Saturday 29th January - This and that...

 Yesterday, a woodpecker came to the bird feeder. My, what a handsome bird! So slim and upright, such bright colours, so easy to spot!

I'm a novice at this birdwatching game. At the beginning of the month I bought some entry-level binoculars from the RSPB, and also a birdfeeder to replace and old one that had broken, and a 'selection pack' of bird food. Suet and meals worms - yum - at least, yum if you are a starling or a woodpecker.

This is the weekend of the RSPB 'Big Bird Watch' or something. I though I might join in - but we don't get many birds (next-door's-cat, maybe?) and I'm not that quick with the binoculars to get them lined up with where the bird is before it is gone. So perhaps I'll leave it until next year. We get sparrows, and starlings, sometimes robins and blackbirds, and, for a couple of days, a thrush was working across the grass. Oh, yes, and magpies. And squirrels (I know they aren't birds, but they still use the bird feeder.) 

I think I shall send off for more suet balls, or logs, or sticks, or whatever. Shopping for bird food is as complex as choosing which tomatoes, brand of cheese, kind of yogurt. Or cat food.

Our cats are really showing their age. I have to cut clumps of fur off McCavity, the fluffy cat, because she is too stiff to reach everywhere. Leo has shorter fur, which ought to be easier to deal with, but she has a fine undercoat which quickly matts up into a felted layer that has to be teased apart, as much as you can at a sitting until she gives a warning meow and swipes at you. They move creakily about the house, favouring an arthritic hip or shoulder.

I was beginning to creak a bit too, so I have started a 'ten day basics' online ballet course. It costs £15 for unlimited access to a set of ten videos. I first came across this delightful website back in 2019. 

It is run by a mother-and-daughter team. The daughter, Susan, started teaching her mother, Elizabeth, ballet because Elizabeth needed to do something to strengthen her ankles and improve her balance, and things grew from there. 

When we were on our unforgettable one week river cruise along the Seine back in 2019 

Happy memories... I kept my first ever illustrated travel journal...

I used to do one of the free online exercise classes they offer every morning on the tiny balcony outside our cabin, propping my phone up carefully so that it wouldn't fall in. I've done the free classes off and on ever since, more 'off' than 'on' but having the basics explained is very helpful. I'm taking about two or three days to complete each level, but that's fine. I've also discovered I can convert time spent doing ballet into miles (or fractions of miles!) to add to my current 'Conqueror' challenge. Unfortunately ballet adds very little to my step count as pointing a toe (tendue) and returning to first position doesn't count as a step, even though it feels like exercise!

It solves the problem of really not wanting to go out for a walk when the weather is so cold, but feeling that 'one ought to do something rather than sitting about all day.

I've made almond macaroons this week. I could show you a picture, but I've just finished the last one. Not macarons - just reading the recipe was exhausting. I realise now why I disliked them so much when I was little - I have a feeling they were usually made with desiccated coconut, or, if made with ground almonds, almond essence was added. I didn't have any ground almonds, so put a packet of flaked almonds into the word food processor. This meant that they were more coarsely ground, and I think that is an improvement. Now, about those left over yolks and half an egg white... two yolks went into the scrambled eggs last night, and I shall make scones this afternoon with what's left.

My brother said he used to use cornflour when he made them (he used to make macaroons? well I never did!) so next time I will use this recipe and make them much smaller. I used a glace cherry to decorate - I'm sure that's how I remember them. They peeled off the baking paper fairly easily, but I think I might get some rice paper just to recreate my memories.    

The baking was to provide a gluten-free accompaniment for when family came to visit on about the only sunny afternoon last week. My brother and sister-in-law came up, collecting my uncle and father enroute and went for a meal locally. Just as they finished the meal - (they asked for affrogatos for dessert, not on the menu, but the waitress, who was Italian, produced them with great pleasure) - the rain stopped and we were able to meet in the garden and enjoy tea/coffee, and tome together. It was blooming cold sitting out in the garden in the pale afternoon sunshine, but we wore coats and hats and had blankets. Just a simply lovely and rare hour with family.   

