Going back to bed at birdsong . . .

A low-in-words Saturday post, as I am sleeping so badly.  I was up at 2 a.m. this morning, back to bed at 4.15, still awake an hour later and shattered now . . .

This is son of Spot, one of two male blackbirds who feed their offspring on left-over cat biscuits!  Spot (who is partly leucistic and has white spots) was in a dilemma this week as he has his well-grown daughter at one end of the porch (she is TWICE his size!) and his son at the other and both were calling for grub!  He didn't know who to feed first.

The cats have little cat couchets about the place.  This is by the drying-up wildlife pond.

Flat out cats . . .

I think this is Clematis "Niobe".  She would have been a £1.49 special from Morrisons.  I am missing getting my cheap summer plants from there.

My English rose "Graham Thomas" is blooming really well this year.

I have lots of Love in a Mist, and have sown more and will probably use the last of last year's seeds to sprinkle in tubs as I haven't any other plants to replace winter pansies etc with, not being able to get to the Garden Centre safely.

Papaver "Mrs Perry" I think.

The last three Pitta breads I made last week.  We had them with home-made burgers in the other evening.

The tall yellow standard rose by the gate, over Tara's grave.  I call it Golden Showers, but it probably isn't.  It flowers all summer long.

I was given half a very large red cabbage, so pickled this jar and have the other half cooked up and in the freezer.

Finally, trying my hand at drawing again.  Practice will make perfect.

A recent walk

It was time to have a break from sewing last weekend, and on Saturday Tam and I had a circular 4 mile walk - up to Pantglas and turn left.  Next Door has been calving some of his milkers in the small field opposite our gateway.  Here is the last mama and her baby, who by the time we got back, had been taken off the field.  She has an impressive udder!

The rest of the calvers, plus Hereford bull, are now in our top field, which has a good crop of grass on it again.

Above and below: the river is really low - the scalloped slate riverbed exposed.

The first brambles are blooming.  This is the sort which has just half a dozen big globules on it passing as blackberries. The birds enjoy them anyway.

The walled garden at the back of The Hall - envious?  Moi?  You bet!

Looking across the valley with the walled garden just out of sight on the right.

Looking up the valley in the direction of Brechfa.

Above, the first of the Dog Roses is in bloom. So simple but so beautiful.  Below is a common plant around here, the Navelwort, which grows in walls and banks. We used to crush the leaves with a little boiled water as a treatment for earache (and it works.)
 

Looking back down the west-facing side of the valley.  These properties are either side of the steep lane up to Court Henry.

Above and below:  Foxgloves.  I have some "wild" ones colonizing my borders in the garden.  Sadly, the non-wild ones I paid good money for have snuffed it!

Looking across to the farm where neighbours Roy and Menna once lived.  Now their son has taken it over (after Roy died a few years back.)

Finally, incoming rain!  We had taken jackets (and carried them most of the way round) but needed them when this shower hit us.

Unfortunately, it was the wet weather on Friday which finally did for my asthma.  Peak flow levels have been low for a couple of weeks but I was coping. Then overnight I got bad - though pollen levels were meant to be LOW throughout the Bank Holiday weekend, they must have been higher than anticipated and rain breaks the pollen into tiny pieces in the air which - when walking up steep hills - I inhaled deep into my lungs and had a sudden 100 point drop overnight in my peak flow so it was a case of reach for the steroids.  I don't know how long I will be on them and have to speak to the Dr today as I will need more as the pollen levels will go to Very High and I may need a longer course of steroids.

So I am staying inside as much as possible.  I kept myself busy with sewing, reading and baking yesterday and made my first-ever Pitta breads using the recipe on Tracy's blog .  Oh my - they rose beautifully and are FAR removed from the dessicated things on offer at the supermarkets, which fall apart the minute you cut into them.   I ate one of these at 1.30 this morning (I was still wide awake) and they are FAB.  These are like a flat bread roll and I shall never go back to boughten again.  Next, I will try Naan bread I think.

I also made Frances' 6 egg Chocolate cake to mop up some of the egg mountain here (I used Goose and Duck eggs).  The recipe is on the side bar.

