A couple of days off

This week we had a couple of stolen days, no jobs, no working away at the relentless list, just a couple of days for going out and behaving as if we were on holiday. Last year we managed a whole week, with two nights away and a detailed programme. This year somehow we weren't quite so organised and ended up with Tuesday to Thursday, with a visit to some friends on Wednesday at The Blackden Trust in the middle. Blackden is a magic place which I have blogged about before. If you get the chance, go and see.

On Tuesday we started with a walk, a local one, the kind of thing we always think we will do but somehow never happens because there is weeding to be done and grass to cut, logs to chop and jobs to do. It took us about four hours, down the hill and back up to Caerwys, over to Babell and then across to Ysceifiog and down and up to home again. There were trees full of damsons, leaving me torn between my urge to forage and get out there for more jam making sessions and the knowledge that as soon as my visitors have gone I need to start on our own produce to begin to make inroads on the seasonal glut.

Damsons are lovely though, tart and sweet together, their skins a luminous black with a purple sheen. They remind me of my grandmother whose favourite fruit they were. I used to help her with damson jam, standing on a stool with a slotted spoon, fishing out the stones as they rose to the surface. I expect someone would do a risk assessment now and find this unacceptable for a seven year old but it was how I learnt to do so many things, standing by my mother or grandmothers, stirring, scraping, trying and failing to rub butter into flour for pastry, getting cross as my Grandma did it yet again in a trice and then suddenly finding at about eleven that I could do it. "Sitting by Nelly" they used to call it in the cotton mills, learning by watching someone who already has the skill.

On Tuesday night we went for a meal and a night at The Manorhaus in Ruthin. Great food, not cheap but a wonderful place for a celebration meal or, like us, just to spoil yourself. The rooms are beautifully furnished using works by local artists. The only other Arthaus hotel I have ever stayed in was in Berlin, all chic modernism and fabulous breakfasts. It seems slightly surprising to find such a place in an ancient little town in North Wales but its local focus makes sense of it. They also have a very nice bar! This is the view out over the town to the Clwydian hills.

In the morning we wandered around Ruthin, failing to get into Nant Clwyd Y Dre, probably my favourite old house ever, as it opens only on Friday to Sunday. It is Wales's oldest timbered townhouse and has been lived in for generations. It was rescued from falling into ruin by Denbighshire County Council and is now a perfect small manor house, the kind you can see yourself living in. From its fifteenth century heart to the Georgian additions with the light streaming in from the sunny garden, it is just a gem.

We also went to Ruthin Craft Centre, wandered the exhibitions, resisted the lure of the cafe and drove slowly home. On the way to Blackden we went to Waterstones in Chester to spend a sizeable book token. I now have no excuse for failure to propagate anything in my garden as I am the owner of a propagating bible. If everything takes I shall have to start a small nursery.

And yesterday was motorbike day. I have not ridden pillion on Ian's bike since we came to live here, nearly four years ago. It's not that I don't like, just another thing that is never on top of the list of things to do. He tends to use his bike to commute to Manchester in the summer which of necessity is something we don't share. So we planned a day of gentle touring, up to Bala, and across a steep and narrow pass to Lake Vyrnwy for lunch. I had forgotten how good a view you get from a bike and how in touch you feel with the countryside, the wind in your face, cows and horses looking over the hedge at you in surprise. There was the inevitable moment when the route took us up a lane so narrow and unused there was grass in the middle. Had there been a bike up there before? Maybe not.

The country of the Berwen hills is empty, astonishingly so. Here and there small stone farms sit in their protecting embrace of trees. Every now and then a tractor comes towards you, pulling a trailer load of sheep, but mostly it is just the high narrow roads, the open views, the hawthorn hedges and the huge oak trees and you. Buzzards wheel high above, a flock of crows starts from a field full of stubble, a shrew darts out in front of you. Coming down into Llangollen feels like hitting the city, although it is not much bigger than our local village.

I was tired last night, not used to hanging on I suppose, and slept deeply in my own bed. Today we are getting ready for visitors for the weekend, bread has been made and cakes and beds. Sweetpeas are picked, a crumble is on its way. Time to whizz out for some shopping.

The pleasure of a glut

Every grower of vegetables will know about gluts. One moment you are anxiously waiting for your new crop, watching every day to see if you can pick something, cherishing your tiny carrots, your courgette flowers, your nascent beans, and bringing them to the table with butter and due ceremony. The next you are staring at vast piles of cucumber, yet more courgettes, tomatoes by the bucketload, beans which turn from tasty and tender tiddlers to huge coarse monsters overnight.

