First day of November

I'm going to try to post every day in November, how about that! ('try to', I'm told, is to set oneself up to fail).

I began this post with a rather Eeyore-ish, sic-transit, something-rotten-in-the-state-of-Blogland, I've-got-nothing-to-say-any-more, quasi-lament, but I wiped it and wrote (then corrected) the above line instead.

When I first started here, nine years ago now, I used to get up at six in the morning, come and sit in front of the computer and just write. Sometimes I took a bit longer over preparing special posts and editing photos and so on, but essentially it was a matter of regular practice. Things ebb and flow, come and go, of course, but perhaps there's still a value in setting a time and making a commitment; that I'll find something to say and to share by doing so, and if the Blogmuse has grown flabby, menopausal and sluggardly, eschewing flights of poetry and other raptures in favour of a comfy chair, knitting and endless repeats of Midsomer Murders, well it won't do any harm to make her take a bit more regular exercise, and maybe take the camera with her. Also, no excuses about the hassle of downloading and editing photos on the big computer, I shall just stick the SD card into this one and lift the odd picture straight from it, with only the minimal editing (cropping and a bit of instant polish) this machine enables. No 6 am starts though, but maybe 6 pm instead.

So, here we are at Toussaint, and you would think it summer, even now, at half past six in the evening, it feels more like June at midnight. A sudden recollection came to me this morning that I had let another birthday creep up without a card dispatched; I have been very hit-or-miss with them this year, but this is one I usually do manage. My apologetic e-mail brought a swift and cheerful reply, which spoke of moorland walks, brunches of scrambled eggs, Guy Fawkes Night fireworks at the local cricket club and pub meals, all of which induced a certain nostalgie de pays, in a nice way. I cleared my desk and undertook to finish a gift. A deckchair - already put away in the garage for the winter but easily retrieved - and knitting in the sun. What a bummer.

Even the a***hole (that's how we spell it in British English, with and 'ar') chasseurs were remarkably quiet most of the day, with just a few silly pooty noised on their little horns and a few bangs and barking dogs in the distance, presumably they had moslty been dragged off to the cemeteries to deposit chrysanthemums.

I was interrupted only by a late peacock butterfly, which landed and rested in the sun on the back of my hand, cleaned its front legs on its long curled tongue, and opened and closed its frayed wings while the breeze ruffled the soft, surprisingly long, brown fur on the back of its body, for at least five minutes. I decided the underside of its wings was really almost as beautiful as the colourful part, and would probably be my preferred choice for curtains, and offered it a lick of the butterscotch sweet Tom had just brought out to me (uxorious, see).  However, it declined, and only went on its way when I late blowfly alighted further up my arm and I made a reflex swat towards it.

I didn't have the camera then, and probably couldn't have photographed it if I had, but brought it out later and pointed it around a bit. But that will do for today.

Been away, come home

Which it's I, for all love, upon the taffrail,

and in the master's cabin of the Dutch East Indiaman Amsterdam*.

The Maritime Museum (het Scheepvaartmuseum) in Amsterdam was glorious, and one of the few places where I took many photos on our holiday, some of which I'll post later. Otherwise I didn't take so very many, but probably enough. The whole trip was such a wealth and a welter of experience and sensation, (even an Embarrassment of Riches perhaps) in so many ways: Amsterdam was lively and upbeat and friendly and beautiful and full of wonders and Bruges was exquisite and bijoux and beautiful and full of marvels, and everywhere there were all kinds of people to listen and talk to and watch and enjoy, it mostly seemed better simply to ride and soak than to try to capture and record. Tom took more, and I may pick over and pinch some of his later, and I may remember some stories to tell.

