Autumn's Arrival...

reminds me of the kind of cooking I like doing...soups and stews and bread. In the summer, it's too hot for such fare, but I'm sitting writing this and smelling the wonderful scent of a slowly simmering soup (leek and tattie (potato to the non Scots among us!)). Healthy, filling stuff...no fat, very little salt, low in calories; those of us trying to Lose Weight Through Eating Healthily find these things Very Important! Just veg and water. Yum.

Joining the soup pot out of the cupboard is my slow cooker (crockpot). In there, there is diced pork, with peppers, onions, carrots, tomatoes, mixed herbs, smoked paprika, garlic...that doesn't smell bad, either, and it will taste great (she said modestly...).

Bread, though, I haven't made for a while, and it brings me back to the debate...to buy a bread machine, or not to buy a bread machine. I suspect, on the one hand, that if I did buy a machine, I'd use it. On the other hand, it feels a bit like an unnecessary expense (a bit like a yoghurt 'machine', when all you need is a bowl, some live yoghurt and a warm place...). There's nothing like a bit of hand kneading for getting rid of stress... And I do have some lovely bread recipes... And it doesn't take all that long to do by hand... Oh, decisions, decisions... I'm off to stir the soup.

Oops...

I was woken at 6am on Thursday by the words, Happy Anniversary, dear, here's your present. And as usual, I had forgotten. Sigh. I'm very good with birthdays, but somehow the anniversary just falls out of my head every time. Fortunately, I was going into Norwich anyway, to buy some bits and pieces, so got my dearly beloved a sports anorak to wear to the football (he's Chairman of a local amateur team). But I did have to admit that I'd forgotten...or rather, that I didn't realise that it was the 21st on Friday...I don't keep a diary, don't really read the papers, so how would I know...the date doesn't even come up on my computer screen. I do always know what time it is, though.

And for those of you who count, it's our 28th wedding anniversary. Doesn't time fly when you're having fun? My mother stood arranging my collar on The Day and said, I give it six months. Hah. Shows what she knew... and whilst it's possible I just stuck it out to spite her, it seems unlikely, even for me...particularly as she died three years ago!

The photo was taken at an organic farm in the Borders a couple of weeks ago, just to remind me what the hills look like... the view is stunning, though.

It's All Her Fault...

...that Alison woman, her and her partner, Michael. They came down to visit from Scotland, and after a whirlwind of cleaning and a bit of cooking, I got immersed in a whirlwind of sightseeing and Having A Good Time, which involved eating lots, drinking quite a bit and generally having FUN! No time to blog at all...

And now the party's over...awww...and I'm back to normality such as it is experienced here (ie messy, disorganised and full of art. You know you don't clean enough when the thing that you thought was a dried up leaf was actually a mummified mouse...either that, or I'm needing my eyes tested. It was definitely mummified, though; we saw a mummified cat at Lavenham, an exhibit at the Guild House there. Apparently they used to put dead cats up chimneys in ye olden days, to scare off bad spirits and the like. Not sure what a mouse would scare away...probably all visitors in future, if they're reading this blog...

I was also presented with a dead mouse this morning. Breakfast in bed, according to Advo. Time to get up, in my opinion. Yuk.
ps Alison, I told you I would put that photo on my blog...you didn't believe me, did you... hehehe...

Millie...

looks remarkably comfortable up there, doesn't she? She's lying on some of the strips I've cut for Andrew and Sarah's quilt, and she's trying to snooze, despite the attentions of her beloved Advo. Twas not always so; when we got her, she was a frightened six month old kitten, mother of her own litter (Merlin was one of hers, the runt of the litter, apparently, but that's another story altogether.). The thing about Millie was that she had a very black and white approach to life. Cats, she said, were not allowed on the furniture. If she saw her sister Mollie up on the sofa, or Merlin, for that matter, she would box their ears and screech at them. Same if they sat on anything that wasn't a newspaper. Or even without any provocation at all. Attack first, ask questions afterwards, that was our Millie. (Mind you, she had the sense not to attack Advo, though she has been known to dot him over the nose if he importunes...).

The vet explained that she could cope with cats, or she could cope with humans, but not both together in the same household. So the other cats Got It, as we were a bit on the big side for attacking. Gradually, over the time we've had her, she has relaxed. She now sits on my knee, sometimes, purring. She gets on the bed for a snooze like everyone else; the table, too, any quilt that happens to be around, whatever. She purrs with enthusiasm when stroked, and she talks endlessly, particularly if there's no grub in the bowls.

She's a changed cat. Amazing what a lot of love will do for a cat. Or a human, for that matter.... it's all just a question of time and faith.

