss it, my precious.

It's got a matching bag to put your shotgun in!  How great is that?  Perfect for nipping to the shops.  The GUN shops. 

Saturday night we went to a party for a neighbour's birthday, which was pleasant - marquees and tables in their riverside garden, with food and music and wine and chatting.  Most convivial.   I have garden envy now, though.  I want river frontage and fishing rights.

Sunday I was woken up by the most godawful thunder and heavy rain I can remember, which enlivened the morning.  Torrential rain all day, making up for all these past weeks of dry.  Dryth?  Drought?  No rain, anyway. 

Today has been lovely, not least because I didn't get up at 5:50 and then struggle in from work, knackered,  at 8pm.  I could get used to this. 




*After 10pm.  We're getting old.

Bee do bee do bee do

I am sitting here, trying to type as best I can with one and a half hands.  No, we haven't had another Lawnmower Incident, in case you're worrying.  Nothing so exciting. 

For a while now I have noticed a weird tiny little lump on the palm of my left hand, almost exactly in the middle.  Last night, I realised it had got a bit bigger, and so of course, I started dicking about with it.  I rubbed it, and it moved around as if there was something stuck under the skin. 

How interesting*. 

A bit more dicking around, and I realised that there was a little lump of something under the skin.  I fiddled with it a bit.

Well, what would you have done? 

I kept playing with it till I had managed to squeeze the lump right out.  It was hard, like a bit of chalk, or a teeny bit of gravel or something.  Very weird.

Once the initial excitement of getting a foreign body out of my hand (right out from under my SKIN!  Ew!) had passed, I inspected the damage.  There's a surprisingly large hole there now, which is bloody sore.  As the evening wore on, it got more and more painful, till I ended up slathering it in antiseptic and sticking a plaster over it.  Now it just looks absurd.  A plaster right across the palm of your hand makes you look like some clumsy galoot who has had a run-in with a particularly tough ketchup bottle.  It's really not impressive, and it feels weird.

This morning, as part of the Spring Madness that is currently gripping the WithaY household**, we went out to the local garden centre and bought a load of plants.  We've got some thyme planted in the flowerbed in front of the house, so it will smell nice as we walk past, and whenever the postman tramples on it.  We planted some Woodruff under the huge hedge out the front, which (apparently) will brighten up a gloomy corner.  We'll see.

We planted two blackcurrant bushes in the fruit bed out the back.  I have high hopes.  The raspberry canes have started to show some green shoots, and the redcurrant bushes have lots of buds.  There might be jam in the summer.

There are now two new climbing roses against the fence at the side of the house, but I am not very confident about them as the soil there is terrible***.  I chucked in a load of compost from a bag, but if they aren't happy then we will have to move them. 

More roses have been planted in the front garden; two ramblers at the side of the drive in an attempt to repress the weeds, and two taller bushy ones in the bed the other side of the drive to add some height and colour.  Fingers crossed that they don't die.

We chose varieties that have old-fashioned open flowers to allow bees to get in and feed.  Apparently the more modern hybrid tea roses are not very bee-friendly.  Speaking of bees, we attempted some bee rescue yesterday.  As we sat on the bench out the front, surrounded by all the flowers showcased in the last blog post, yeah you remember, we spotted a bumble bee.  He didn't look very well. 

He sat sadly on a leaf on the bay tree, so Mr WithaY carefully picked him up and put him on the heather, in case he was hungry.  Nothing.  He just hunched up, looking wretched.

Mr WithaY decided that he needed to make up some sugar and water solution to feed the bee, in case it was too tired to find food in the flowers.

It wasn't very interested, so we left it on the heather, and hopefully it will recover.

Other gardening news:  The potatoes we planted have yet to make an appearance.  Bloody things.

My camellia's have flowered, although they are a bit feeble.  The one at my lovely Mum's house is about 8 feet tall and laden with huge flowers.  Mine do not look well by comparison.

Please admire the delightful pipework on the wall behind it.  All adds to the charm and ambience.  We've got shitloads of charm round here. 

*By which I mean "slightly gross and freaky" of course.

**Mr WithaY is spring-cleaning his study as I type.  That time of year again already. 

***I dug a hole in three different spots, each time hitting fucking hardcore or paving slabs about 4 inches down.  Lord knows what the previous occupants had buried under there.  Some kind of Doomsday bunker/fallout shelter possibly. 

Cheese fiasco

Can't believe it's been so long since my last post. Sorry, if you were impatiently checking back on an hourly basis for the next thrilling update, and all that. I have no real reason for this slackerliness, other than a dull and tiresome lack of inspiration. Some days it doesn't stop me and I cheerfully witter on about anything that happens to scamper through my brain, but for some reason that facility deserted me.

Until now, obviously.

Maybe it's all the gravitas and responsibility of my new job starting to congeal in my soul. Maybe in 6 months time I will have grown my own pinstripe carapace and be unable to find other people falling down holes funny any more.

I hope not.

So. The big disappointment of the weekend was the Frome Cheese Show. We've had it in the WithaY diary for months, planning our annual Big Day Out to admire the animals, vegetables and Crafts. Oh, the Crafts. I had new batteries in the camera and everything.