Now on our return, the swallows are still with us, and as a result of this, we have these, I've counted four so far, on the fennel and the Mexican orange (which is having a second flowering):

and while the sunflowers are coming to their end - I cut the last decent blooms to put in a bunch to thank the friends who took us to the railway station - the dead heads can stay, so we can still enjoy the goldfinches on them:

Unfortunately and less welcome on the nature notes front, we also returned to find that we now have these:

Hornets, finding ingress in some numbers into a weak point under the roof where the extension joins the main house. It's late in the year for them but evidently not too late. However, this fact did promote a friendly exchange with the lad next door, part of an unspecified family grouping who moved in unannounced just before we went away. We are rather used to our space and privacy and not having to anticipate arguments about the ill-defined parking space, so we were a bit grumpy about their arrival; I made an approach (in part to establish boundaries about the parking) and offered my name but received a somewhat reserved response and none of their names, and I instantly saw them as unfriendly, potentially troublesome, and this chap in particular as rather ferrety and feral looking. And we were slightly miffed that the house's owners, our former neighbours, hadn't given us any warning that they'd re-let it, which of course they aren't obliged to do but they always have done in the past.

I think we needed to get away and out into the world; too long behind your own walls, minding your own business and guarding your space can make you fearful and defensive, and inclined to see evil everywhere. In the light of shared concerns about the proliferation of frelons, the youngster was sympathetic and helpful, and went and found his i-phone to give me the name and number of his half-brother, who, he said, was in the business of pest control and lived locally. He's not weasle-like or surly, I thought, he's just thin and wan and shy, and very young. I asked his name and he told me it was Steve. That sounds English, I remarked, and he smiled rather sweetly. And their parking habits so far have been neat and considerate. So far so equable.

More to come about the trip.

* Read Desolation Island end to end in the course of the trip. I like to have the appropriate holiday reading matter for the location.

Ovipositing swallowtail, another reason to have fennel in the garden

Fennel, dill, aneth, fenouil... it's a little confusing. I've never tried growing vegetable/bulb fennel, I don't care for it all that much, even veggie lover as I am. The herb one we have is the bronze one, and I think, like the bulb, it's called fenouil in French. I've always tended to think it very similar to all intents and purposes to dill herb, which is called aneth here. But then I asked Polish Chick, I think it was, or maybe Joe, who was also devotee of dill if not a fan of fennel, whether I couldn't substitute fennel for dill in a recipe - it might have been gravlax or pickles - as I didn't have any of the latter, and I received an uncompromising no, dill was distinctly different in flavour from fennel! (None of this alliteration took place at the time, whomever the conversation was with.)

So I tried growing some dill, and the germination was rubbish but then some of the seeds did come up eventually, and I've carefully nurtured the plants, but now they've grown big I can't honestly smell, taste or even see, once the dill plants grew beyond the early feathery-leafed stage, much difference between the two, and I haven't got around to making either gravlax or pickles with them.

However, they are both attractive to a somewhat unusual range of insects. Greenbottle type flies, which aren't very pleasant really but I suppose they have their place in the scheme, and also these curious leggy wasps:

They are the most unassuming and gentle creatures, showing no inclination to sting or bother one at all; in fact looking at the photo perhaps they don't even have a sting or aren't even true wasps. I'll try to find out.

[Edit: they appear to be paper wasps, polistes dominula. Some dizzyingly detailed facts about them in this Wiki link; how do people know all this stuff?]

The other insects which are drawn to it, not to feed but to breed, are the swallowtails. Not always, some years we see them often, others not at all, when they simply flutter through they are so rapidly moving and elusive I can seldom photograph them, but on this occasion one set about laying its eggs, or attempting to, on the plants, and being thus preoccupied, I was able to capture it on camera, with a lot of zoom.

I've since looked for the eggs or caterpillars, but no sign. Other years we've had them on various other plants, mostly other umbelliferous ones like carrots or parsley, but also on some Mexican orange bushes where this butterfly was also prospecting, and I have even been known to take them off and overwinter them as chrysalids in a terrarium, with a small amount of success. Both as caterpillars and as butterflies, they are impressive creatures, I think, at least by the standards of this corner of northern Europe.

