Idle Rambling

First of all, Mr Nicholas, nice try, but these are elderberries my friend:



A little darker red than the mystery berries you'll notice. I still have no clue what those super bright red berries are though. We need to get Loula on the blogging scene because she would definitely know - she is the queen of wild flora and indeed of foliage in general!!

Secondly, your 'prize' for having made the best attempt at my little hedgerow challenge....a little something to satisfy your self-professed interest in signs:



And finally, whilst providing photographic evidence of the idle ramblings I have been undetaking whilst - perhaps pre-emptively - luxuriating in the long summers afforded those of a teacherly disposition, I would like to share with you a little something that tickled me today, as I was idly reading a couple of books I had bought today in my favourite cafe in Durham - which never fails to serve me deliciously frothy hot chocolate - the chapter on 'The Ramble', penned at 5 p.m., by the great Idler, Tom Hodgikson, author of my new bible, How to be Idle:

"...the act of ambling is a revolt. It is a statement against bourgeois values, against goal-centred living, busy-ness, bustle, toil and trouble. For the creative spirit, the act of walking harmonizes work and play."

Long live the Wold's Way, I say!!!

I can imagine my revolutionary brother having loved this sentiment when he read it!

And just for the sheer ticklement of it:

a) I loved the citation of Victor Hugo's reference to buses as 'travelling balconies'...exactly why I far prefer to be transported around London by bus than the stinking sweaty tube;

b) I was amused to read something I had never heard previously on the subject of Wordsworth and Coleridge, that a spy, sent - because the Home Office was suspicious of their seemingly aimless amblings in the countryside (as well as, let's admit it, their radical views) - "to monitor their activities saw the two poets taking notes on the riverbank and assumed that they were plotting to bring firearms from Bristol for a planned insurrection." When of course they were just letting their creative spirits roam....highly suspicious!!!

Hedgerows!!

Oh how exciting. This is really VERY exciting.

When Rich's parents came to visit us, we took them for a little walk along the lane, through the fields, you know the story, and Rich's Dad, John, for some reason had hit on the idea that I would be interested in things I could pick from the hedgerows for cooking with, which is true, and he was enthusiastically pointing out to me, Lisa look, here are hazelnuts you can pick (imagine soft thick lilting north yorkshire country accent), they'll be ready soon, and sloes, you can make sloe gin, and so on. And I was so excited about the prospect I took the Richi out for a walk along the same route last night to check on the readiness of the hedgerow offerings that apparently we could live off, but only blackberries were ready



(I say only, I mean, that is exciting in itself, I am going to make a blackberry crumble, and that is one of the great delights of the English autumn) and I set myself to wondering when those hazelnuts would be ready to be made into a cake and I thought to myself I bet the inter-web has the answer and so I looked and I found the sweetest recipe page I have ever come across on the inter-web or indeed in a recipe book, and so I post it here for your fond delight, but also for my own posterity so that I can check it and refer to it when I have picked my hazelnuts, sloes, and rosehips. I knew there must be something I could do with rosehips - they look so ripe and bulging. Anyway, check it out!

Over the garden gate!!

Okay, before I leave you to wander in the garden according to your own whims, I would like to set you a challenge.....just WHAT are these berries???



They are very red! And I suppose I could find the answer on the inter-web myself....but where would be the fun in that. Prizes for those submitting answers before sunday noon!!!

Other delights that can be found in the hedgerows:




Bye XXX

Coffee...

Hello good morning perhaps I should say good afternoon perhaps this finds you in the evening in which case I hope that is good too. Today I find myself with an intense pressure headache clouding my vision and my thoughts. I feel like a drug addict. The reason I describe myself in that way is that I think I am suffering withdrawal symptoms from an evil coffee I discovered in the market from the eccentric ee's and wizz man on the first stall to your left as you come from the entrance by the market tavern. I could, if I were that way inclined, develop a conspiracy theory about this man and what he has put in his coffee. Because Rich and I do have a theory that this chap is a leftover from the 60s, wearing long baggy black robes, a shaggy mane, a straggly beard, and a strange faraway, never quite ready to make the connection with the person he is talking to, kind of an expression, giving the impression that maybe he had too much orgiastic sex and took too many drugs in the 60s, leaving him to live out the remaining decades just a little bit zombified. Anyway, he has a shelf stacked with jars of coffee beans and being an experimental sort of a person - sometimes - I thought, ooh, Turkish coffee, extra strong, extra dark, sounds good. Of course I knew in the same moment that it also sounded dangerous to one with such a delicate consitution as myself, but as is so often the case when one's sensible side is up against one's sensory desires, the little sensible fairy sitting on my right shoulder was ignored, went off in a sulk, and all I can guess is that she is now getting me back. Because I kept having really bad sleep last week, and I thought to myself what is the reason for this, and some instinctive knowledge popped up inside whispering that it was that extra dark extra strong Turkish coffee. And I didn't have any this morning, at all, not even any other kind of coffee, and that's why I think my head feels like exploding. I may be wrong. But just in case my cookie theories aren't entirely half-cock, I cycled into the nearest town and bought some less strong dark coffee.

