Windfalls

 In other news, I knitted a bunny for grandson 

as a companion for the elephant I knitted granddaughter

using another one of Julie Williams' wonderful patterns.

I cheated with the jumper as I had some self-striping wool 

left over and it meant fewer ends to sew in.

The garden is getting tangled and unmanageable.

So naturally I turned my attention to something tangled that I could sort out -

the ribbon drawer.

This is kept in a small chest of drawers that used to house

 my father's wireless-making equipment.

Top drawer buttons,

second drawer spools of thread,

third drawer tape measures, needles, pins, fixings and scissors,

fourth drawer, ribbons.

As a child there was a ribbon drawer for my hair.

I loved choosing a ribbon for the day.

They didn't stay in my hair for long though.

Now I come to think of it, there was a handkerchief drawer too.

Does anyone still give a child a clean hanky each day?

We had a pocket in our school knickers for them.

How bizarre!

A colourful hanky was a vital accessory for the ferryman game.

You chanted in a line opposite one child,

Ferry me across the river,

do boatman do.

For I've a penny in my purse and my eyes are blue.

(They aren't but that didn't seem to matter.)

Then the boatman would say. 

I'll ferry you across the river if you can show me something with the colour ...

and then you had to produce said item.

If you couldn't and with a brown school uniform it was a challenge

for the unprepared,

you had to race across the invisible river without being caught.

Miniature autumn tints in the bonsai walk at Wisley.

Giant pale pumpkin looking like 

a giant something else in the vegetable garden.

Windfall apples in the orchard at Wisley.

Too tempting not to try several of them and lament 

the paucity of choice in our supermarkets and greengrocers.

They all tasted so different.

When I say all, I mean a few.

I so wished I could pick these for crab apple jelly.

I seem to have been waylaid by Instagram. I thought it would never happen.

You might like to pick up some windfalls over there from time to time.

Swatch

I'd like a chaise longue covered in

moorhen's foot green velvet.

In the detail

We hotfooted it up to the Lake District for two days

in search of mizzle, lowering clouds and cool temperatures,

reliably on offer on previous occasions as I remembered.

Instead, we found a fair facsimile of the weather 

we've been having down South.

Normally so very welcome.

Fortunately we also found the holiday home of one man's dreams:

Blackwell overlooking Windermere,

an Arts & Crafts house,

designed by MH Baillie Scott

for Sir Edward Holt and his family.

Every detail was exquisitely crafted,

and preserved intact thanks to years used as a girl's school,

with boards put up to protect the original features.

Tiles by William de Morgan.

As much as I marvelled at the

skill and workmanship on display throughout a house

where no expense was spared

I was also bowled over by the precision

of the dry stone wall builders

seen everywhere on our walks.

Torpor

Just as I no longer believe that we will ever emerge from under the scaffolding,

our roofers having abandoned us for unfathomable reasons of their own,

I also no longer believe that there will be an end to blue skies and stifling heat.

In reality there can only be the briefest interlude of 'perfect' summer weather.

It is forecast and eagerly anticipated.

It arrives and is greeted with joy, and plans for a picnic,

then the doubts set in.

Will it last?

Will it last until important outdoor event x?

Then it does last and the heat builds.

New doubts perturb us.

It is too dry. Reservoirs will empty.

Farmers are worried.

What are those sheep eating

down there on the brown marshes?

My fig tree has lost its leaves.

How do they survive in Greece?

A hose pipe ban is inevitable.

It is too hot to sleep at night.

People behave oddly in the street outside at 2am.

It is too hot to go walking at midday.

I fall asleep instead.

I haven't put enough factor 50 on.

The new baby will overheat.

Linen is scratchy and doesn't look good corrugated around my waist.

Somehow the perfect endless summer of our winter dreams

has played a trick on us.

Two weeks is quite enough as long as it covers

important outdoor event x.

22C is just nice as long as there isn't a brisk NE wind.

This. This is just taking a good thing too far.

One thing and another

My headmistress had no suggestions to offer me for my future 

apart from occupational therapy.

I looked it up in the dusty Careers Room and saw that it meant basket making.

This may be why it has taken me 47 years 

to get around to making a basket.

I went on a one day course at Charleston Farmhouse

and came out with a willow  basket that now has pride of place

on the table, but I don't think I'll be making another one.

A visit to Eastbourne, 

the first place in the country to have an average age of over 70,

has persuaded me to buck up my ideas about the rest of my future.

Meanwhile gardens continue to delight.

My day lilies

and Sissinghurst's - 

only a tower and a flagpole missing from mine.

Seeking shade I lingered between high yew hedges

and sheltered in the gazebo,

away from those pesky strolling tourists.

I leave you with this three year old's depiction

of a sad fox howling at the moon.

Time to get the crayons out again I think.

Small beginnings. . .

. . .again.