Affrogato

Put a scoop of good vanilla ice cream into a suitable glass or bowl for each person.

Pour over a shot of hot espresso coffee.

Serve at once.

Monday 24th January - Flowers, anniversary of my mother's death, chocolate

I'm on a roll, at least for posting on this blog. I can't say the same about going for a daily walk (too cold) or practising the piano (not in the mood) or doing some drawing or painting (also not in the mood).

While it is so cold and grey I like to sit close to the radiator and read, or knit, or do Freecell and Suduko and the new craze, Wordle.

I'm also pretty occupied by thinking about the garden.

I have potatoes chitting on a windowsill upstairs

Micro greens making slow progress on the kitchen windowsill

and peas just beginning to sprout on a downstairs windowsill. These last are not for planting out, but for adding as shoots to salads once they are big enough.

 I've moved the tete-a-tete daffodils to the sitting room now that they are flowering. They are a such a pleasure, so cheerful, and also so poignant, because they remind me so much of my mother.

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of her death, back in 2016. We had kept her room in the nursing home full of flowers, mostly pots of daffodils, all through the few weeks she was there after leaving hospital; balancing them as high as we could on the windowsill so that she could see them easily. As each pot of daffodils began to fade we would replace them, and I planted them in a row along the hedge at the bottom of the garden. 

She always had flowers in the house, and taught me how to arrange them, how to 'make a spider web from the stems, so that they criss cross and hold each other up'. The big glass bowl of tulips, the silver coffee jug of roses, the small vases of  grape hyacinths, vast displays of dahlias... 'put the leaves in first, and then add the flowers'. Bunches of cut daffodils always had to have some leaves with them, cut from the garden if necessary. 

It's a strange thing - we were all so focussed on supporting my father through this time, that I think we might have lost sight the rest of us to some degree, of her being my and my brother's mother, and such an important friend for my husband, and being a grandmother, and all the other members of the family and friends affected by her death. Ah well; that's how it was then, and here's how it is now. We did the best we could at the time. It's hard to think and clearly in the midst of everything.  Hindsight and all that.

Anyway, now I have daffodils too, because it's what you need in January and February, to fend off the grey days and now, to celebrate my mother's life.

I took the picture of the flowers just before we sat down to our little smackeral of something; cake and 'second coffee'. We try and restrain ourselves to just three coffees per day - morning, elevenses, and after lunch. Otherwise we would struggle to keep pace with ordering supplies!

I have a fairly inefficient and relaxed approach to watching my weight, which is probably why I still avoir  more poids that I would ideally like. My current aim is to begin each week  little lighter than I began the previous week. Here is a conundrum -  to be at my lightest I should weigh myself first thing in the morning, before breakfast but after going to the loo. Yes, fine, but that sets a harder target to meet the following week. But if I weigh myself after breakfast I'm likely to be disappointed that I don't weight very much less than before, or worse still, I'm heavier. 

My 'diet method', as I have said before, is to try and eat half as much as my husband.

 His plate is on the left, mine on the right. So far, so good. But then I'm more inclined to snack on this and that through the day - a handful of nuts, a chocolate button from the last of the Christmas store, a few crisps or crackers... He doesn't seem suffer from the same weakness, or maybe he is just very skilled at surreptitious snacking? I shall keep an eye on this.

I suppose I shouldn't make cakes if I were that concerned about my weight, or at least not the sort of cakes that I like to eat. That would be a start. 

It does make me very pleased, as well as slightly sad, that the milk chocolate in the Christmas stash is nearly all gone, and only a few milk chocolate buttons. Everything else is the rich, dark, intense kind of chocolate that the French apparently eat in small quantities for medicinal purposes, as a source of iron.  He will enjoy them; they don't have the same appeal for me. And as for the marzipan -  that's all his to enjoy with no competition from me.

  

Saturday 22nd January - Books to last a whole year

 For several years now I have always had a book that I read slowly, over the course of the whole year.