You will have noticed that my usually colourful entry has been entirely black and unvaried thus far. It is a reflection of my dopey state that I didn't even think of giving you a little colour until now. And the reason I have introduced some colour in this new paragraph, is to signify a different intent. I actually began my blog wanting to share with you - as promised - some of the plantings in my garden. But, as is so often the case, when I began writing, some other force took over and a stream of coffee consciousness ensued. I was actually hoping to post a picture with my last blog, but as I am new to these things, I have to confess that I couldn't manage to do it until my personal wizard faxed me the necessary coding, which, now that I have at my disposal, I intend to use, ah yes, it is true.



So at first I thought this might be a beetroot. I have a great fondness for beetroots, and have just delighted to discover a Polish recipe for beetroot with venison, which I randomly decided to experiment with given the proximity of a Teesdale game counter to the excellent cheese counter in the market, which has the virtue of letting you try before you buy and even if you don't, but I wasn't so cheeky. Anyway, the point is that this isn't really a beetroot, I think it is more likely to be a swedey turnipy type thing - Lou help me out here, you're better with all forms of vegetation than me!!!

Actually the point wasn't really what kind of a vegetable it was, more that this particular vegetable was planted amidst the neatest, bulging-with-health-iest rows of vegetables I have ever seen, in the most exuberantly colourful flower-blooming garden I have ever seen, in a tiny ruined house opposite the well-preserved castle at the far end of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.





And we weren't expecting to find it, my fellow travellers and I, but there it was, apparently famous, due to the renown of the horticultural architect who had originally designed and planted what we had come across within those four wind-wracked walls. Gertrude Jeckell I think she's called. And I can only imagine that the plants thrive so beautifully because of the rich salt soaked air from the sea gusting through those sweet peas,





real peas,



ox-eyed daisies,



and cornflowers.



But it was lovely, quite lovely. Whilst Rich and Dave sat, marginally disinterested, on a bench





by the sundial,




Lou and I absorbed ourselves in an effusion of flowers.

The end.

Attitude(s) to Blogs

Gloomy colours today to reflect the mood outside.

Of course one has to admit that this is most welcome in the garden, and as we speak, I can hear the plants rejoicing (even the herbs on my windowsill, as I have a lavendar with a particular intolerance of too much water, recently having developed fluffy mould which caused me no end of concern until my wise green-fingered mother suggested letting her sit outside to dry out in the sun, well imagine if I had of done that today, my little lavendar would have been most disgruntled, and no doubt refused to grow at all).

But anyway, that wasn't really the subject in my mind as I sat down to share my thoughts with those good enough to visit the garden and enter into my thought bubble awhile.

No, I wanted to share my thoughts on blogs, because since finding myself drawn into the enticing world of virtually represented inner worlds, I recalled a conversation with the two first visitors to the garden, in which I was most disparaging about excessive cyber communication, not comprehending the point of a blog, and concerned that this absorportion in communication mediated via a screen and a keypad was, if not damaging the more real face-to-face interactions between people, at least limiting them, encouraging us to behave in an increasingly insular fashion. I'm sure there were more points I was making, as we sat around the dining room table in the house whose garden we had erected tents in, on the 2nd night of the epic Easter Wolds Way walk....but alas, and also, as ever, my memory fails me.

So I had been thinking about this negative perspective in relation to my dawning realisation of the advantages of the blog....and I realised that in a way it enables a different kind of communication, by encouraging friends to interact with representations of each others' interior worlds, and rather than drily limiting the sensory involvement in interaction, it enhances the scope for us to represent ourselves visually, as well as aurally, and of course verbally. And because we are not writing for any particular person's ear, as with an email, but for a general person, and also for ourselves, what seeps out of the blog we create, is not the particular aspect of ourselves that is drawn out in relation to the dynamic that exists between, and is created by, our interaction with any given individual, but any, perhaps all, the aspects within ourselves, assuming a blog is maintained over a period of time, thus allowing for changes in disposition.

And I thought that as I had previously been so disparaging, and yet in my own mind had recognised a development in my attitude, I should share that development with those to whom I had initially expressed the initial uninformed attitude. That's all that comes to mind on the subject for the moment, but I would be most interested to hear other, complementary, contrasting or tangential thoughts on the matter from those gracious enough to spend time in my garden.

To be honest, this little blog only began so that I could steer comments into my sister's Station, in response to the intriguing image splattered and artfully phrased insights into her oft-concealed inner world. And although I have only created my virtual thought repository in order to do so, in true pois fashion, I became quite excited by the prospect of shaping a world according to the workings of my own imagination. And so I welcome you to the bottom of the garden, where peas are planted, fairies roam and the thoughts of Liselapois float up and around like bubbles. Come back soon...with each season, you will find changes in the fragrance of the flora, the range of vegetables ready to pluck and the stories the fairies feel inclined to share with visiting friends. Bye!