I can see it can be overwhelming to have baskets of produce coming into the kitchen which you can scarcely use before the replacement basket is sitting accusingly on the worktop, but I love a good glut. Principally this is because I love chutneys and preserves and the whole process of producing shelves of shining jars which will keep you company through the winter.

Just now I am planning a week of preserving (not this week, we are having our strictly no jobs, go out, have fun, pretend you are on holiday week but next week). There are spiced pickled runner beans to be made, and pickled green beans with garlic, both guaranteed to convert the most determined bean hater. There is a courgette chutney, sweet and spicy, and soon there will be a marrow and fresh ginger jam for the courgettes which got away while my back was turned attending to beans. We don't have apples yet, maybe another week or so, but we do have a huge onion crop and we also have cucumbers growing practically as you watch them in the greenhouse. For those I am going to make Thane Prince's Bread and Butter Pickle from her lovely Jams and Chutneys book.

I just need to get out to the shop for malt and cider vinegars and brown sugar and to have a few sweet, sharp and spicy hours in the kitchen.

some things that make me smile

Things that make me smile:
Chickens, the one left behind suddenly realising and running after the others like a cartoon chicken, suddenly panic stricken, legs akimbo, all flap and silliness. Cockerels shouting at each other, calling and fussing, gathering their girls to them for a particularly tasty morsel. Hens in a dust bath, settling, fluffing their wings, scratching and dousing themselves in dust as if it were water.

My grandson, serious, silly, three years old, all blond hair and blue eyes. We are driving. A voice comes from the back.
"Grandma."
"Yes, love."
"I'm beautiful."
"Are you, love? That's nice." What is going on here, a very young narcissist?
"Yes, and my mummy is very beautiful."
"Well you're a very lucky boy."

My father in law, telling me yet again, both amused and indignant, at his horror on discovering that the chocolate chip ice cream he had bought was green. "Green! I thought it was off!" He ate it though, not easily put off, my father in law. He will however never accept that calling something mint and chocolate chip ice cream is any excuse for making it green. He is probably right, presumably the green is some hideous chemical cocktail, but it is his indignation that tickles me. It is a real affront.

My father, telling me in all seriousness that his dippy dog is perfectly behaved. He was a firm disciplinarian with the pets of our childhood but now in his seventies he is prepared to forgive this one anything.

Sinking my nose into a great jug of sweet peas. These are from some Sarah Raven seeds sent to me by a blogging friend who I have not yet met but hope to soon. The flowers are dark, deep purples, dark blues, velvety burgundies, not the largest of blooms but strongly and sweetly scented. They sit on the deep windowsill of the sitting room wafting their scent as I pass.

The sound of the cork coming out of a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

The sound of my husband's car on the gravel, coming home.

Bodnant Gardens and The National Eisteddfod

On Wednesday I went to Bodnant Garden for a guided walk with the Head Gardener. Fifteen or so of us wandered round while he showed us what they were doing, talked about particular problems, such as sudden oak death, and their potential solutions and showed us both the public and some of the private areas of the garden.


It is one of my absolute favourite places. The house is still lived in by the family who developed the garden and gave it to the National Trust. They are still deeply involved in its development and care. The house sits above a series of wide terraces. Huge trees frame views across to the mountains. The terraces are formal: a rose garden, full of sweet smelling David Austin roses first.

Hmm, where is the blackspot which has taken over all of mine except the tough Rugosas? I have a love hate relationship with roses. In winter and spring when they are all sticks and thorns I think they are ugly and boring. Then they overwhelm me with blossom and scent and I fall in love again. Up here on the hill is not a good home for roses other than those which are truly tough and hardy so I have restricted myself in buying new ones to rugosas, pink Roseraie de L'Hay and white Blanc Double de Coubert. Being at Bodnant is making me want to try with some David Austin roses. I wonder if that would just be cruel?

The terraces continue down, past beds planted simply this year with Cosmos Purity. So simple, so easy it even grows for me but it is lovely.

You walk on past formal ponds, the first filled with water lillies and flanked by ancient cypress trees, older than the garden, the second a long narrow pool which was apparently used as a practice place by the first man to swim the English Channel.

And after the terraces, the garden springs its second self on you: it becomes wilder, full of trees and winding paths and rushing water.