Following a slightly more cider-centric night at the pub on Friday than we had planned, we were up a bit late, and didn't set off for the Show till about 11am. Still, it was a nice day, and we headed off cheerfully in Mr WithaY's Landrover, reasoning that it wasn't far to go, and it was likely to be a bit muddy. All went well.

Until, that is, we got onto the main road to Frome, which was nose to tail with almost stationary traffic. We inched along till we got to the next junction, and the long straight road towards the showground was nose to tail as far as the eye could see.

We looked at the queue, then at each other, and made a team decision to bale out, do a U turn and head for the hills. Driving back the way we had just come, we could see the traffic backing up for bloody miles. Nightmare.

Once home, as were were already in our "Walking in the Mud" clothes we did a couple of hours of gardening, cutting back about a hundredweight of lavendar. We were knackered but very relaxed by the time we'd finished.

The mole's still out there. We think we've seen the last of him, then hey presto, bloody miles of tunnels and molehills appear. It's all most dispiriting.

It may be coincidence, but all the roses are doing really well for the first time all year. I think they might enjoy having their roots disturbed. Hey, who wouldn't.

Still waiting for the glorious Village Fete prize, by the way. *sigh*

Roses

Been to Mottisfont Abbey today, National Trust owned home of the English Old Rose Collection. It was gorgeous. Bloody huge amounts of driving though - 250 miles plus due to complex family logistics.

If you've never been there, go. It's beautiful. There are acres of grounds with a spring, which is unbelievably cold, a river full of enormous brown trout, a circle of (I think) beech trees, an ice house, the Abbey itself, and of course the walled garden full of roses.

And the cafe sells rose petal ice cream. Mmmmm.

Mum and I rode up to the garden in a little electric cart thingy. Mr WithaY elected to walk, more from the shame of being seen on the back of a tiny milk float than any real excess of energy I suspect. It was great because it meant Mum wasn't tired out by the time we got there, and really enjoyed the flowers. Plus we got to ride a tiny milk float. Like a theme park for very old people.

On the way there our trip up the M27 was enlivened by the sound of something huge and hard whacking the front of the car. A stone, we believe. And now there's what looks like a bullet hole in the windscreen and a long creeping crack below it. So I have to ring the insurance people tomorrow and pay £50 excess to get it fixed.

Arse.

Back to work tomorrow after a week and a bit on holiday. Not looking forward to an early start, but I hope to get a guitar lesson organised if I can which will make the day more bearable. Better text my lovely teacher tonight and find out if he's free.

Driving along, seeing all the brilliant white, rain washed sheep reminded me of something one of my Scots mates said, years ago, after he'd been to the South of England for the first time. He commented on how fat, clean and healthy all the animals in the fields looked as he drove further and further South, remarking "I expect the farmers put all the best looking ones near the roads."

I love that idea, and also the logical extension of that, which is that there are fields full of hideous, scrawny, filthy, miserable Dorian Grey animals hidden away from the roads, concealing the farmers' shame.

Discoveries

Well, my car is fine again. When I got to work yesterday morning the central locking worked. I locked and unlocked the car several times to make sure, and yes, it was fine. Current theory behind the whole "locks going on and off while driving for no reason" phenomenon involves water getting into the electrics and causing mayhem. The nice chap at the garage was very understanding when I rang to cancel my appointment with him and the "fitter" who he'd arranged to come over to sort it out for me.

Mr WithaY is gloating. He has a long-held theory that washing cars is (a) pointless, (b) bad for the environment (all that water!) and now (c) fucks up the electrics.

Cuh.

Work is very busy at the moment. We have a huge deadline approaching, but once that's over I am off on holiday for a week with my lovely girlie mates. Can't wait. My shopping list so far consists of Champagne, chocolate and loo roll. Well, what else do we need? Crisps, maybe. And Tequila. Oh, and some apples. Healthy living. I might write a lifestyle book about it.

Sadly my gorgeous guitar teacher isn't coming over tonight. He has a cold too (not caught from me, mind) so I will have to practice on my own. He sent me a stern email telling me "no slacking". Heh.

Jim has disappeared off for a few days, I think he might be back for the weekend, but am not sure. The house feels a bit strange now, we'd got used to him being here. I want to get on and decorate the spare room once he moves out. It's all plastered and everything, just needs painting. And then that's the whole place redecorated. Hurrah. It's taken five and a half years but the place is unrecognisable. And that's a good thing. I don't think I'll ever forget the stench of the dark brown hessian wallpaper in the sitting room, impregnated with lord knows how many years of nicotine and filth. Gah. Everything was brown. Paint, walls, even the windows. Not now though.

I did a tiny, completely pathetic bit of gardening last night. Pulled up about 5 weeds, then Mr WithaY got home from work so we cooked supper and chatted instead. However, I will get the flower beds in the front garden weeded over the next few days. It looks very pretty from a distance, like a proper cottage garden, but it is a bit rank if you look at it closely. We have tons of borage in flower - if we make Pimms we'll be fine. And the roses look like they are about to burst into flower too, about a month early.

I am having huge problems with Second Life at the moment which is very annoying. I will defrag my laptop tonight and see if that helps, but I've had more and more problems with the game since Chrsimtas, and it's virtually unplayable now. I emailed the guys at Linden Lab who run the help system and have had a "thanks for your query" email back, but nothing else which is a bit crap. I am pining for my lovely on-line mates.