Chutniiieeee! Tomato and Apple….. agonisingly, ecstatically yum! first time i’ve ever made it! the secret ingredient ginger (not so secret now blabbermouth) toms from the garden, a bag of apples from up the hill… the rest of the ingredients all from rummaging deep within the pantry bung EVERYTHING in the pan and gently hubble and trouble boil away… eventually all was reduced to a state of primordial gloop… that wot the first amoeba clambered out from? its texture sticky to the finger, colour kinda brown but with lashings of radioactive vermilion as you can gather i’m proud of it… it also required great poise to achieve a selfie balancing an apple on my head (William ‘kiss and’ Tell) anyway had intended to give up on facebook… horribly last decade… at least i’ve spared you my poetry… but you know. CHUTNEY! a Hindii word originally ‘to lick, or eat with appetite’… indeed!
Lammas/Harvest blessings… right on cue the first tom to ruddy ripeness… tho this one seemingly so huge that it has, after einstein, warped the fabric of both time and space must be such a bulge full world seeing thru the eyes of a fish? apols for another veg snap… guess august is always fruit and festies yield of a different type… daughter has been moving out of her student house, a glut of clobber! where does it all come from? the trusty estate car fit to burst guess that is what being a parent to kids in their twenties is often about… i can see my dad patiently and good humouredly helping me move for the umpteenth time… lugging another lucky dip box: wizard cape, curios, futile gee gaws and a hoard of books. thanks dad! life in all its rhythms and cycles
Sarah: Oooh that’s goodMine completely failed this year no tomatoes
oh thats a shame… for me, most years, the only thing that gives a decent harvest… slugs and snails don’t seem even remotely keen on them! xx
Sarah: only thing I’ve managed so far this year is radish’s!Think it was v wet , then v hot, now v wet !
Snozzcumber! that GREW in the garden!! probs shouldn’t be quite so suprised as i planted it… but miracle of a slug dodger i’ve named this one wilson… wilson pick-itt Update alas poor wilson is no more…. sunday morning yoga followed by courgette and sunshine… a great start to the day
couldn’t wait till the midnight hour tho… too peckish
Sigh … Since festie I have clearly eschewed the use of clothes… So unspiritual and a symbol of capitalist oppression… Sky clad in.B&Q
aww a baby snail curled up and asleep in a courgette flower! cute …. that or she’s punch drunk sozzled into unconsciousness having gorged herself on the nectar… the blighters have utterly decimated almost everything i’ve planted…. runner beans are has-beens of all the courgette plants this is the ‘last man standing’… a pyrrhic victory… snails have been so bent on devouring the others this plant has mostly survived… one fruit looks like it will make it to harvest. yay courgette flowers are super on salads… tho might give this one a miss… plenty of vitamins in snail slime? toms are looking good tho the devastation is the same every year. you’d think i’d learn. try something different? apparently not! i don’t mind. spiral shells… mystic beauty evicted to the patch of great willow herb down the far end of the yard anyway stuff to do! x
Megan: If you plant lots of garlic, onions, leeks, etc. around the plants they like it keeps them away (to some degree).
planting up a few tomato seedlings… earth day, blessing from the empress, abundance to all walk on the sacred earth beneath the broad expanse of sky…. our birthright being outside, in nature, with people we love… connection to body, land and each other ………. toms grown from last years seed slobber, love the closing of these circles nettle tapenade for lunch, yum… i’m calling it tapenade as, happily, i have no idea what the word means!
Esther: I have these Angel cards too! Don’t have much spare time to draw them these days but you’ve reminded me to do a reading for myself 👼 xx
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Aw I’m sure your so hugely busy all the blooming time! Hope you find some peace amongst the bedlam… plus occasional appreciation of how joyful it is… my nippers are 25 and 21 now… proper bonkers xx
I actually really like these cards… I read tarot for years, but kind of came to a pause with it, as tho, obvs, powerful wasn’t always in the right space to integrate some of the darkness These are proper fluffy, love the illustrations and lots of buoyancy Most of the cards make me think of someone I know… this lady/empress does too… tho can’t quite work out which of my friends she is?! Ha! Hug xx
courgette flower guzzling season, a soggy soporific afternoon, too lazy nowadays to do more than endlessly post pics of lunch x
megan: There are so many tasty flowers!
