Saturday 25 September 2010

Life . . . and all that.

On the left is Smudge aka Jarvis (gender unknown but he/she has a fat boy's face!) and Alfie, definitely a boy. Below, page bottom, is Tippy, also definitely a boy. They are not particularly frightened of me and will feed at my feet, but make a movement and they are gone like greased lightening - until you rattle the cat food tin!


The sky is the colour of a bowl of blue ribbons, left to fade for years on a windowsill in the sun. Some of the garden looks scalped where I have been clearing spent leaves in the border. Some of it looks blowsy like a raddled old tart propping up the bar in a seedy back-street pub. The vegetable plot looks like a wart hog has been let loose and has grubbed everything up. I spent a satisfying hour or so taking down the bean poles and the spent beans.

The hill to the river is in gloom now, the dessicated leaves have done with playing in the breeze and have settled for the night in the gullies beside the lane. Little chewed-up lengths of splintered hedgerow litter the lanes hereabouts as farmers tidy up their farms and smallholdings.

Whilst I was working, several ideas for blog posts came into my head, but now they have run willy-nilly from my brain and I am left with a head like an empty room with the door just slammed shut.

I probably meant to talk about books, about find a cookbook of Devon recipes I bought in 1986, and with a favourite much-made recipe in it for Apricot and Coriander Fruit Loaf which I have somehow managed to forget completely about over the years, when Life has got in the way. I plan to make one tomorrow.

I definitely meant to talk about kittens, and trying to tame them, and their blowing raspberries at me . . .

I should mention that I have blown the dust off my more than 3/4 finished Devon Village x-stitch and sewn a little of it this afternoon, and realized just why I laid it aside at summer's start - it was because I was a line adrift on the little bit I was working on today, and it has scrambled my brain completely trying to sort it (as it's beyond "putting right").

I could ponder how I actually enjoy - and look forward to (!!!) - ironing these days, as a satisfying job. It is something I dreaded and avoided when my children were small and there was a permanent ironing mountain the size of Ben Nevis.

I might add that I had the best night's sleep for a week last night, and what bliss it was to stretch out my tired body in a warm bed, and know that all my family were under the same roof and I didn't need to fret about them coming home safely.

As for tomorrow - well, it will involve processing some of the windfall apples I picked up today, along with some of the smaller Bramleys. A couple of pies, and perhaps some chutney . . .

7 comments:

  1. Well I can see why Tippy has that name. The cute little white tip on his tail. It's a good thing he has that otherwise how would you be able to tell the difference between Smudge and Tippy.

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  2. Tippy has a white collar all around his neck, and also has a pair of skew-whiff spectacles!

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  3. And just how many raddled old tarts have you come across hmmm????

    Nice one BB.

    Have a good weekend.......

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  4. I was fooled a few years ago by the sex of a kitten--was callling it 'she" until I ook "it" and the one I knew was definitely male to the vet for their first series of shots. Be it said that the identifying bits were buried in dense long fur, but I was chagrined at my mistake. The vet's wife was minding the desk that day and said, "Oh Bill, are you sure? It's face looks like a girl!" Needless to say, Bill the Vet hauled the kitten back out of the carrier and upended it for us, saying testily, "And how many years have I been at this job?"
    Your description of the fall day and the nearly spent garden are most evocative.
    Like you, I can compose a whole blog story in my head, while on my knees in the garden, or doing some mundane chore. The literary blogsphere will never know what it has missed--by the time I get to the PC most of my bright ideas have evaporated.

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  5. The cats are adorable. We adopted a brown fat tabby who showed up in our back yard and named her Momma Kitty; it turns out it was a boy cat, so we changed his name to a guy name, and apologized to him.

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  6. Adorable kittens, they look like boys but sometimes.....they will fool you
    Enjoy your apples and cooking goodies, I wish I was in the kitchen with you.
    Regards,

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  7. What a lovely post. I know just what you mean about creative ideas coming and going.......

    The three kittens are looking very well. I wonder if you will end up taking all of them with you when you move?

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