Abundance in August

There is a moment in August when the crops come at you faster than you can pick them.  Remember this in December when all is bare and still.  I had a bit of an "Oh my God" moment, in the midst of almost too much plenty,  when I discovered that the beans I had thought were still leaf and no beans weren't that at all.  I lifted the sprawling leaves thinkingthat maybe they needed tying up and there they were in their tens and twenties and more, another vegetable to be eaten or frozen or preserved.  Don't fret and fume.  Half the world is desperate for what we have.

The plum tree is only in its fourth year but is weighed down with fruit that its slender branches can barely hold.  It is a Victoria, the plums sweet and tart at the same time.  Funnily enough they are sweeter eaten raw than when cooked.  The plum crumble (don't you just love those words together?) which I made yesterday was delicious but nothing like as sweet as a single plum in your mouth.

This is a Shropshire damson.  Yes I know we don't live in Shropshire but it is not far away so practically local.  Damsons grow in the hedges around here.  Damson jam vies with blackcurrant for the title of my favourite but does have the disadvantage of all those stones.  You just have to accept that the time spent at the stove over the simmering preserving pan with the slotted spoon fishing for yet another stone, is the price you pay for the sweet tart darkness of damson jam, an adult pleasure, of a kind.

And apples, there are always apples: apple chutney and apple jelly and apple cake and apple pie.

And more apples here too, weighing the old trees down.  I am bringing the pears inside to ripen.  Their lives are shorter and sweeter.  A perfectly ripened pear, if only you can catch its moment, melts upon the tongue and runs down the chin.  Just now they sit in the bowl on the kitchen table, stubbornly, coldly hard.  Supermarkets trick you with their bags of pears.  They are as much like a pear as a plastic flower is like a rose.

And a wall full of runner beans, solid enough to keep out marauders.  Yesterday I swear there were no beans.  Today they are thickening fast.  Get them just now when they are slender and sweet and they are delicious.  Turn your back and they grow a foot long and can fell a man if you are short of a truncheon.

Did I mention raspberries?  I am still not sure it is possible to have too many raspberries even though I am bringing them in by the bucketload.  We have had our daughters staying for a few days, one with a small child and one with a large puppy.  Puppy and child adored cruising the raspberries and I do too.  I pick them and think I will make jam and somehow what is left in the colander is never quite enough. 

Flowers too.

This is a salvia, Blue Angel, grown from seed by Karen at An Artist's Garden, and singing against the valerian.  Fortunately, it does not need to be eaten, preserved or frozen.

The best and worst of country living

You might think that living in rural Wales would have cured me of an addiction to glossy magazines of the Country Living variety but you would be wrong.  I am still a sucker for articles about artist and craftsperson Fionella who lives in her pink walled cottage in Suffolk with her daughter Saskia, her beautiful Irish wolfhound, Ossian,  or mischievous Jack Russell, Tyke.  The cottage has invariably been done up on a shoestring and has white painted floorboards, vintage textiles and Fionella's own art work on the walls.  Light streams into a country kitchen with a jug of wildflowers on the scrubbed wooden table.  The garden will always have a lot of lavender, roses and lady's mantle.  There will be a wrought iron table and chairs under the apple tree, the chairs with soft floral cushions and the table, covered with a hand embroidered cloth,  holding a jug of home made lemonade.  You will always wonder why you aren't living her life.  I have been reading this magazine since 1990 so I am clearly not about to kick the habit now.  Six years after the big move from the city though, I can give you the best and worst of country life as I suspect even Fionella experiences it, if only she would say!

Here is the best: it is beautiful, quite unbelievably so very often, and I live here all the time.  I can see it in all seasons, in all weathers, with and without company.

I can feel the seasons: hard and cold winter, warm and soft autumn, summer, baking in the sun or shivering in gusts of rain and my favourite, spring, surging with excitement and light.

It makes your heart soar.

And here are the worst things:  mud.  In winter mud is everywhere, on your boots, on your car, in your house, on your kitchen floor, on the hems of your smart trousers when you look down, even though you wore your wellies to drive to your meeting and only changed out of them in the car.  I haven't any mud pictures as I am always too busy wading in it to carry my camera.

Narrowness: a narrowness of choice in shops and company.  Capers? You have to be joking.  Multicultural communities? Well there is English and Welsh I suppose.

It can be lonely, especially in winter when life turns inwards and you might not see your neighbours for weeks if you live high and out and away.  It can turn you in on yourself without the distractions of lights and shops and cinemas and theatres and restaurants.  You need to work at life up here.  Everything is harder, both physically and in a way mentally.  You need to plan, to plan your shopping on a week to week basis, to plan your social life and even to plan your winter so that it does indeed hold company and variety and your life doesn't shrink to rain on the windows and a cold dash to the logstore.

Funny, writing this has made me understand why there is no representation of mud and narrowness, loneliness and hard work in articles about Fionella's life.  They don't photograph, these things.  Even after all this time up here I can't show you pictures of what they look like.

Yet I wouldn't change this life for the world.   But if you are thinking about a big move to the country, try and look at your pink walled cottage in winter, when the roses are bare sticks and the lady's mantle is under the brown ground.  Town and city life irons out many of the highs and lows of living.  Real country living is wetter, dirtier, colder, more beautiful and more satisfying than any photos can tell you.  So says Fionella, when the camera has gone.

Update from the hill

Life is full up on the hill at the moment. The kitchen is still in progress.

Here is Ian taking out the sink and then the new ceiling in all its newly plastered glory. Still to be done? Don't ask. It will happen, eventually.

The garden is throwing stuff at us faster than we can eat it: cavolo nero, onions, chard, beetroot, potatoes, raspberries, blueberries, beans, salad stuff. And the cutting garden too is full: full of dark purple sweet peas, orange marigolds, orange and gold cosmos, black cornflowers and White nicotiana. There are jugs all over the house but I still can't keep up.

And of course there are the projects which have totally stalled. The quilt which hasn't moved on since last November is lying in a box upstairs. At some point it will start whimpering reproachfully when I go by but just now it is dozing quietly. The socks which I dropped a stitch on in January have already got to that reproachful stage. Every time I go past my knitting bag they sigh heavily. They will just have to wait. It is gardening season, never mind sorting out the kitchen season. Besides I still haven't worked out what I am going to do to sort the hole out. I had a look at it on one rainy day and feel pretty sure I am just going to have to take the sock back, quite a long way, having turned the heel and everything. It may be that if I leave it long enough I will not mind so much.

And then there are the new eggs sitting in the incubator, barnevelders and scots dumpies (don't you just love the names). There is so little going on at home it is obviously the ideal time to start a new project. They will be lovely though. I will find some photos.

And this blog counts as my first ever written on the new iPad, another rather glorious soaker up of time!

I might just be getting the hang of it.

July end of month view

With very few words. July end of month is part of the series hosted by Helen at patientgardener