Sun Soaked!

These little girlies have been sun soaked over the past few days. Bea, the more plumpscious pig, lies replete, stuffed with spring grass and sunshine. Dora is more modest and is a trimmer and all together stream lined pig. I love it when they flump with their skinny ankles out-stretched in a pool of sun light.

The hound, yesterday, managed to find the sole swamp in the forest. ( Forever a retriever) and lay with the shining eyes of happiness of a basking hippo! I have become quietly resigned to his love of mud. One cannot be house proud with such a big,hairy dog. He, then dripping swamp, found a pile of leaves and rolled, delightedly, in them and ran tar and feathered! Fine if you are not going out immediately. Bad news if you are. So I kept him down-stairs and put the Dyson on the stairs to deter. He is scared, witless, of the Dyson...but not today! Came home and down shot the hound, rejoicing at my return, having been luxuriating on our bed. Curious at how the draw of ones bed can over come the utter fear of the scary Dyson! Oh fickle,fickle hound! And even today the shopping bags became a phantom in the ktichen not to be passed.

Sunk Deck!

Slightly un-nerved to breeze outside this morning to wonder why I felt like I was on a listing boat. That, or my left leg has dramatically shrunk! Such has been the force and extent of the rain the the deck has come away from its moorings. I know for sure that Big B made it very properly as he had help from our chippy friend. I've kept the text from him on the day that he was flying solo with it that told the story in laymans terms.
"Where are the plasters?"
Bless! I am emptying the butt but the garden really doesn't need watering. Sigh!

The Nuture Hut

My soul is restored having spent all day in the garden. I planted and potted and sewed and am left with the deep satisfaction of knowing that the veg garden lives once again and will profer up it's sacred offerings in the fulness of time. (Slugs permitting!)
I love my shed. I love the smell of warm wood and soil especially when my little green plants grow contentedly in their cots of compost. I read in there too. In fact I finished my book resting my feet on the bag of compost between digging the potato trenches. Warm and sun fillled I thought about my Nana's shed. It was small and only used for storing garden bits and pieces, and yet Nana hung up a pair of curtains at the solitary window and it became mine. All I could do was sit between the lawn mower and deck chairs but I was happy to be. Room to read. Room to entertain Charlie the garden gnome, Fifi, Nana's poodle nightie case and Heidi, the German doll to a tea party and good wholesome chat.
Along the outside of the shed grew runner beans along the zip wire of string. It was my job on our Friday lunches to pick enough for 3. I'm sure that Nana did cook other things but my lasting memory is of tiny lamb chops, new potatoes, the beans and mint sauce served in a crystal boat. And then, of course, there appeared the sponge flan filled with tinned fruit cocktail and orange jelly served with a pool of evapourated milk. I loved it.
The frog spawn has all virtually hatched and the pond shimmies with little quivering black commas. We have gained an extra newt too. I wonder if they eat the frog spawm as the amount that was the does not tally with the handful I can see. Tis life.
The blackbirds seem to have given up on their nest. Probally left in disgust at the nosey neighbour who watched un-abashed as they built and wove their home! The blue tits have, however, taken up the rented accomadation in both boxes which is quite lovely. The cost of seed and fat balls is monumental!
My day ends and I hope for another one as good and sun rich as today.

Easter Feast

As my friends will tell you, my reputation for cake making has never been up there in my top 10. Great bomb-craters. Fantastic creations risen to the size of a padded envelope! Rachel Allen can rest in her floral pinny that there is ABSOLUTELY no competition from this side of the Downs. I do,however, have one culinary ammunition to my name, and that is meringues. Crispy and yet deliciously chewy on the inside. Friends and I feasted to the point of having to be very quiet after lunch. There is nothing as pleasurable as eating good food with good friends.

I have come along way with my love of food. This I am forever in gratitude to my friends for taking me along a new path. For years I had a more than cranky relationship with it, opting for lesser things.

My dear friend and I are frequently seen eating breakfasts of bread and butter and hard boiled eggs somewhere on the Downs with the hounds. (Hard boiled eggs always remind me of Sizewell nuclear power station in shape!) To sit on a field roller and drink tea in the middle of a field is,well, just a taste of heaven as the larks "drop their silver chain of sound" around us.

I am finding the use of a keyboard more than frustrating as my voice on paper is formulated, but here it comes across as stilted and broken. Still, bear with me. I certainly will not be hoofing off for a job in a typing pool, that's for sure!

Sorry, Big B that you were not here to share it. Hope you like the picture instead! x

Shrug

I'm not too sure what happened but I appeared to have lost my blog for a couple of weeks, so this is really testing the waters.

This morning I took the hound around the lake and was treated to 2 herons standing in the reeds like umbrellas in umbrella pots. They are such pre-historic looking birds that unfurl themselves into tatty sheets of grey material as they launch low speed, low level.

Jaipur ran and ran,kicking up his heels like a spring lamb. I lost track of him and then clocked him swimming with olympian strength after a moorhen. What I spotted, and Jai didn't, was the male swan who drifted out of the reeds like the Amarda. (The nest was close by) It should never surprise any dog owner what a proffered gravy bone can do. I reckon that stroke was butterfly!

With Jai now dozing, I knit myself into a mild hypnotic state. This shrug initially reduced me to feeble tears of frustration. I couldn't even twitch and it would go wrong! 18 attempts later,we are up and running on part 2. Sooo satisfying. And a lesson to behold...do the prototype first!

Happy Easter!