Dreamy

This summer has a dreamlike quality to it. 

The children are poised between childhood and adolescence - they remind me of wet butterflies, emerging from their chrysalides.  This summer they don't want to go on trips, or have adventures.  They don't want to be entertained.  They want to read, to draw, to lie full length on the sofa and mull over ideas.  These moments of reflection are interspersed with days at friends' houses, or the arrival of friends at our house.  I expect there will never be another summer quite like this one - by this time next year the children will have changed again.

And I know - I really do - that I too am poised on the brink of change.  I sit outside in the evening, listening to Radio 4, and reading books about study skills.

 

The last time I was at University I had never heard of the phrase 'study skills' and every essay was an exercise in winging it.  This time, things seem more professional - I think my essays may be much better structured, and certainly more crafted, as a result.
 

I enjoy this stillness, and this reflection.  Perhaps I am picking this up from the children.  There are two weeks of holiday left for them, and just over three weeks for me - plenty of time for more dozing on the sofa, philosophical discussions about Modern Warfare III, baking of cakes and reading of books and kindles.

I am enjoying this unstructured, floaty sort of summer very much.

Summer 2012 - I like you too

Spring greens

It is raining outside.  A constant drip-drip-drip for pretty much the past ten days.  Living in East London this is a novelty because we haven't had any significant rainfall all winter, and we are now officially in drought.  I am rather excited about the rain, because I haven't seen it for so long.

The garden is green and lush - I'm not allowed to use a hosepipe any more because of the water shortage, but I don't need to at the moment.  I've been buying geraniums, herbs and lavenders for the garden, and potting them up a few at a time, when the rain eases to a drizzle.  The vivid pinks of the geranium flowers, mixed in with the bright, wet greens of all the grass and shrubbery, is very pleasing to the eye.

And when the rain gets too heavy, I come back inside and pick up my knitting, which is in the same shade of vivid spring green. 

French spring green shawl

I am knitting myself another shawl from this pattern, but instead of the multicoloured sock yarn version I did last time, I am making this one from a green linen and wool handspun yarn that I bought with Mum in France over Easter. 

Walking through Bruniquel to the castle.  We filled Mum's basket with yarn.

A poster for Bruniquel's textile fair

We heard that there was a textile fair at a local castle, and went along on a cool, wet day much like today, not really knowing what to expect.  What we found was the most amazing selection of hand spun and hand dyed yarns and knitted and felted garments from right across the South of France.  Mum dived in to the mohairs, alpacas and angoras, and I was captivated by the linen blends and the bright colours.  We filled Mum's basket with yarn - a modest three skeins each - and came home with hastily scribbled notes about needle size and yarn blends stuffed into our pockets.

The colour of this green yarn was exactly the same shade as the new oak leaves bursting forth in the French forests while we were there, and now it is the exact same shade as the geranium leaves in London.  Perfect.

Spring jobs

South-West France in springtime is lush and rampant. 

We have been helping my parents clear up the dead autumn leaves and stalks, and get everything neat and tidy for spring.

We raked, swept, tidied, lifted, wheeled barrows, dug, sorted and carried.  We burnt probably 40 barrow loads of leaves on a big bonfire.

Meanwhile, C has been baking again - he made us an enormous black forest gateau from the Hairy Bikers Bakeation book, which was just the thing to put back some of the calories we had worked off in the garden.

Time off

Half-term reading for C

Time off is always welcome - and time off from school is particularly appreciated around here, even though school itself is generally enjoyed.  This past week the children were off school for half term, and G took a week off work as well, so we all had a week off at home together which felt very special.

We crammed our week with Good Things:

• a family trip to Kew Gardens with cousins, uncle and aunt.  With the aid of a toppled snowman, C was taller than both Uncle and Dad for the first time.



G, C and Uncle M

• a family trip to Cambridge to see the newest member of the family, and another uncle and aunt.  O took approximately 200 photos of her smallest cousin.



Baby A's perfect little hand

• a birthday for G
• a trip to the other side of London to celebrate a milestone birthday for G's father



O reading and C listening to his iPod on the tube

• a long walk through the forest with old friends
• a day chilling out with more old friends, some computer games, and knitting for the Mums


Slow but steady progress on my shawl

• a day at the Olympic Park to watch the Track Cycling World Cup at the velodrome



Cheering on Team GB at the velodrome

Everyone's back at school and work today, and I miss them.  I am tidying, and cleaning, and setting the house back to normal.  It feels too quiet, but I go back to noticing - and appreciating - the small things. 

