Saturday 8th July - random non-sequituers

 Professor Tim Spector is keen that we should all eat 30 different types of plant per week. I think the newspaper headline

'Eating 30 plants per week will cure all your ills' is probably a vast overstatement of what he actually said. I have learned not to go past the headlines on news items such as 'insert name of minor celebrity here gives update on their devastating diagnosis' when it turns out they have sprained their ankle or some such.

Thirty plants seems a lot, so I kept a running total this week. It seems that seeds, spices, vinegar, pickles, coffee, tea, chocolate can all be included in the list;

so my breakfast of fruit-nut-and-seed muesli contains raisins, sultanas (are they the same?) apricots, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, almonds, hazelnuts, oats, wheat and barley. Not in great quantities, but I eat a portion of this most mornings. This with a cup of coffee gives me 11 items.

Over the course of the week my meals and snacks included brazil nuts, macadamia nuts, sugar snap peas, garden peas (I think they are different because of the pods), potatoes, rice, asparagus, raspberries, tomatoes, lettuce, pea shoots, baby spinach leaves, red peppers, olives, jalapeno peppers, chilli peppers, lemon, lime, pine nuts, cucumber, apple, basil, parsley, chocolate, tea, edmame beans, black beans, white beans, borlotti beans, canelli beans, ginger, indian spices, mushrooms, onions, spring onions, garlic, and cauliflower.    Around another 38 items. I haven't counted in today yet - indeed, I stopped counting!

It appears that it is not the quantity so much as the variety that matters. No problem then!

Dead-heading sweet peas is an odd sort of task. I went out yesterday and did all three pots as comprehensively as I could. Today it looked as though I hadn't been near them, and I came away with another handful. On closer inspection I saw that they hide their little seed pods inside the faded petals. Aha! You won't catch me that way again!

I brought a few stems indoors yesterday, but today the petals have faded and even have seed pods! The other flowers are coriander from the herb pot and a small bit of erigeron.

I adored 'Mrs 'Arris goes to Paris' and read it in one sitting. Paul Gallico's writing is so vivid. It feels so full of love... with the message that it's the people, inside the clothes, that really matter. I'm in luck; 'Mrs 'Arris goes to New York' came in the same book. I'm almost afraid to start reading it in case it isn't as good...   

   

Thursday 6th July - asleep walking

today's sketch

I don't feel as though I have woken up properly all day... 

I can't work out what to wear. Yesterday I wasn't warm enough; today I am wearing a warmer fleece jacket and have put on socks instead of going barefoot as I usually do through the Summer, and now that the skies have cleared I'm feeling too warm...

Somehow I have managed to teach one piano lesson, write up yesterday's piano lesson (a rehearsal for a 'mock' exam, so a bit tricky). Just one more lesson, and two social zooms to go before I can go back to sleep!

I'm not going to make my step target today, for sure!

   

Wednesday 5th July - Turning over another new leaf...

 What is it about the idea of starting afresh, turning over a new leaf, trying again?

This page should have been portrait orientation but I've even turned the page through 90 degrees to make it use less space. It's been ages since I stopped drawing a sketch a day, and I'm missing it now.

Writing is another activity which has gone by the board; I notice the last entry in my notebook was in April. It is very easy to be overtaken by events and then lose the impetus.

A couple of things have helped re-ignite the creative embers; A couple of books of poems by Wendy Cope were probably the first sparks, then tripping across this book in Sue's blog (actually, I follow a couple of blogs written by ladies called Sue so I am often confused as to which is who!) aha, it's this one  where she lists the books she has ordered from the library. I've picked up many a recommendation from her blog, and others too, I might add;

Anyway, this is the book; 

I wasn't about to pay lots of money for what was obviously a little gift book, but it was for sale on the secondhand book site I use quite often (rather often, to be more truthful).

It is a little bundle of joy, and I have put it out of reach to avoid reading it all in one go...

It is just a collection of just about daily observations; three- or four- lines describing a small, everyday incident, seen while walking in the park, overhead on a bus and so on.

I try an limit myself to just one page at a time, and will pass it on to a friend when I have finished with it.

So now I am trying to 'stop and notice' things and jot them down. Since I am still avoiding what they call 'unnecessary social contact' and indoor public spaces this limits my opportunities for 'people-watching' - something I used to love doing at cafes in the past. (Hopefully those days will come again...)   