ooh what are your faves? and i’ll search them out… i’ve been nibbling on ooh sea kale, honeysuckle, dandelion, gorse and hawthorn a fair bit… tho not all at once! xx
megan: I am eating wild geraniums, nasturtiums, clover, chive flowers, garlic flowers, borage… and more.
of course de edible aliums! why didn’t i think of that, wish i’d planted some chives for the gorgeous flowers now! next year ho hum xx
tomatoes, in late october? the 3 month glut continues… of course by now they contrive to be both leathery and fluffy, less of the much longed for succulent sweetness of summer, more of the ‘oh well might as well munch another’ but still thoroughly palatable being somewhat of a late bloomer myself, kindred sympathy frrling somewhat troll like this autumn (feeling! but frrrrling probably catches it better), where can’t be bothered, mingles with exhaustion, reluctance and slumber … yes me with my shimmer and swagger, ha… but hey curmudgeonly stubborness has its place… looks out the window again… may well go back to bed oh and astonishingly Finn is 24 today! gobsmacking!
Yield…. in every sense of the word, season of our gratitude for glut… yet also of surrender, this the time for offering up hornswoggled by insomnia, stress swept from mind deep into muscles, so to creep downstairs, out into the garden, the soft summoning of dawn clouds above, brown grey bellies, promising something of rain? a bird infused soundscape, keening yelp of seagulls, the metronomic throb of a wood pigeons hoot nearer, the more intimate chirrup of a family of sparrows, feather restless, scattered amongst the protective thorns (too many yard cats!) of an enormous Rose bush clarion call of Red, pluck one tomato, roll around in the palm of hand. satisfaction. harvest. tooth chomp, puncture flesh, the rush, ooze spurt of seed slobber sumptousness. yum a leaf of mint, one of basil, bruise between fingers, olefactory contradiction, grok the befuddlement
yield part 2
oh, i just like writing words… my picture snap is fab, despite verging on the trite, bit like a gareth bale goal celebration! thankfully far from instagram perfect… but, ah me and my rotten tomato heart! these the days through which we must kep one broom handles distance apart, it is hard to believe that anything will ever flow? mind ponders, roams back, to what? a festival commonplace, but none the less cherished for that hmm it is dusk, i pause and sit somewhere on the fringes, back against the trunk of an old beech tree, moist earth below, leaf shiver above a friend wanders by, ‘the first stranger in the dusk’, she comes over, we chat, then long languish in each others arms talk stream tumbles, whither and whence it will roam! gentleness the timbre of intimacy with time we will part, the evening beckons adventure… but, forever tarry through the twilight laughter, connection. simple, i am happy… yes, those days will come again harvest…. Yield.
i’ve been hugely enjoying Runner Beans this summer… not for the yield obviously ‘one bean Dick’, but its the first time i’ve grown these critters truly the Magic Beans from Jack and the Beanstalk… fee fo fi fum… such boisterous, roving, mischevious plants… wriggle creepers! corkscrewing up the canes, vines on the climb space rockets… saturn v… mission control we have lift off! one has eloped next door, over the fence and far away… such orchid-esque 2 tone flowers, orange and white another, eschewing its suggested support has meandered off and compromised itself with a pink flowered great willow herb, standing a metre and a half in the ‘scrruffy’ part of the yard no idea what the willow herb makes of it, but such riotous exuberance!… they don’t seem to be stranglers in the way of the dread bind weed… just hitching a ride glorious!
hmm i actually would have preferred a collage with the tall picture of the bean… but the auto tool wasn’t ‘aving it… i’m not quite as preposterously ego centric as it seems… not quite!
Childish natch, but always fun to make covert obscene gestures
‘It’s like a jungle, sometimes it makes me wonder… How i keep from going under… uh uh’ work space becomming engulfed with greenery…. still too much of a nip to the nights till these squatters can go frolic riot down in the garden
no tomatoes 