August collage

I have, as anyone who reads here and can remember, mixed feelings about August. 'The yellow Provençal August the English dream of', Iris Murdoch called it, and British school summer holidays being fairly short compared to much of the world, a great deal of hope and expectation has always been placed in what often felt like the disappointing scrag end of summer. This year both spring and summer have sometimes seemed sad and difficult, and I welcome the change in the season. We've had a man up on the roof to fix a potential source of weather worry for the winter, and are working on other areas of weatherproofing which will, we hope, make winter less of a source of trepidation, so autumn can bring it on, and I'll happily wave goodbye to August.

Yet it can be a rich, fruitful and colourful month, and I'm often surprised by my own appreciation of it. Here's some of it.

1. Bee on an umbel.
2. My red onion crop, grown from sets and not ever so large but really very good, sound and firm and shiny and very tasty. 
3. Maize crop, and those scrawny thistles which come in a very pretty blue.
4. Courgettes. I bought one plant only from the market rather than growing from seed this year, and that is enough really if one doesn't love them to distraction or want to fight the battle against marrowfication.
5. in amongst the bearded barley... I somehow missed photographing the wheat and barley harvest, with the straw in big lush heaps, then in big rolled bales studding the fields, and then the tractors beetling about with their wagon trailers gathering them up. We find we still enjoy the sight of this.
6. Landscape looking inland.
7. Another umbel, hogweed seed head I think; you're supposed to be able to use these seeds as a seasoning/flavouring, and when crushed they do have a unique spicy aroma, but I don't quite have the foraging nerve to mess with umbelliferous plants, when they're good they're very good, when they're bad they're toxic.
8. Tiger moth on flowering eucalyptus.
9. Blackberries. A good year for these, as it seems to be for most fruit. I've not gone picking yet, and may not do so, we don't eat huge amounts of jam and jelly, and I still have crème de mûre from last year - we don't drink huge amounts of kir either - but they are good to munch on in passing.
10. Knapweed, a very August thing. There are a lot of thistley things about at this time, I like their purples and blues.
11. Cob nuts, we bought these in fact, though there are a fair number in the hedges too, but not so big.
12. Pumpkin in flower and fruit. Again, I bought plants, a potimarron and a butternut, but they're very stingy and will probably yield no more than one fruit each. I really will plant more seeds next year. And blog more, and read more, and carry out many other good resolves.

July collage

1) The day we'd taken my sister back to the airport, that evening a hot air balloon, which in French delights in being called 'une montgolfière' passed over the house. These were a fairly common sight in the UK; our wedding coincided with the Bristol balloon festival, and the sky was full of the colourful, fanciful things all day.  Hereabouts one never sees them, this is the first I remember; our former neighbour told us that there's a man who owns one, the same man as is to be seen on summer evenings flying a tiny microlight craft, but their use is forbidden as they frighten the cattle. This one began to descend rapidly once over our hill top, and I was very tempted to jump in the car and chase and watch it come down, as I've done on summer evenings in the past: once in my childhood with my dad, when we followed one through Ashridge forest to an area of parkland, where dozens of other people had done the same thing and small children were racing around in their pyjamas, and another occasion when Tom's daughter, whom we were visiting at the time, her mother-in-law and I all drove off in sudden pursuit to the bewilderment of our assorted men- and child-folk. But the moment wasn't right this time, and I didn't do it.

2) Mirabelle plums in the hedges, the branches heavy laden.

3) Pink poppies.

4) Peas ripening, the second sowing better than the first.

5) Red onions drying in the sun.

6) Gatekeeper butterfly in the hedgerow.

7) The last artichoke, left to flower.  These never last very well. On the Island of Bréhat, they somehow preserve them and sell them to the tourists.

8) Courgettes, flower buds and fruit.  We're eating them now.

9) Whitecurrants, later than the red.