Today I shall take some seedlings (Nasturtium and Borage, self-seeded here) along to my friend N with the smallholding, and get Keith and Tam to bag up some more donkey and sheep muck-heap manure.  It's good stuff.

Having quickly tired of the price and quality of the supermarket veg and fruit, I put an order in to Chris Thomas's greengrocery warehouse at Abergwili yesterday and Tam went out to collect it.  I went wild and bought a whole BOX of apples (about 150!!) so I shan't run out of those in a hurry. £10 well spent. 3 BIG cucumbers, some lovely big spring onions, more shallots for pickling (a kilo), two big fat courgettes, and fresh strawberries - English ones and SO sweet. They get their delivery on a Tuesday, so it's the best day to buy down there.  Tam was delighted to have a 6 week old donkey foal (one of twins!) canter over to her when she went around the back of the shed for the order. Quite made her day (wish I'd gone along for the ride!)

Have a good day all.

Being creative

Lockdown has given me plenty of time to sew and here are a few of the things I've been working on.  This Autumn colours table runner has now grown and will be a lap quilt!  Quite a bit of this has been sewn in the middle of the night, if I can't sleep.

This is as far as I can get with the final borders on the Baltimore quilt.  Hand-quilted and a pleasure to work on.  Now I am waiting on an order from Doughty's at Hereford of wide sheeting for the back of the charity quilt, and to back the last two borders of this one.

This is the charity quilt nearly finished (Quilts for Care Leavers).  I need to cut some white hexagons and then it's half-hexagons to fill in and square off the edge.  I took out half a dozen blocks which weren't the pretties (a bit pale and wan) and have put other more decorative blocks in.  Hopefully the recipient will like it.  I found this unfinished quilt in a Charity Shop, so they also benefited from its sale.

Well, I had a lovely day in the garden yesterday - feeling confident to stay out there as pollen levels were apparently LOW on Friday - Monday, according to all the pollen recordings on line.  W.R.O.N.G.  At first when I measured my peak flow, it had actually gone up some 40 points, which was reassuring.  So I worked away weeding a very overgrown area in the side border, and made great progress (there is even bare soil to be seen there now!) and also dug over the last triangle in the veg plot, ready to receive "guests" from the Polytunnel, and finished off getting some of the grass out of the rhubarb patch.  However certain you are you have every root, the blardy stuff STILL grows back!

Then in the middle of the night my breathing was bad.  I came down and took my antihistamine early, had a cup of tea and read some of my book (though there is a big pile still to read!!)  If you like family history, then I can recommend this one, set in Hastings, Sussex.

I am wondering if the pollen has affected me because the rain we had broke the pollen down into tiny bits (which is does, particularly if we have had a thunderstorm and heavy rain) and these have gone deep into my lungs.  My GP has explained this to me in the past, but I was lulled into a false sense of security this weekend.  Ah well, time to do the indoor jobs then.

Thanks to Middle Daughter, I had a Shipton Mill flour delivery 10 days ago, so am well topped up with Organic plain and S-R flour, some 00 for pasta making, and some strong Canadian white bread flour too. 

I am off to get a loaf started now, and perhaps make a cake to mop up some of the egg mountain.  I would just LOVE to be outside - and Tam and I had planned a special longer walk as a nod to it being Bank Holiday Monday (Whitsun, as it used to be called).  I hope we can get back to walking together again soon.

Lockdown is a drain on finances

L D Braithwaite in full bloom. Love this deep red colour - it reminds me of the Ena Harkness rose mum used to have in the front garden.

The title of this post says it all.  When you can't get out to shop as you normally would - using Lidl or Aldi for the bulk of your shop, and in my case, the big greengrocers at Abergwili for fruit and veg, the shopping bill soon begins to go up.  Add to that the fact that supermarket online shopping doesn't seem to give you the same offers you would get if you went in person to the shop, there aren't many savings to be made. 

Patio rose Peachy.