I spent a happy half hour in the garden this morning, chatting to the hens as I cleaned out their eglu and inspecting the progress of the buds and bulbs.  While we've been having time off with family and friends over half-term, the plants in the garden have been hard at work.  Spring is so nearly here.

Snowdrops

Clematis bud

Winter and woollens

I've used Silverpebble's and Thrifty Household's excellent Making Winter project to start something I've been meaning to do for a while: taking time out of my day, every day, to stand or sit outside for ten minutes and drink a cup of tea or coffee.  I think even in the very depths of winter I would get enjoyment from wrapping up warmly, stepping out into the garden and watching what's going on around me as I sip a hot drink and think about what needs to be done with my day.

Today I looked at the lavender bush where I saw Mr Toad back in May.  The lavender bush did pretty well this year but I realised that I still need to cut off the dead flower stalks.

I checked that the hens were happy under their new rain cover.  They get a new one every winter, and I spend each spring and summer looking for perfectly clear shower curtains that I can use.  Gill found this one for me in the Habitat closing down sale.

I marvelled at the amount of cherry leaves that had fallen in just one day since I last cleared them all up.  I love how they look on the green grass, but if I leave them there, we will have no grass next summer...so every week or so I rake them up.

And I drank my cup of tea and rejoiced at my toasty warm shoulders and wrists.  As well as Making Winter, there's something else that has caught my eye this month: Wovember.  This is Kate Davies' and Felicity Ford's campaign and celebration of 100% wool.  I was as appalled as Kate was to discover, when I read her blog last month, that an item of clothing that contains no wool whatsoever can still legally use the word wool or woollen in its description.  Wovember has been set up as a way to highlight this issue, campaign to change it, and at the same time celebrate everything 100% wool.

My shawl is knitted from sock yarn, which is a wool blend of 75% wool and 25% polyamide.  This enables socks and shawls and anything else knitted with it to be subjected to lots of use and regularly chucked in the washing machine.  My armwarmers are 100% wool, from merino sheep, and I just love them to bits.  They are incredibly warm, and perfect for pulling over my hands as I clutch my early morning cup of tea.

Summertime

For so long, it seems, I've been making Grand Plans about all the complicated, indulgent and time-consuming things I was going to do once the ironman was over and family life wasn't dominated by G's training schedules.

But it turns out that its not about Grand Plans at all.  It's about the joy of going back to a more flexible, unstructured life with time to spare for the small things.

We sat in the garden together, early this morning before G went to work and while the children were still in bed, drinking coffee and listening to the chickens potter around.  A formation of geese flew overhead, so low that we could hear the swoosh of air from their wings.  I watched a caterpillar crawl up the lilac tree and we talked about books.

The rhythm of the week ~ Sunday

Sundays begin on Saturday evenings these days. 

The race bike comes down from its bed of blankets in the loft and is loaded with snickers bars and sports gels ready for a 6am start on Sunday morning.

With just four weeks until his ironman race, G is at absolute peak fitness and spends his Sundays out on a 6 or 7 hour bike ride followed immediately by an hour's run.  I am in awe that anyone can do this amount of exercise and still vaguely function at the end of it.

He comes back with odd tan marks (from cycling gloves paired with a sleeveless tri-suit), and sits contentedly in the garden, soaking up the evening sunshine and telling me how fast he cycled (very fast). 

We're missing him while he's doing all this training, but so proud of him for all his hard work and dedication.  Only four weeks left.

An eclectic list of small happinesses

It is still the small things which are delighting me this week.

• Progress - at last - from the Foreign Office, who have been slowly preparing important certificates for me and G, so that we can get married in France.  G's certificate is finally here, and mine is on its way.  The deadline for handing them in to the Mairie is next week, so I can breathe a little easier now.

• By contrast, the officicial translators we've used have been a model of efficiency and speed.  We have to get all our birth certificates translated into French by a traducteur assermenté (official translator) and we used Bond Street Translators, who have been incredibly quick and helpful.  Should you ever need anything official translating into French, these are your people.
• C has been awaded Young Runner of the Year by our local Park Run, and we are so proud of him!  He came home from this morning's run with a big box of chocolates, a fancy certificate and a big grin on his face.

• The garden has had a proper drenching from the weird, stormy weather we've been having all week.  It really needed it, and now all my busy lizzies and geraniums are dazzlingly bright and producing new buds.
• I made a cotton summer dress for one of O's friends, using the Japanese pattern book I blogged about here.  The fabric is what makes this dress so special - a metre length of printed cotton from Ikea.  Ikea always have a few properly stunning fabrics in stock, and if you live close to one it is well worth popping in regularly to see what you can find.  Many fabrics have print that is a little too big for dressmaking but every now and then you hit the jackpot, like with this bird one.