Froggy...

was basking happily in the shallows on Friday. I haven't looked today, but given that it's around 80 deg, he's doubtless doing the same today. Though we've always lived in rural or semi rural communities, this is the first garden in which we've had a pond. It delights us both. This year, the frogs have been particularly enthusiastic, and lots of tiny baby frogs are leaping in and out of the pond. They get bottom marks for brains, though; I put in a 'bridge', a piece of wood that I thought would be easier for them to use to get out of the pond. Instead, they ignore it, or, in one or two instances, scramble up the side of the 'bridge' to get to the edge of the pond and then climb up the much steeper incline. This is not the brightest behaviour I've ever seen in an animal...

The newts are incredible too. Every so often, there's a flash of orange belly in the pondweed, and another newt sculls by. They are such beautiful animals, in movement and repose. And then of course, there's the dragonflies dancing around the pond. We didn't have dragonflies in Scotland, their shimmering grace is a delight.

And then, of course, there's the domestic animals, the four cats. Or is it five? We seem to have acquired a fifth, or at least a half of a fifth (the half that eats...). Black as midnight, thin as a rake, with a torn (and healed) ear and a terror of all humans (I'm sure it's not just us...). Not sure if it's a he or a she, but it gets on tolerably well with all the cats here, though we do hear it crying a lot, perhaps it's more of an armed truce. It does have a tendency to sneak in when nobody's looking, and wolf up whatever food is around at a rate of knots. We heard it coughing yesterday, and hope that it'll calm down around us sufficiently for us to be able to see if it really is ill, and if so, to allow us to help it. I'm planning to spend a bit of time in the garden next week, preparing a place for my new shudio, perhaps we can get to know each other a bit better that way... though my four tend to congregate around me in the garden, as if to say, hey, what *are* you doing here, this is our space...

Losing It

I go through life forgetting, misplacing, and downright losing things. It used to be handbags, as a teenager. It took a while to remember that I was carrying one at all...and more than one bank account has been frozen while I look for the bag in which the cheque book was carried. And yes, I've been known to mislay a credit card, but that was later... What else? Keys were a favourite. But for some reason, the current 'lostit' is my camera. Which is a Big Problem, as I can't take pictures for my blogs...or the book...or anything else for that matter. (This is a pic of Oxburgh, taken some time ago; blogging without pictures seems somehow unnatural.)

So, I mentioned it to Robin, who wandered around the house, muttering. How could anyone *lose* a camera, particularly a camera the size of mine, with a Big Lens. How could anyone *lose* something that had cost so much money (he's an accountant, bless him, he can't help himself). He didn't say, stupid woman, but it was all in there between the lines...

This is not the first time I've lost a camera, of course. I lost the first digital I had during the move to Norfolk. I had it in the temporary house, and then suddenly didn't have it when we moved to our permanent address. I thought I'd put it in a box, but I'd unpacked all the boxes, and it didn't turn up... Lost, right? So I bought another (the one that's currently lost). And three months after that, I opened the box with the computer stuff in it and...there was my camera, nestling securely amongst the discs, grinning smugly. There had been logic in that, of course. I'd figured that I wouldn't lose the box with the discs in it, so that made it a good place to put the camera, which does, after all, have a connection with the computer, so I'd remember, right? (Wrong, as it turns out, but it was a good thought...). So that camera went to a friend, and I kept my nice shiny new one...only to...misplace it.... sob. Anyone seen a camera???

Drookit.

Very. I'm grateful that I didn't have to go out today, as after a grey start to the day, it started to rain around 2pm and has only just stopped. We have a puddle the size of a paddling pool outside the front door, but, fortunately, nothing worse. Sally was on the phone this morning prior to moving all sorts of things from the ground floor to the upper parts of the house, but fortunately, despite her worries, the stream in her garden stayed where it was supposed to...though some neighbours have flooded houses to contend with.

I suspect the only creatures happy about the rain in our garden are the newts and frogs. We've been watching the frogs metamorphose from wiggly, squiggly tadpoles to miniscule frogs that can leap far higher than their own height. I do wonder about their sense of direction, or just their sense, perhaps, as they spend ages scrambling out of the pond only to take a leap one way, then leap straight back in again, and begin the process All Over Again.

I, on the other hand, having intended to go out and start Cutting Things Down to allow the erection of a large shed, or should that be shudio, decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and remained undrookit. Works for me.

ps drookit in Scots means soaked or drenched. As in the expression 'ye look like a drookit rat', which I'm sure was applicable to lots of people in the UK today...