Some items just aren't available at supermarkets either - particularly flour - and so I have just had to buy culinary flour from Shipton Mill at £1.30 per Kg bag.  It is organic, which I would prefer anyway, but if I was economising on a weekly shop, I would buy a cheaper bag to tide me over, and not 5 x 1 Kg bags because I don't know when I might next be able to buy it!  I have bought my bread flour in 10 Kg bags from Wessex Mill, but still can't get our favourite Oats and Bran flour from them at the minute.  

Teasing Georgia

Yesterday I had to make an order online for various woodworking stuff for Keith, and paid well over the odds for what he needed, as although there was "free delivery" it wasn't really, as delivery was definitely included on the price of what we were buying, so instead of one delivery cost, we ended up paying 5 lots of delivery charges!  In normal times we would go into town for it . . . I tried a click and collect order from Screwfix, but they didn't have half of what we wanted . . .

Clematis (originally £1.49 or similar price from Morrisons) now climbing the apple tree in the front garden.  Well worth the money!

One delivery I AM looking forward to is some material from Doughtys at Hereford - more fabric for quilt making.  I had to order the backing sheet for the quilt for charity, and needed a hot pink for the borders (hoping it will be near enough the pink used on the blocks).  Also a little treat for me in the form of a pot luck pack of fat quarters of floral print fabrics.  I don't know how long I will have to wait for it though, as their website says they are snowed under with orders and Royal Mail deliveries have up to 14 day delays! Hopefully the latter is resolved now!

 First bloom on the Paul's Himalayan Musk.

Anyway, until I get more fabric, the quilt for charity will be on hold, and I was hand-quilting the first of the 4 strips for the final border on the Baltimore quilt.  Photo will be added later, when I have wiped off the blue fabric marker pattern.  At this rate I shall be starting my William Morris heirloom quilt ahead of schedule!

Saturday's walk Part II - and Time Management

Good evening everyone.  I can't justify spending half the day on the computer, waiting for photos to load, and then to write my post, so I have to do things in bits and pieces.  Here's the next bit of our lovely walk on Saturday, walking on the loop that takes us back within 3/4 mile of home.  The steep grass hill in the background is one I am sure is familiar to regular visitors here.

It's the time of year for the Hawthorn (May) to blossom.  I love the way the branches are like sprays of flowers in a vase.

Looking down on the back of a smallholding.  The steep fields would be a challenge for anything bar sheep really.  I wouldn't like to cut those for hay or silage as quite a steep slope on them.

The long view, looking up the river valley towards home.

The same view in close up between the fronds of bracken.

The little farmhouse and outbuildings which go with that photo of the distant smallholding a few photos back.

Looking across the valley.  To the right you can see the Forestry have been harvesting timber.  The speck of white to the left is a little hippy smallholding, see below for close up.

You can see how quickly the road disappears from sight, which is why we do the walk this way round - DOWN that steep hill!

Tam has a soft spot for this little house.  I think it must be a holiday home as I've never seen anyone there.

White Campion - I saw some on the walk we did past Lady P's stud a couple of weeks back.  Not seen it for MANY years before that.  It's rare round here.

A lovely big beech tree in our smallholding friend's field.

Finally, sheep and her lambs which had shot off up the field when we came into sight.

Well, I have been doing a lot of sewing on the quilt for charity, and am now waiting on backing fabric, and some hot pink to do the border with (with white).  I need to sort out the stencil pattern for the final border on my Baltimore quilt, so I can work on that in my spare time.

I still haven't worked out whether my asthma is taking a pollen hit.  I have a new peak flow meter, but it has a round mouthpiece (my good one that recently died had an oval one) and I can't get a proper seal on it. It doesn't seem to record anything over 400 so I don't know if it has a problem, or it's me!  With the main pollen season in the offing, I have ordered one which seems most like the one I had before.  It will be with me tomorrow.   I've kept out of the sun most of today (and the past couple of days) but whilst Tam was cooking tea (Enchiladas) sat on the patio with two bags of round shallots to turn into more pickled onions.

The birds were singing, and the sun had dropped behind the house so I wasn't roasting and all sorts of random memories were flowing through my head - stuff from childhood, and my Dorset Days, and friends who are no longer with us (you felt so close, Trish).  

I don't know how much longer Lockdown will be in place in Wales, but gosh, we could do with a nice drive out to get a change of scenery!