I've also downloaded 'Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris' - the book by Paul Gallico which is behind the film. If I enjoy it, I'm in luck as Mrs 'Arris also goes to New York, Moscow, and becomes an MP in subsequent books!

 

Monday 3rd July - a normal Monday?

While we were in the garden yesterday we spent some time wondering the best approach to dealing with one of the big half-barrel planters we bought back in 2015. Both iron hoops were lying at the base, so the staves were only staying upright through habit. We were thinking it might be possible to lift the hoop back up and tap it in place - it worked on one of he other barrels last year.

  This morning the decision was made for us; an unscheduled but urgent job - normal for us! 

Himself has emptied the barrel (four and a half large plastic flowerpots of earth) taking every care to prevent the earth from spilling all over the pebbles. The staves were either rotten or rotting, as was the base, so quite a lot did get into the pebbles in the process, which meant scooping out another large plastic pot of mixed pebbles and soil, and then separating them. However it was a good morning's work, and a sack of wood and two rusty iron hoops for the tip in due course.

I had been planning to plant my marigolds and petunias in the barrel - ah well, I now have a number of  large flowerpots to fill instead!

......

Just look at these beautiful carrots, growing nicely - in the spinach pot... I have no idea how they got there, but thought I may as well let them stay.

....... 

The day has ended with a most annoying piano lesson which left me very cross with the student. I had set just a few scales (they have been on-going for a couple of weeks so I was hoping for some improvement) and to do some work on a piece -not much as she is not doing a lot of practice at the moment. 

I had already decided to get tough; so we spent the first 10 minutes doing one of the scales properly - it is a difficult one, not something you can blag your way through (G major in thirds, hands separately);  you do have to work at it! So I persisted until she was able to play it.

Then we moved onto the next one... same story, and another ten minutes gone.

And the next...

We were had reached the last five minutes of her lesson before it was time to look at the piece - it's a Grade 7 Haydn sonata, and again not something you can bluff your way through. We have already spent tine going through it in detail including how to learn it and how to practice it.  

'How have you got on? Which bit have you been working on?' I asked.

'Oh, I just sight-read through it a few times,' she eventually replied, not looking at me. I nearly ended the zoom call then and there - I have been having this battle with her for YEARS. But... I pushed through ten minutes of Proper Learning for just the first 6 bars until she could play them accurately without mistakes. She is probably still muttering...

I have some sympathy for her; if you don't practise regularly you don't make progress, and every time you go play you find that you are no better, or perhaps even worse, and a cycle of discouragement can set in. Biting the bullet - getting the job done - these are the sort of things that everyone has to learn at some stage, but the process of learning this lesson is not a wonderful experience.   

Learning an instrument is about so much more than learning to play the instrument.

Next week is the last lesson of term... then a blissful summer break for both of us!

............

Soup for supper;

I had saved the scraps from ends of salad onions, tough asparagus trimmings, and trimmings from broccoli and used these to make stock. Yesterday I had some of the cooked asparagus in my potato and spring onion salad, and today I used the rest of the asparagus and cold potatoes, with the stock, salt, pepper, lemon etc to make a delicious soup, which has almost restored my mood. A couple of chocolate oatcakes finished the job nicely.  

 

Sunday 2nd July - you are closer to God’s heart in a garden

than anywhere else on earth, as they say, and that's where I spent most of the morning.

 The morning church service wasn't live-streamed today as there was a baptism with lots visiting guests and children. I wonder what they made of it all? It was an all-age family service, and led by a science teacher whose talks are always exciting and surprising, and often require fire extinguishers close at hand....

But back to the garden. I (very slowly!) extracted a bucket full of  compost, complete with hundreds of worms and too many so-called biodegradable teabags.  I intend to mix the compost with spent earth to top up the as yet unplanted patio tubs. Meanwhile Himself worked away at clearing all the wild strawberry plants that had overgrown the 'pebble patch'. It's looking much, much better.

A friend came round with three trays of plants for me. I know she often takes friends to the coffee shops at various garden centres, so I asked her to get me some plants if it was convenient. 

I'll work out where to put them tomorrow. 

This year's success has to include the sweet peas. It took them quite a while to get going.

And also the cardoons. The third one at the back is invisible because it is so small; we removed three enormous snails from it the other evening and surrounded the remnants with 'slug gone' wool pellets so maybe it will recover.

The temperature has dropped noticeably this evening. I'm grateful for a rug over my legs and tootsies!

Saturday 1st July - imparadise

Imparadise; verb: to make blissfully happy; enraptured. to make into or like paradise