It has a huge collection of champion trees. I love that term and can hear my Lancastrian grandfather every time someone uses it. "Ee luv, that's champion" was the stock response on being shown a drawing from school (never good, not one of my talents) or a painstakingly written story. I know, I know, champion trees are not champion in the Lancashire sense, but they could be. Astonishingly this massive and beautiful tree is not one. To earn the title as horticulturalists use it a tree must be the biggest in the country but this one is champion in my grandfather's sense so that will do for me.

I have lost count of the times I have been to Bodnant now and every time I go I see things I have not seen before and marvel at how it balances its two selves. In my no doubt biased view it is one of the great gardens of the world.

And the next day a friend from Welsh class and I went to the National Eisteddfod, held this year at Bala. The sun shone, we wandered about occasionally being able to pick up a single Welsh word in a rush of the incomprehensible. I have got to a very frustrating stage with Welsh where one or two words in a sentence jump out and mean something in a sea of noise. So I know that the woman on the podium is talking about a competition but haven't the faintest idea what she is saying about it. It involves a mountain and an area and somewhere in there is a duck. Will I ever get there with this beautiful, difficult language? Dw i ddim yn gwybod: I do not know.

There is competition in the learners' tent as well as the heavy stuff in the Maes, the huge purple tent where real singers and poets and bards compete for fame and glory. We are a choir of 48 learners, all from Clwyd, sadly unrehearsed and cheerfully hopeless, but somehow Eirean, our Welsh language organiser, all smiles and patience and inexhaustible energy, conjures up a harp and a harpist and someone to drum and we rehearse outside while the other choirs are competing. We go on last. "Sing, smile!" Eirean urges and we are away, belting out our song in Welsh to the tune of "Down by the river side". The judges are smiling and tapping their feet in time with the music and it is great, we are all borne along on a tide of sound and rhythm. We come out breathless and laughing.

There is adjudication. Even learners' competitions are taken seriously at the Eisteddfod. We wait, adrenalin subsiding, hot and tired and ready for home. To everyone's amazement, including I suspect Eirean's, we are third out of the ten competing choirs.

Fabulous time, fabulous day.

Seven words

Little Brown Dog (writer of one of the best blogs in the world) has tagged me to identify seven words which describe me. Mmm. Tricky. I thought of ringing my daughter and asking her advice as described by Fennie (another writer of great blogs) but that seemed a bit too copy cat. So here goes:



Sociable

I like company. I like talk and laughter and people round the table with a glass of wine. I can talk to anyone about pretty much anything and love meeting new people and going to new places. I love jokes and funny stories and have had to train myself not to be the last to leave. I always assume that everyone I meet is a potential friend. However in order to be sociable I have to have large tracts of time when I am



Solitary

I like being by myself and sometimes if I have had uninterrupted company for too long I find myself needing to run away and hide in a cupboard. I am quite happy to have days in a row where I don't see anyone and talk to no-one but the cats and the chickens. Too much company makes me harrassed and irritable. Too little makes me shut down and become grumpy and grunty.



Optimistic

I tend to think the best of everyone until they do something to make me think otherwise. I think things will turn out fine even when they seem to be a mess. I can usually find something to be cheerful about when things are going wrong. I must be a right pain to live with, always skipping about looking for the silver lining.



Pessimistic

I have a wildly overactive imagination and can think myself into a disaster scenario at the drop of a hat. If Ian is half an hour late home when he is riding his motorbike I have respected his wishes for a non-religious funeral, tried my hand at running a bed and breakfast and moved to Devon to be nearer my ageing parents by the time he comes in through the door. So vivid has this been that while delighted to see him again sometimes I am almost surprised.



Rational

I like analysis. I like thinking my way through things and I can see a flaw in someone's argument at thirty paces, even, sadly, my own. I hate sentimentality and resent it when someone tries to manipulate my emotions. I am likely to be the person who doesn't cry at a sad film and who sits on the sidelines during any national outpouring of feeling being sceptical.



Kind

I had the best teacher as my mother is one of the kindest people I know. There is nothing more important than treating others with the kindness you would hope to meet. I think I am kind. I know I place kindness above other things which I greatly value such as intelligence.



Awkward

I will do anything for you and happily put your interests before my own if I like you and want you to be happy. However I absolutely hate to be told what to do or what to think and if you try to make me do something I won't play.

I think so many people have been tagged to do this now that I won't pass this on to another seven people but if you haven't done it and would like to please consider yourself tagged. I would love to see the response from laurie at three dog blog, karen at an artist's garden and paula at locks park farm but only if you fancy doing it.