Week 44
Tulip list; houseplant house; lightning fast Hallowe'en
What a wet week! I hope you have stayed safe and dry where you are. First of all I want to say a big thank you to everyone who joined in on our ‘Show us your pumpkin’ chat on Hallowe’en. It was so fun and there are LOADS of amazing pumpkins on show over there, you are all artists as well as poets. I think we will have to make this a Lia’s Living Almanac tradition. Do pop over and have a look if you haven’t already, and why not add yours too? It’s not too late and we will all ooh and ah at them. I’m also delighted that so many of you enjoyed my folky, spooky All Hallows playlist, and wanted to remind you that it also contains some old traditional Bonfire Night/Guy Fawkes folk songs, so its moment has not passed yet.
To business: this is our weekly post in which we trace the minutiae of the passing seasons in all of their magic and mundanity - hot water bottles, glorious sunrises, overflowing gutters, majestically rising blood moons and all. We begin with a round up of your comments from week 43:
Breath streaming ahead of us as we walked out into a frosty morning
Baked mushrooms covered in garlic and cheese, then sticky toffee pudding
Gazing at the gorgeous silver Hunters moon
Huge leaves of scarlet and bronze of the Virginia creeper hanging from the wall and carpeting the ground
A flurry of last-minute cover designs for Frankfurt Book Fair
Beautiful mists over fields on the train to London
Napping on the sofa, toast, tissues & gentle murder mysteries on the tv
Silvery, fat hyacinth bulbs twinkling at me like Christmas decorations in the market
The moon coming into fullness and lighting the crisp autumn night, and the foxes calling
Making crunchy winter salad pickle with the last of the green tomatoes, celery, cabbage and runner beans - like piccalilli but gentler and sweeter
The squishy damp mulchy leaves smell of a wet autumn
Spicy pumpkin soup
A waterlogged garden, & rivers running down our road
Eating the very last tomatoes from the garden, tasting of sunshine despite the almost incessant rain
Homemade creamy fish pie with peas
Planting summer-sown foxgloves and sweet rocket, along with the allium bulbs
Stamping through a colourful carpet of fallen leaves and breathing in the decaying scent of autumn.
Roasted maroni (sweet chestnuts) eaten piping hot straight from a paper bag in the marketplace
Abundant golds and reds shining out everywhere. A strange and colourful fall season, full of light
Slipping into wool house shoes
Watching the morning sky change from star speckled deep blue to burnt orange while sipping tea by candlelight
The aroma of cinnamon-laced apples in crumble
A very damp and misty walk in woods, the sounds eerily muffled and the smell of a distant fire
Candles everywhere especially in the windows and hot water bottles to take to bed, listening to the tawny owl as I snuggle under the covers
Getting out the big winter jumper that I throw over whatever else I'm wearing indoors, and my furry slippers. Toasty now
Beautiful!
Here’s my week 44:
Tulip list
You’re right, I did do a load of bulb planting a couple of weeks ago but this week was the turn of the fancy tulips, in pots. Those with good memories will recall that I had a bit of a moment this summer over the sorts of colours I wanted to fill my garden with, essentially: deep raspberry swirled with clotted cream, plus coral, plus peach. Well at that exact epiphanic moment I pre-ordered these tulip bulbs, so that is what I am hoping will emerge. I thought you might like to see my list:
Apricot Beauty
Wyndham
La Belle Epoque
Pretty Princess
All underplanted with a little Muscari armeniacum. I will show you them all in spring.
Houseplant house
I do love putting the houseplants outside for the summer because they love it so much out there and they get all green and fat and glossy, but it is gorgeous to have them indoors again.
Lightning fast Hallowe’en
I have seen various people lamenting the fact that this Hallowe’en was not like it used to be and that kids don’t come around any more. Well…very much the opposite around ours! A ridiculous number of cutie little ghouls and witches, plus a respectable smattering of slightly scary teens too. We had bought them a lot of sweets. This bowl was piled high and there was a back up bowl. And…this was all that was left my 6.30pm. By 6.45 I had started raiding the fruit bowl. By 7pm it was all over. So I am delighted to report that Hallowe’en is alive and kicking in my street.
That’s it from me. Please remember that this Sunday is the 1st Sunday of the month and so we will all be showing our ‘usual spot’ in the Sunday chat, so get your pictures taken in the run up if you can.
And now…please leave your comments. What have you noticed/eaten/made/spotted this week that has made it particularly ‘this week’?
Moving house this week. Packing boxes and making plans for the new house. An ending and a beginning. This morning as I lay in bed listening to the predawn tawny owl chorus, a highlight of this time of year, I wondered if there would be owls living around the new village. I’ve left some apples on the tree for the birds and dug up a cluster of snowdrop bulbs to take with me. This morning the sun has come out and the wind has followed blowing the leaves from the silver birches like so much confetti.
We didn't have any trick or treaters (or guisers as they call them here) and the Halloween torchlit maze I was looking forward to was cancelled due to the inclement weather! but instead, we went round to see some friends, eat steak pie and watch horror movies. We also made a deliciously rich stew packed with the last of the harvest from the community garden (pumpkins and potatoes) and the last of last year's sloes. The autumn step count challenge has begun, so I'm spending every spare moment stomping around through slippery wet leaves!