10) Tom making chutney with the mirabelles, and very good it is too.  I just have to stay his hand from opening and eating it too soon.

11) Molly's Rainbow Bridge gloves, as it turned out, though not consciously so (I know it's a mawkish and maudlin thing but I don't care).  My niece Bee in Australia feels the cold, even there.  She fell off her bike and smashed herself up a bit because she was trying to pull her jumper sleeves over her hands. I promised her handwarmers, and found the thick rainbow wool I'd bought a while back without plans. During Mol's last couple of days, during my shifts of lap-time with her, I knitted them up; it was comforting to have something bright and quick and easy in my hands to work on.  Bee understands, she always sees rainbows when beloved people die. I have since, it seems, acquired other antipodean nieces and nephews, some of them entirely honorary and unknown to me, who want pretty mittens made for them.

12) Molly's last day, with Tom on the sofa. Hesitated to include this, perhaps I'm overdoing it, but it seems important.  She was calm and comfortable.

~

The boat trip today was wonderful, will get onto the photos very soon.

Latest things happening; a soapstone shape; white arthropods; cone flowers; TMI Marcel?

Cooking chicken Kievs this evening, a nostalgic indulgence from the time when they were Marks and Spencers' signature dish, I found myself scraping the residue of milk, cornflour, beaten egg and breadcrumbs into a blob and throwing it in the pan to make a little fritter.  Molly's portion, as always. What else could I do?

I ate it myself, it really wasn't bad, she did all right.

We picked up her ashes today. Tom had been quite distressed and fretful about the limbo which we were in regarding them. I'd tried and probably better succeeded in telling myself it didn't matter too much, that her poor tired little body was all finished with anyway, and all would surely be being dealt with conscientiously and properly, even if it was the holidays and there were delays, that many a human cremation was delayed far longer. Nevertheless, I was surprised at the peace of mind and sense of resolution it brought, and also how nicely it was done; the paperwork which we had been too distraught to take any notice of at the time assured us that they understood it was a painful and difficult time, that by deciding on this course we wanted to do things decently and that they promised to do their part of it with all respect and kindness.  The certification and packaging looked lovely and used her name, and there was even a little piece of card with flower seeds pressed into it that we could plant for her in the place of our choice. OK, maybe it was all calculated marketing but we appreciated it and considered it well done. I don't remember anything so warm and personal with my parents' ashes, and it really wasn't an expensive service.

The vet and her husband asked rather shyly if we were going away this summer because if not they would very much like to invite us over, as friends, now we weren't customers...? That touched our hearts too.

~

We have Tom's daughter K, her husband and children coming for their summer visit tomorrow, and now we feel better able to cope with it, and enjoy their company.  I'm always slightly surprised how much it pleases me transforming my blue room into a cosy den for the kids, and stocking up on oven chips for the traditional moule frîtes fest, and Tom and K always benefit from a bit of time together.

~

Jantien has been back in Moncontour for the remainder of her residency there, and encouraged me to come for another sculpture class.  This isn't really serious sculpture as she does it, more like a simple session of soapstone polishing, but it is immensely satisfying, since whatever happens, at the end of the afternoon one has a beautiful piece of polished stone to show for it, as well as skin, hair and clothes covered in a layer of coloured talc which is curiously pleasurable.  I had a notion this time to make something to do with garlic, having been seduced into buying some very beautiful pink garlic imported from Argentina, a thing I would never normally do as, without being too sanctimonious about it, I do try to buy and eat as seasonally and locally as possible.  But these were so beautiful and reminded me so much of a sculpture, with their pink polished cloves pushing out through their chalky white husk.  