 The first time this happened, I was reading ‘The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris. This is a series of essays, written through twelve months, beginning in September, during a time when she was exploring monastic traditions and recording how she responded to them as a frequent visitor to various monasteries. Maybe a bit niche, but fascinating, not only for the spiritual insights, but also for the richly poetic writing. I was torn between wanting to follow her journey and also needing to take time to reflect and savour the words, so I decided to keep pace with her over the course of the months. 

After this I was hooked on the idea of a book as companion for a year. Here are a few that I have already followed in this fashion.

‘The Almanac - a seasonal guide’ is compiled by Lia Leendertz. She writes a new version every year, with nature notes, gardening notes, recipes, phases of the moon and stars, tide tables, and more for every month. I love the illustrations; delicate black and white drawings scattered through the text.

 

‘One Woman’s Year’ by Stella Martin Currey, originally published in 1953. Each It is an engaging mixture of anecdotes, stories in which her family makes an appearance, recipes, anthology of prose and poems from a time when life was very different to today. The cover is plain grey, like most Persephone Books, so I have taken the illustration from the publisher’s website,  which is well worth a visit if you can't get to the shop in Bath. Although I have seen some of their books for sale in various bookshops.

I have promised that I will constrain myself to buying just one book, and no more, per month from them this year. Of course, that doesn’t include any secondhand bargains that I might trip across! 

‘The Wild Remedy’ by Emma Mitchell, through the year. This is the account of how being out and about in woods and fields helps her overcome the deep and dark depression that threatens to overwhelm her every Winter. Just looking at the photographs and illustrations inspires me to go outside and look at what is growing.

This year I have bought ‘The Country Life Cookery Book’ by Ambrose Heath, illustrated by Eric Ravilious and originally published in 1937. Food cookery was very different back then.

 

I was given ‘A Year Unfolding – A Printmaker’s View’ by Angela Harding just before Christmas. She records the view from her studio window through the seasons with a commentary, so that is also keeping me company this year.

 Those two books should have been enough, but I have just spotted ‘The Morville Year’ by Katherine Swift for sale on a secondhand book seller’s site for the ridiculous price of just a couple of pounds, including delivery. Too good to miss! 

 

 

 

Friday 21st January - The Moon

Moon rising above hedge
Quink and coloured pencils (from 2019 10 notebook)

These past few days I have been enjoying watching the moon in the afternoon, at bedtime, and in the morning.

It has been huge and wonderful and gleaming with a kind of benevolent face upon this grey and messy time that we are in - at ground level the politics are frankly depressing, with the kind of behaviour and language that we would never tolerate in the classroom or on the playground at any of the primary schools I have ever taught in.

In the morning, to the West, the moon glows in the dawn twilight, slowly heading for the bar branches of the huge oak tree at the bottom of the garden. (Today I spotted three small birds in the top of the tree, flitting to and fro, four magpies bounding along the middle layer, and a crow perched motionless on the lower branch ignoring the lively bustle and chatter all around).

In the afternoon the moon rises in the South, chalky white, enormous against the roofs of the houses, refusing to be entangled by television aerials and chimney pots. (Small children without coats race ahead of their mothers, apparently impervious to cold, galloping, hopping, bouncing along. Their mothers follow in their wake, pushing a buggy laden with coats and school bags, a cold toddler wailing gently from the depths of a cocoon fleecy blankets).

In the evening dark the moon glows brilliantly due East, like a protector against the night hours, keeping watch, eyes always open, mouth in a slight smile. (I stand at the window and look at the lighted windows of the houses all around; strips of gold patterning the dark like jewels. There's a conservatory in a garden several streets away, lit up like an exotic oriental pavilion, and I imagine people sitting in comfortable cushioned wicker chairs, sipping wine as they reflect on the day).

I used to teach this little lullaby to the youngest children;

"I see the moon, and the moon sees me,

God bless the moon, and God bless me"

Now the moon is waning... it will make it easier to see the stars...

"Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight,

wish I may, wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight"  

Friday 14th January - An adventure in time travel

I  rang my father this morning to ask how he got on at the bridge club yesterday afternoon. Halfway through the question I realised that I was a day out in my reckoning - he goes to play bridge on Friday afternoons... and today was - no, it still is, for a few more hours, Friday. I'll ask him again tomorrow...

It's felt like that off and on all day. I think it could be because this was my first week of piano teaching, and I've managed to arrange my schedule so that Friday is completely clear. So after the last lesson on Thursday it feels as though it should be the weekend.

It was a glorious sunny morning today, and I briefly considered suggested we drive to the coast and look at the sea - every so often I get this yearning to stand at the sea and just look - gaze - view - absorb... Then I thought, no, it's the weekend and the seafront is usually crowded with families and scooters and dogwalkers, making socially distanced walking a constant game of chess, steeping off the footpath and struggling through the shingle for a couple of yards, back on the path, back on the shingle. So I gave up on the idea. But of course, it was Friday, and we could have gone. Oh well. Maybe the good weather will hold for next week as well.

Meanwhile I did go for a short stroll up our road and back, not far, but far enough for fresh air, to listen to the birds, enjoy the sunshine, and discover How Cold It Is. 

A friend brought me some daffodils in tight bud earlier this week. They began to think about coming out within hours, and now, a few days later, they are brightening the kitchen windowsill.

I took the picture just now, this evening which is why the background is black. The moon is nearly full - and for some complicated scientific reason we can see it through the sitting room window in the afternoon, a 'chalk moon', I call it, because that's what it looks like. I haven't quite got my head around why sometimes we see it through the front windows in the afternoon, looking to the east, and at other times at the back of the house in the morning, facing west. It has been explained to me, and I have read the explanation, but the reasons are clearly something that my brain has decided is not of importance to my happiness or survival. So, please don't try explain it to me again!

The tin tray beside the daffodils is a tray of rocket seed which I started off a day or so ago. They are just coming through;

Following the instructions in the Huw Richards vegetable book I made myself a 'sprinkle bottle' by taking an empty fruit juice bottle and carefully poking holes in the lid with a kitchen skewer. I am glad to report that I achieved this without skewering myself, and it makes an excellent device for watering the seedlings without flooding the windowsill.

The mitten project is progressing well. The is the current state of the fourth attempt;

 It fits fairly well - the right width, but a little long - my hands are pretty much shovel-shaped with broad palms and short fingers. I now need to pick up the stitches, currently kept safe on a piece of blue wool, and knit up the thumb. It seemed a good point to stop for tea. 

I'm tending to use my glass teapot now. A change that has been rather forced upon me; I couldn't understand why I appeared to be slopping tea onto my tray cloths quite so frequently until I discovered that the blue teapot had developed a crack from top to bottom on one side, and the tea was seeping out, when I was using it. I'm rather sad about that as it was a present from a piano student's mother. Ah well. I enjoyed using it while it lasted.

Tray cloths? I can't help myself. I am my mother's daughter - all trays always had to have cloths on them. I asked her about that, and she said it was because her mother insisted upon tray cloths... 

Saturday 8th January - One week into the year

 Good morning everyone.

So, what have we accomplished this week?

I finished a mitten, and then ripped it out - it was the size of an oven glove, and the texture was far too open. Every little breeze would have gone through the fabric with barely a check. So I am nearly two inches along the ribbing of mitten number 1. By hook or by crook, I will finish a pair of mittens this month whether I want them or no.

I haven't taken a picture - two inches of ribbing on 4mm needles looks much the same as 2 inches of ribbing on 5mm needles after all.

One thing the last year has taught me, is that it is the process of  knitting that I enjoy, almost more than the product. Rather like growing vegetables.

I get all excited at the sight of little shoots appearing through the earth, but I am a good deal more 'take it or leave it' about actually eating the produce. I have ordered my broad bean seeds, and also a packet of spaghetti squash seeds - just 8 in that packet, but then, how many spaghetti squashes can one eat. They are very exciting - forget all that spiralizing stuff - these are 'ready-spiralized'.