• I saw photos of my nephews and niece having fun on holiday in Norfolk.  The picture of my 18 month old nephew looking very solemn, in a wetsuit, was too sweet for words.  He looks so much more a part of the family now that he is big enough to run around the beach with his older brother and sister.
• I made fresh strawberry and vanilla muffins for brunch this morning.  They taste and smell of summer.
• G has headed off to Snowdonia with his bike, wetsuit and other triathlon clobber for a half-ironman race tomorrow.  He's well rested, filled with carbs and optimistic for a good time and straightforward race.  Or at least he was until he saw the latest weather forecast.
• While G is away, secret plans are afoot for Father's Day next week. Sshhh!

10 things

• I am very excited to be going camping this weekend.  Old, dear friends, sunshine, good food, celebratory drinks and all the children running wild in the woods.  It will be an excellent weekend.
• Another old, dear friend has started a blog.  Since she moved up north I very rarely get to see her, so I love that I can keep up with what she's been doing and cooking more easily now.  Check out the malteser cupcakes and her Mum's wonderful bread pudding (which I made last weekend and went down a storm with the whole family).
• I am late to the party, but listening to Adele's 21 album at the moment.  It is fantastic.
• I find that I very rarely get sentimental about the passing of a stage in the children's development.  I am always ready for the next stage.  No more crawling?  I just loved that they were walking.  Sad to pack away the cot? No - just loving how sweet they looked in the big bed.  And so suddenly I find I'm excited about C starting High School and the soon-to-be teenage years.  Bring it on.
• In this spirit I made him some new curtains - bye bye to the curtains printed with baby giraffes that I made when I was pregnant with him, and hello to bright, funky, green, abstract curtains.

• G is cycling 180km to Cambridge and back today - the same distance that he will have to do in his Ironman race this summer.  I still find it hard to get my head around the distances involved.  In the actual race he'll already have done a long swim, and when he gets off his bike he'll then run a marathon for the last leg.
• I am still a couple of years off 40, but I suddenly find myself seeing the point of gardening for the very first time.  This feels like some kind of middle-aged enlightenment.  When I turn 40 will I want to get myself one of those kneeler pads?
• I'm baking a great deal of soda bread.  Mainly because it's so quick and easy. Weigh ingredients, stir, plonk on baking sheet, bake.  All done in 50 minutes.

• I've also been making these onion bread rolls, which are delicious - especially with a couple of rashers of bacon and  a squirt of ketchup inside for breakfast.
• How did it get to be June already?

Meet my new friend

Can you see who's hiding under the lavender bush?

No, I thought not.  He's very good at hiding.

This is my friend Mr Toad.  He moved into our garden while we were in France and I have grown very fond of him.  We play Hide & Seek each morning, when I go into the garden to feed the hens.  Sometimes I find him under the lavender, sometimes he's beneath a giant rhubarb leaf and very often I see him peering out at me from behind the ivy.

Washing on the line

Along with the first bunches of daffodils, the first few times each year that I hang the washing on the line outside tell me that spring has arrived.

Today is a gloriously light, bright sunny day and I was up early to hang washing on the line.  I wish I could say that the washing was pretty - Cath Kidston tea towels maybe, or vintage handkerchiefs, or delightful homemade floral dresses... but in fact it was a heap of 100% pure nylon sports kit belonging to G and C.

The very feel of it sets my teeth on edge, and I struggle to peg it - slippery and damp - onto the line.  It is all one of three colours - white (yet mudstained - you cannot get mud stains out of 100% pure dri-fit nylon), black or dark blue.  No pinks or reds, no Liberty-like florals, no faded chintzes.  Such disappointing washing to hang up on a beautiful spring day.

But my peg bag lifts my spirits, and in the sunny corner of the garden there are daffodils, beaming in the sunshine.

There are currently two peg bags similar to mine listed in my Etsy shop.  If you also find yourself with sad, black, nylon washing on a beautiful spring day, then consider buying one to inject a bit of femininity and floral, cotton charm back into the laundry.

I console myself with the thought that at least all this horrid functional sportswear will smell gorgeous after hanging on the line all morning.  Until it is taken out for a run in the forest and covered in mud and sweat once again....

Photos of our Christmas - part I

To mark the darkest day of the year, I cut some evergreens when I went outside to feed the chickens this morning.

Now we have ivy on the mantelpiece.

And vividly scented, vividly coloured stems from the mock-orange bush (Philadelphus) on the table.

~~~~~~~~~~

From now until Christmas Eve I will be sharing, each day, a few photos of what Christmas is like in our house.  Cake and board games may feature quite heavily.