On birds, beauty and baking failures (29th June - 5th July)

The weather this week

Dramatic rain showers, overcast days, and bright explosions of sun when you least expect them. This week was like spring, minus the ferocious, freezing wind.

On a couple of days I took a walk up on to the moor in misting rain to watch dark clouds and rain showers stride around the horizon. Without the normal howling gale it was refreshing rather than dreich, and as the cool water found its way to my skin I felt like I was becoming part of the landscape.

At Home

On the whole, I can’t imagine a better place to have spent lockdown than here. We have ample space to walk, a rambunctious puppy to keep us busy and a garden supplying us with fresh things to eat. We are incredibly lucky. But every now and again, Instagram taunts me with images of the delectable treats available to city folk. Raw-milk cheese, gelato, seafood platters, decent pasta. Oh, and the thing I have been fantasising most about lately… take-out, or any food that just magically appears pre-made.

“Collapsed Walnut Munge” - a baking fail that inspired a big whisky to cheer us up.

Now, Jim and I are resourceful folk. In the absence of decent bakery products we have experimented with various recipes and are now making pretty decent cakes and bread (best to forget the many loaves that could have served equally well as masonry, or this fantastic failure). I am an alright cook and am making the most of what the garden provides so we haven’t had any bad meals. But when I saw that Mary’s Milk Bar was offering a gelato delivery, I may have got a little moist around the eyeball. We actually have an ice cream maker somewhere and could definitely do it ourselves, but I realise that this is besides the point. It’s not just the product, it’s the personality that comes with it. Part of the pleasure of eating something special is the journey you take to get it, the banter you have at the counter, the story of the person who made it. That’s why during these bloody weird Covid times, take-out is just fine, and DIY is impressive but actually kind of lack-lustre. The connections are the flavour I’m missing most.

In the garden

We are now harvesting our own unripe strawberries (slugs claim the ripe ones when I’m not looking), blackcurrants, tons of herbs, green salads galore and some rather wiry purple mangetout. To be fair to the mangetout, I made the mistake of trying to grow them in the poly tunnel and it’s just too hot for peas in there.

Both the red and blackcurrants are being snacked upon by the birds, but I don’t have the heart to net the bushes as I don’t want to see birds and butterflies getting stuck in the net. There are enough berries to go round this year anyway, and I have no desire to spend hours in the kitchen preserving things, so we’re just eating them fresh when we feel like it.

Experimentation in climbing squash plants.

We also had our first harvest of shelling peas on Sunday, alongside a roast chicken. Those peas made all the other disasters worth it.

With all the rain we’re having, the garden is looking particularly lush - a polite way of saying it is an overgrown mess. At a moment when young children traversing our lawn could have easily been lost for days, I decided to try Jim’s new mower. Two days later Jim re-mowed the lawn in order to even out the bald spots, Mohawk stripes and large divots where I’d tried to turn the mower around. *sigh*

This has been a bird themed week, with a wren that repeatedly found its way into the polytunnel, the mass exodus of our grumpy little blackbird fledglings (who in true teenage style, left the barn in an absolute mess), and a protracted drama involving baby housemartins. We found a raggedy, balding little fledgling (later christened ‘Garfunkel’ by Jim) waddling around on the path outside the kitchen one day, and before Humphrey could get his chops around it, moved it up on to the bird table in the hope that its parents would come and claim it. But later on, Humph discovered a sleeker sibling (‘Simon’), and terrorised it for a short while before we also placed it up on the bird table. I took care not to touch either of them with my hands, thinking that my scent might scare off a parent, but either I wasn’t careful enough, or those little babes had already been abandoned. No loving parent appeared and the two little birds huddled together in the rain all night, ocassionally trying to climb into a hole in the stone wall. After a day of carefully chaperoning Humph in the garden and trying to keep quiet every time we entered or left the house, we found Simon dead. Garfunkel continued to perch in the Lady’s Mantle and scurry around on the path, then one day he was gone. I hope he made it. The multiple housemartin nests under our eaves continue to emanate clamourous chirruping so I’m sure we’re in for more heartbreaking bird-drama. The moral of the story: nature is cruel, and housemartins make pretty laisez-faire parents.

I got two Charles Dowding books this week and am very excited at the prospect of planning a rabbit-proof, no-dig garden for next year. I’ve pretty much written off the few meagre veg beds I have now, as they’ve been summarily eaten, smothered by weeds, or are just plain non-starters. My beautiful, lush runner beans, for example, have developed a terrible case of bean-drop-off and are now basically just a nice organic garden sculpture. On the plus side, this means I can start transforming the plot in the autumn without feeling too bad about it.

In related news, our compost operation needs to be ramped up. We currently have two plastic bins sitting on the site of an old caravan which are pretty full. They were getting sluggish and so I added chopped comfrey about a month ago, and now they seem to be digesting again. But seeing as Downing recommends using literal tons of compost, I’m not sure these two bins are going to cut it. I reckon it’s time to transform that whole area into compost production. Goodness knows we have enough organic matter to feed it. Once it stops raining and I feel brave enough to revisit some scything, the paddock should produce enough green matter to fill a few bays instantly. Its where to get the brown matter that I’m not so clear about.

Other things

One of the most exciting tasks this week has been preparing my dad’s first online exhibition. Shortly after lockdown began, dad started taking time each day to do a pastel drawing in their garden. With fewer work pressures, no visitors or gadding about, he found he regularly had time to paint, so has produced a collection of 50 (and counting) pastels and a couple of water colours. The series shows the garden responding to the sun - opening, blooming and becoming more vibrant. In a way, I think the same transformation has happened to dad while he was doing them. Dad has been a painter for most of his life; painting and selling all over the world. Lately, I’ve been lucky enough to help him archive his work - a pleasurable task that has transported me to southern Turkey and France, Istanbul, and Crete, and also to memories of my childhood. So many of those paintings are astonishing, with a vibrancy and expression that he feels hasn’t featured so often in his more recent art - until now.

It is an absolute joy to see my father’s enthusiasm for painting return, and to see him willing and eager to share it with others. The response he has received through Facebook and Instagram and spurred him on, and we’re placing the whole Lockdown Series online really soon where it can be enjoyed as a whole and bought.

Dad’s Lockdown Series is now live on Artwork Archive at:

https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/simon-blackwood

and 10% of all sales will go to the Disaster Emergency Committee Corona Appeal Fund which supports vulnerable families facing multiple threats such as famine and displacement as well as Covid-19.