 I can't remember which brand of seeds I ordered, so I am not endorsing Mr Fothergill's seeds.. But the picture shows you the general idea - when you open up the squash, you find delicious spaghetti-like strands inside. Yum yum. I am excited about these.

I've also ordered half a dozen seed potatoes for 'chitting', various other seeds, and also several little pots of tete-a-tete daffodils to brighten things up.

Our Polish neighbours who moved in last year are very enthusiastic gardeners, but have a different view of vegetable gardening; his parents, back in Poland, grow masses of vegetables as a matter of course. When I said I grew just a few large pots of this and that 'for fun' he paused, looking at me carefully, obviously revising his thoughts about vegetable gardening. I had meant to grow potatoes last year, but left it late.

'Potatoes are such hard work', he said.

'Not if you grow them in potato bags or large pots.' I explained about how you just cover the growing shoots with more earth until the pot is full and then tip them all when they are ready to be harvested.

'How many potatoes do you get?'

'Enough for a couple of meals'.

I think his idea of  a reasonable amount of potatoes is a cellar-full.

I'm planning to be guided by Huw Richards this year, 

   recommended by Ang in her blog 'Tracing Rainbows'. I don't have a 4 foot wide, 10 foot long raised bed, just an arrangement of 10 very large patio pots, each about 1 cubic foot in size, arranged on a moderately sunny patch of concrete where a shed once stood. I reckon I can adapt his plans

I bought the book too late last year; his detailed month-by-month instructions for December, January and February mostly consist of telling you what to harvest when - but I have nothing to harvest. I did just manage to plan garlic cloves in one tub within the deadline.

Meanwhile, I read the book, and other books (currently 'Miss Bunting' by Angela Thirkell, and listening to 'Over Sea. Under Stone' by Susan Cooper on audible), knit, and mooch about watching the rain.

The current bookclub 'read' is a podcast series on BBC sounds called 'Things Fall Apart' - all about how various movements suddenly sweep across social media - how, and why they started. Fascinating, and rather disturbing.  

Tuesday 4th January - Waiting

I have a feeling of being suspended between one 'season' and the next. It's hard to explain; 

There was Advent, a time of preparation, 

and then there was Christmas, the main event. 

Then there were the days between Christmas and the New Year, when we took things quietly, looking at the Christmas presents, making the kits (on-going in the case of his complicated 'build a wooden clock' kit, chomping our way through tins of mince pies, Christmas cake, bowls of chocolates and snacks.

Now, this seems another suspended time, nearly but not quite back to 'normal'. I'm, not starting teaching until next week - it is always worth giving the school term a week to get under way, and the students a chance to do some emergency piano practice.

I'm actually looking forward to taking down the Christmas Tree this year in a few days time, because I have bought some Christmas Tree and ornament storage bags bags, and it is well past time that we went through all the bags and boxes and and bits and pieces of 'Christmas' that get jumbled together and put into the loft (or left lying around in the spare bedroom, as happened last year!). Some of the things needs to be kept, but a lot never come out from one year to the next. 

There's nothing like New Storage Boxes and Bags to making tidying up seem more fun! But not yet, I'll have to wait until Epiphany. The Christmas lights may stay a little longer - we'll see.

Last Spring, or maybe the one before, I replaced the wreath on the wall beside the front door with a sort of home-made basket of tete-a-tete daffodils. 

I found the net, and a bag of moss when I was clearing the shed back in the Summer, and seen where I can some pots like these on-line, so that will be one of today's tasks.

Sunday January 2nd - How long does it take to create a new habit?

In my case about 7 years, I think. Especially if it involves commitment and effort.

However I have managed to go out for a walk two days in a row. Not only that, but was persuaded to add a loop around the back of the pond near us... and was rewarded by the sight of a front garden full of early daffodils all in flower.

Stopping to stare at them was a welcome opportunity to pause and catch my breath before continuing on to the post box to post a couple of 'thank-you' letters to piano pupils.