Jantien always says there are two ways to go with sculpture: you can have an idea what you want to make, find the right stone and shape it into it, or you can let the stone lead you to the sculpture.  In fact I suppose I took a path between the two, as there simply weren't any raw pieces which would have lent themselves to becoming a pink garlic bulb, so I let the idea go and picked up a piece of pinky brown soapstone with a flat base and some interesting speckles, and began to smooth it off, but the garlic idea persisted, along with another that came through.  When I'd told Jantien that I had an idea what I might do, she'd chuckled and said she didn't think she had a black piece of stone. In truth the notion of trying to make a Molly sculpture hadn't occurred to me; I'm afraid I do rather find the idea of making effigies and portraits of one's dead pets rather naff and anyway, I don't feel equal to representing Mol in such a way. Yet the shape that came about was about her; as well as being a garlic clove, 

it is also a tear drop.

Not great art or anything, but, as I say, deeply satisfying to make and to have.

~

A few more photos to season things. 

J'suis descendue dans mon jardin...  Going to pick some white Winchester Cathedral roses (for a friend and neighbour's 100th birthday, a rather strange event which I thought I might write about but am now out of time and probably your good graces to do so) I displaced a curious resident, a white spider, with a speck of pink, like a chameleon to the flower. 

Pray tell me arachnophobes ( which I am only quite mildly), is a spider less frightening coloured thus? Is it the darkness of them which disturbs?

Another white arthropod, a marbled white butterfly.

They are all over the place just now, won't be for long.

Some echinacea with and without bumble bees, just because.

and some poppy seed heads which Tom put to dry in the rough glazed bowl, even though the blasted things sow themselves all over the garden in all the wrong places without any encouragement anyway.

I don't think he meant it to be tasteful but I thought it was just so terribly much so.

~

And finally, for Robbie really but also anyone else who might be interested, proof it it were needed that Proust really was weird. Never mind every kind of snooping voyeurism from Françoise killing the chicken through Vinteuil's daughter's girlfriend spitting on his picture to the Baron de Charlus getting thrashed by a sailor, never mind locking your girlfriend in your flat in case she might be a lesbian, this is really perverse:

...but what fascinated me would be the asparagus, tinged with ultramarine and rosy pink which ran from their heads, finely stippled in mauve and azure, through a series of imperceptible changes to their white feet, still stained a little by the soil of their garden-bed: a rainbow-loveliness that was not of this world. I felt that these celestial hues indicated the presence of exquisite creatures who had been pleased to assume vegetable form, who, through the disguise which covered their firm and edible flesh, allowed me to discern in this radiance of earliest dawn, these hinted rainbows, these blue evening shades, that precious quality which I should recognise again when, all night long after a dinner at which I had partaken of them, they played (lyrical and coarse in their jesting as the fairies in Shakespeare’s Dream) at transforming my humble chamber pot into a bower of aromatic perfume.

There's a lot of asparagus in Swann's Way. I'm going back over it with audio book, picking up particular passages that interest and checking the text in the original and Moncrieff's translation as and when the fancy takes me, which having them on the Kindle makes easier.  The audio book is heavily abridged, of course. I loved the asparagus description but on checking found they had rather coyly left out the last bit about the chamber pot.  Wrongly I think, for any discussion about asparagus, as with Jerusalem artichokes, is not complete without a mention of the after effects, is it? No, what's weird is that what most people would be more inclined to liken to the miasma surrounding Bridgwater cellophane factory (go on, follow that link, you know you want to) he describes as 'a bower of aromatic perfume'. Now that is strange.

Hellebores

I post pictures of them here every year, I think, but they're always so welcome when they appear, and they do so undemandingly well here. The new camera gave them added novelty this time too; an advantage of the compact and screen vs viewfinder is that it's easier to look up into their faces.  Someone (was it Zephyr?) said they found them sad flowers because they insist on looking downward all the time.  It's worth trying to get down under them though, to catch the sun through the petals.

The first bees of the year enjoy them too, though only really the white ones, which I noticed for the first time have a very delicate perfume. Once you start trying to catch the bees in them, you don't settle for just taking pictures of the flowers, I find.