Autumnal pursuits — Frond & Feather

So Joe went back to school on Tuesday, and after a few days of catching up with essentials (and non essentials) I’m here again, with lots of pictures and miscellaneous things to report…

This being September, Joe’s ninth birthday came and went with gifts, cake and a gathering in the park. It was good to see everyone together, like it used to be before the Skye epoch, and a few of us extended the day with a jaunt up to Kiln Clough Farm for drinks in the sunshine.

Back on the other side of the Pennines I’ve been out in the heather, haunting the moors all by myself and savouring every second. The heather’s out in full purple bloom and I found some sloes which are ripening nicely (I’ll monitor them and go back to collect some for sloe gin making in a few weeks).

We’ve also harvested apples from the garden and made a crumble. I collected some windfalls yesterday morning so they’ll go into a compote to be eaten with Greek yogurt for breakfast.

There’s a little industrial estate down by the canal (with more sloes growing), and Jay took his car down there for its MOT last week. He discovered that one of the units housed a farm shop, which opens once a week, so we went back to take a look. They had the most beautiful, painterly gourds and artichokes and other seasonal produce so we’re heading back there later this (Saturday) morning.

In other kitchen stories, Joe and I made a chocolate fridge cake. Just before the holidays ended we went over to Chorley to put flowers on my mum’s grave, and stopped off at the walled kitchen gardens at Astley Hall for a little wander around. The apple trees were literally bowed down with so many different varieties of apple; there were large trees, ‘step-over’ ones, espaliered ones, dwarf ones with the tips of their branches touching the grass… all with magical names. It was just early autumnal perfection. It’s becoming a bit of a ritual now - we visit the grave, which is always emotional for us - then go to the gardens and feel a bit uplifted again. My mum loved gardens and plants. It’ll be seven years next week since she died yet it somehow feels so much more recent than that.

At Astley they have a beautiful orangery-type building filled with scented geraniums (which always remind me of her) and succulents, and there was a selection of old cookery and gardening books to buy, with proceeds going to the upkeep of the gardens. There were some hilarious, moodily-photographed 1980s cocktail manuals and lots of yellowing 1970s recipe books, but I found a little copy of Joanne Harris’s The Little Book of Chocolat. We drove home with me and Joe getting excited about chocolate and chestnut truffles, macarons and - of course - ‘Nipples of Venus’ (he is a little boy)…

So that’s how we made the fridge cake. We started with the simplest recipe and will gradually work our way through the book.

On the subject of gardens, we’ve been regularly visiting our local garden centre. It’s a bit of an institution and is still plant-heavy despite the gradual creep of candles, furniture and architectural salvage. At the moment there are bright colours everywhere: rudbeckias and echinacea and achillea. We picked up bulbs for the new garden, some to naturalise (snake’s head fritillary, pheasant’s eye daffodil, snowdrops), some for pots (deep purple and burnt orange tulips, dwarf daffodils) and some for indoors (paperwhite narcissi).

Regarding the house, the inevitable has happened: the purchase is proceeding smoothly as far as we know, but the race to meet the stamp duty holiday deadline is now likely to be missed because the solicitor has decided to take a holiday of his own. Of course, we only found that out via an out of office reply to an email.

Always nice to end up a few thousand out of pocket unnecessarily.

Still, we’re crossing our fingers that everything goes through to completion and exchange, and I can start sharing pictures of the interiors.

It was difficult to do that on Skye - the place was so very dark and gloomy, and who wants to see endless shadowy expanses of woodchip? - and here, the house is rented and extremely uninspiring. No shelves, no pictures. White walls, laminate floors, vertical blinds. It’s impersonal and blah, and I can’t wait to make the new (well, circa 1930) house a home.

The temporary garden’s a bit better, even without Mackie being there with us. Apples and Japanese anemonies and blackberry cables running riot. And sunflowers.

Jay and Joe planted sunflower seeds in some of the beds, and they’ve reached dizzying heights. Multi-headed, some with centres like big brown saucers which attract the bees and sway in the wind. We have golden yellow, rust, velvety claret and everything in between. I’ve taken LOTS of photos of them.

My next photography course starts on the 20th, and I plan to spend next week revisiting the last one and brushing up my skills in preparation. There are a few things I haven’t mastered yet and I’m determined to get there.

My non-working (in the gallery) days are settling into a routine again now where I drop Joe at school, come home and tidy up, make a cup of tea, light a scented candle on the desk and work away at the computer until lunch. Right now I’m listening to music which came out before I was even born - mostly Neil Young and Creedence Clearwater Revival - as I like a bit of background sound.

You may have noticed I’ve reinstated my online shop.

I’ve been considering selling my etching press and shelving the printmaking as it’s so time consuming and I haven’t felt particularly motivated to do it, but a few days ago I changed my mind. I think once I get my photography course done I might spend a few days here and there printmaking to build up a collection, then put my work online again. Yesterday I even got the typewriter out and typed a few quotes onto the handmade paper I use for this kind of thing.

We’re planning to build a garden room at the new house and I’m thinking I could section a bit of it off to house the press, my equipment and the drying rack.

So there’s that.

What else?

This has been quite a big catch-up, hasn’t it?

We’re heading into my favourite time of the year now so we’re doing plenty of canal walks and last night we met up with friends at a little local bar before walking home. It’s still feeling warm and humid (the forecasted storms never came) but things are slowly cooling down and there’s a lively breeze this morning with grey skies, and I welcome that.

An old friend is coming over this afternoon and we’re going into Hebden to look at the Print Fair. Maybe we’ll pick up a coffee and walk along the canal again, towards Todmorden, where there are colourful barges and little allotments beside the towpath.

The plan for tomorrow is to go to Oxenhope and walk along the river to Haworth. I still want to go there alone soon to visit the Bronte Parsonage but this trip will be about steam trains, the traditional sweet shop, and looking in the other little shops too. I’m looking forward to walking through the woods and seeing the leaves turning and we’ll take a bag for any finds we come across.

And, of course, the camera.