A year has gone by...

and the sourdough saga continues, nothing much changes, apart maybe my level of frustration at my tarnished bread making skills of a fermented-kind.  Once again yeast of the dried-kind cheekily beckons me from the high shelf of my kitchen cupboard... 'Go on, you know you can't live without me!'. Weak as an addict I hungrily clutch up with fingers at full stretch to reach the upper, uppermost far, far reaches of my shame. 

'I will keep my starter ticking over in the fridge!' I tell myself as I carefully cut the sachet open...

This is...

 Doris...

This is her offspring...

Back in the days of us living in Ludlow my son and family came to stay.  They loved my bread so much I offered them some starter, the equipment and Poppy's(me) guide to making sourdough.  Now what I didn't know was mixed in the magic of this particular bread making was something mystical, which inadvertently was being carried back with them to York.  He named his starter Fred and between them they went from strength to strength.  From that day on my bread was a dead ringer for a frisbee tribute band, flat boring and definitely out of tune.  So much so I gave up, resorting to making my normal yeasted bread.  Disgruntled (not one to bear a grudge?) I carried on, between times we moved and life took lots of different turns, some good, some not so.  All the while deep down I chuntered on about my son having nicked my sourdough crown.  Each time they came I requested nay demanded a loaf which squirrel-like I froze and in only-child-like fashion I kept strictly for me!  This obviously couldn't carry on; humble pie was eaten and an SOS went out to please bring me offspring of Fred on their next visit.  

He arrived with the starter which he had named Doris, And more importantly a refresher course for the teacher by the pupil.  A couple of weeks went by and my efforts were slowly improving, too slowly for me.  Until yesterday when I finally feel I've cracked it.

Wallowing in my tub...

 what made me think having Cindy Crawford looking down on me in my swanky new bathroom was such a bright idea as I reclined in the foam filled deep?

A flavour... Ellie shaped...

 

Cumberland... our new home...

This is where we now live and not a day goes by without we say...

'How lucky are we?'

BIg pink knickers…

 eat your heart out.

Those of you who on occasion have been tempted to plough through my ramblings might remember my horror of dahlias and my likening them to big pink bloomers.

Whether it is reaching the age to be walking distinctly sideways up to the contemplation of actually buying a pair, I really have no idea.  However yesterday evening I wandered lonely over to the allotment and picked a dahlia.  Last night it wasn’t fully open, this morning I was greeted by this…

  

I think I’m in love.

The thing is…

I really don’t do birthdays.  I never have, Why? Who knows.  As an only child who lived a solitary life,I became very self sufficient.  Although I do remember in those far-off August days the weather was always hot.  On one memorable occasion I got so excited at having a birthday party I made myself sick with the pent up fever of excitement.  So much so, I was posted off to bed while the party went ahead without me.  I can hear now from my darkened room the whoops of delight at my bestest chums scoffing all MY jelly and blancmange, sandwiches and cake.

As a consequence of this Freudian, probably totally wide of the mark assessment of my disinterest of the date in the year that marked my entry into the world, I get very few cards, in the main because I send so few.  Although having said all that when I glance across at the windows of houses as I wait for the traffic lights to change, seeing the rows of cards I often wonder if this is what comes to folk who remember everyones birthday.  Bit like a round robin type of thing.  What goes round comes round.  And the worm of wonder does start to think and turn… maybe?  The lights change and I roar off, never giving it another thought until the next red traffic light beside a home where a popular person lives!

It is my birthday today and for some strange reason I have quite a few cards… not that I deserve them, mind.

Thank you Monica for remembering.

Two bluebottles were ganging…

up on him. The squeaks even I could hear.

Ellie alerted me to our latest visitor to the Wrenery.  I heard a scuffle and thought the frog that had the audacity to sit in her water bowl was back.  I couldn’t see anything so with my alter ego Insp. Clouseau found hiding in the closet(where else would you expect?)I decided with magnifying glass clapped in my left hand to go investigate.  All I can say at this juncture is… a ruddy good job I had this excellent additional appendage to the fore.  After tiptoeing around, not easy for a fat lass in a trench coat sort of macintosh.  I spied through a glass darkly a teensy-weensy little ball of fluff, making the most awful racket and for one so petite, who would have thought it?  The bluebottles were closing in for the kill, pretty much like billionaires with not much else to do having got bored with counting their squillons, going on safari to shoot the hell out of a brace of rhinos’ssss, an odd giraffe and rounding off with a lion for good measure.  That sort of behaviour.  Well, I don’t mind telling you the field vole who had purely by chance got lost finding himself in the barren plains of the wrenery and weak with lack of seeds, roots and other nourishment of the field vole kind was in a very sad state.  Until that is Lettice Leaf and sidekick Hubs rode to the rescue.  The poor wee mite was rescued and promptly captured (too weak to run) and taken across the road to the sunny uplands of the the allotomentoes.  Where seeds a plenty awaited the 50p piece size tiny muchly weakened beastie. 

Not the man in question sadly.

Life on the

allotment. 

A flavour…

 

Ludlow town wall stands guard

 

 No Dig is the way forward

Charles Dowding

You know the...

 sort?  The ones that you really have no idea if you devour them or they you?  In an earlier age you would (may?) have parted with £9.99 to enjoy their company.  Now the fifty pennies that you part with to get them in your grasp seems like a safe bet.  Even if the money spent is ill advised and you decide to chuck them out of the window, or better still take them back from whence they came.  This way the charity shop gets another bite of the cherry as it were?

I am of course referring to a tome like this...

all 833 pages.

The print you need a microscope to read.  The density of words on the page you need the skills of Bear Grylls to navigate. The eyes of a hawk to see.  The intellect of Plato to understand (an easy read if you have stickability) and the fortitude of Saint Daniel to not be sidetracked.

I am in the full flush of heart thumping first love, nay call it lust.

I will report back...

‘I didn’t think...

 dying would be like this!’

How many people have thought that this year I wonder?

The grim reaper on piecework this last year must have made scythe-loads of crypto coin?

Audrey is sat in an end of life ward... waiting...

Her only one designated visitor reports that on his last visit she was nowhere to be found.  Hold on, was that her under what he at first thought was a pile of bedding?  Audrey was sitting out of bed with her head on a table under the covers.

She is becoming more confused by the day.  Each day’s dementia questions she sails through, then sinks back into whichever otherworldly place she occupies?

Audrey in better days.