A few days early, I know, to say ‘Happy New Year’ but life’s going to get busy again, with work and socialising … so here are a few frosty photos.
I went for a walk this morning down into the local park and then down to the canal. It was a wonderful morning, though my fingers became a little chilled as I found I couldn’t really control the camera with gloves on! Continue reading “Happy New Year”
I had an enjoyable evening making the wreath for the door, but decided it made a better table decoration.
Happy Christmas to one and all.
The photo competition, which asked for ‘photos which focusses on some detail we may usually overlook’ had an encouraging number of entries, considering how quiet it is currently around these parts.
Ara’s delicate silhouetted tree was the first entry, and a striking one at that, with blue sky and pink tinged clouds in the background, plus the chance to see the flowers and the green of the leaves faintly against the house.
(Personally I feel the strength of the image may have been improved by cropping to keep just the silhouetted image, loosing the house.) Continue reading “Pseu’s ‘Detail’ photo competition, results, November 16th 2014”
Evening all,
here is the next photo competition – with apologies for my tardy response.
Please post a photo which focusses on some detail we may usually overlook.
Continue reading “New photo competition, ‘DETAIL’ – closing date UK midnight, 15th November”
I have just managed to post a photo in comments…. and without following any complex instructions. SO now I shall test if I can do this again and if I can give good instructions on ‘how’ for others.
Here are two pictures, loaded in the usual way through the add media button
Continue reading “‘Testing’ for photos in comments”
It has felt like September for a couple of weeks now and the garden has taken on a distinctively ‘early Autumn’ look, with leaves turning and spiders’ gossamer glinting in sunlight, or glistening with dew or raindrops in the early morning.
The hedgerows are full of berries: rose-hips, haws, blackberries, sloes and many others. Just off to pick a few more sloes. Anyone have a good recipe for sloe gin?
We have a surfeit of vegetables which my off-spring won’t eat, so I have made this morning a soup to take into work – just tasted it and it is delicious, though I say so myself.
Beetroot and courgette soup
Three medium beetroot, boiled until cooked, the skins slipped off and the beet chopped up
One courgette not too large, sliced (mine are the yellow skinned variety)
One onion, peeled and sliced
one clove garlic, peeled and sliced
salt and pepper
a little lemon juice
Soften onions in oil over a gentle heat, add garlic and sliced courgette, and soften a little longer without colouring.
Add the beetroot, and stock to cover. Cook 5 mins.
Blend, season and sup.
Looks very pretty with a swirl of cream stirred in.
Does anyone else have an unusual mix of ingredients to make a summer soup?
A few weeks ago I was invited to an event at Rousham, a rather wonderful privately owned garden which is open to the public, but not to children, from 10 am to dusk each day.
The event was a fund raiser for a group of cyclists (The Valley Girls) who are planning a cycling trip across India. The star attraction was advertised as being ‘Pippa Greenwood, giving a talk about growing vegetables’ – plus a chance to mingle and nibble with a glass of wine and wander the garden until dusk. For me the star attraction was the chance to see the wonderful garden.
The weather was not promising. There were several heavy downpours of rain in the few hours leading up to the start of the evening, and I debated going in wellies… however the clouds cleared and we had a lovely evening among the borders.
Before the 11 plus our primary school classroom would be full of the sound of children’s voices chanting their times tables, and other important facts, such as length from inches up to miles, depths in fathoms, areas in hectares and acres, weights up to tons….but most of these facts are lost to me, partly I suppose because of decimalisation, negating the need to know in so much detail. I didn’t find rote learning a useful tool, quite often finding myself speaking the ‘Nine eights are…’ then mumbling the rest. I do know of course now know my most of my times tables and have strategies for checking my memory! What I remember from those classroom days are random things like the texture of the speckled paint, the smells, the anxieties, the friendship inconsistencies, the risk of having one’s head knocked sideways for not knowing the value of a minim….
I wonder if any of the Charioteers can remember the wordings for rest of these classroom chants…. this is to do with a poetry project I’m working on. Interweb searching has not yielded results!
And just to prettify the post, here is a picture. Continue reading “Rote learning”
My second entry to the photo competition
Boadicea's Chariot 
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