In the grim mornings driving around in the half dark, watching out for the first green leaves (on the road leading up to Loxwood) or the first daffodils (at the corner where I used to divert down a tiny lane to take a short cut cross country towards Ardingly) was one of the pleasures of my old life as a peripatetic music teacher. The earliest primroses would suddenly appear on the sunny side of a steep bank further along the same tiny lane, and bluebells on a south-facing verge on the road to Petworth. Oh yes, I used to put the road miles in, back in those days, criss-crossing the county from East to West, North to South.

I used to think that the months of January and February were just two months of grey-ness, until I saw pictures of David Hockney exhibition some years ago - maybe this was it; 'The Arrival of Spring, Woldgate, Yorkshire' . You can click through the pictures at this link. I was disbelieving of the amount of colour he had used, until I started to look at the hedgerows more closely, and came to the conclusion that the colours were, indeed, all there, if not as bright.

I'm glad we got out this morning, because this afternoon closed in early with cold and rain and grey and early dusk. 

I have been reading the January chapter of 'Nature's Remedy' by Emma Mitchell. It is one of the few books which is actually better on Kindle, if you read it on a tablet, as the drawings and photographs are so vivid on a screen, and you can scroll in to examine the details. Inspired by this I went into the garden (yes, in the rain, no, I didn't put on a coat, yes, I did get wet) and pulled a few springs from the herb planters to draw and paint.

Knitting... 

This must be the third time I am attempting to knit mittens. Why? Because. The first time they were going to be too small. The second time they were going to be a bit big, which I was prepared to put up with, but I didn't like the way I had done some increases, and also I had mysteriously acquired rather more stitches than the pattern suggested. I had been using the pattern from my Birthday present book 'the Knitter's Companion', but found an even easier to follow pattern online. So far it seems to be going well. It is really a practice run for knitting a pair of socks. Here's a link to the pattern I am using. 

Hello 2022 - Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow

I've had those words as an earworm to several days now. Anyway, I wish you all a Happy New Year, and also"Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow", today and every day.

And, should you know the tune, I apologise for infecting you with the earworm. Although there are probably worse things to have running around in your head.

This time of year the sun rises more or less opposite our bedroom window. The view might not be wonderful - all roof lines, television aerials, street lights, telegraph poles and BT wires, but one can look past and through them to see the glorious skies;

I have not made new resolutions this year - although I will continue with the old ones of  'write a page in the daily diary every the evening' and 'eat chocolate at least once a week'. These are not so much resolutions and habits now. The other one of delivering two bags of 'stuff' to the charity shop every month is a bit tricky at the moment.

Somewhere I read about the 'Texas Sharpshooter', who fired his gun at the barn door, and then painted  targets on it, with the bullseyes centred on the bullet holes. That seems a promising approach to making guilt-free 'resolutions' for this year.

Oh help. I have just googled this on the source of all knowledge and discovered that is is a description of one of many fallacies that abound in statistical analysis... nothing is so likely to wake the sleeping tigers in our household as yet another example of misuse of statistics on the news. 

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes, my bullet holes in the barn door are a series of soft and flexible suggestions for myself for January...

1. Taking up the Active Repertoire Challenge at www.pianodao.com, which is always to have a couple of pieces that one can perform anytime, anyplace, without music, and without anxiety. At the moment my 'go-to' pieces all date from my childhood, when I memorised everything I ever learned to play as a matter of course. I plan to resurrect something a bit 'meatier' than the Bach Minuet in G, and also learn something new which I will probably be teaching later this year anyway.

2. Sketching throughout January

This is an exercise from (one of the many) books I have acquired over the years. It is a place we visited about 4 years ago on a bleak Spring day quite near to where we live. The house is in a hollow quarried out of the side of the hill, and I took the photograph from a sort of treehouse built around the trunk of a huge beech tree near the top of the steep slope behind the house.

3. Walking (off and on) throughout January - a nominal notion of maybe reaching a total of ten miles by the end of the month sounds attainable.

4. Writing more letters and postcards, sending more emails to friends and relatives. Walking to the post box and back is about half a mile, which should help me along the way to covering ten miles.

Our nearest post-box has been decorated for Christmas!