Bosham in pictures

Now I am home with technology I can get to work I will now post some pictures of Bosham, a place that is very photogenic indeed.  There is a strong sense of history in the area, King Canute lived there and reputedly did his famous bit with the waves there (reputedly!) and Earl Harold set off from there on the trip which resulted in him getting ship-wrecked on the coast of Normandy and changed the course of British history.    But like so many of our picturesque and truly beautiful villages and towns, its prosperity peaked early, meaning that it escaped later development.  In the Roman period it was an area of industrial and trading activity and Fishbourne Palace is at the head of the next inlet.



When I first stepped out of the village street onto the harbour front I was blown away by the sheer sense of space, a great expanse of air and sky, it made me realise just how shut in towns can sometimes feel.








The old mill...


...and the millstream (which also ran down the side of our cottage) joining the inlet.

On the difficulties of photographing bees

The ceanothus in our garden is in full bloom and the bees are in paradise, you can hear them buzzing as they nimbly work from flower to flower.  Looking closer you can see that their pollen baskets are bright yellow and full, so full sometimes that I wonder how they can still fly.  But while the bees are great fun to watch, they are most difficult to photograph, being small and fast moving.  My camera is good, but not state of the art, so it struggles to focus fast enough and accurately enough.


Despite being a failure at its main aim, I rather like this photograph as it shows the problem, the bee appears as a sunlit blur in the centre of the picture, while the camera has focussed on the flowers.



These are probably my best pictures of the lot.  I think I shall have to send my sister out there with her big camera while I read up in the manual of my camera to see if there is anything I can change in the settings to make photographing these amazing creatures easier.



Then my next challenge will be learning to identify the different varieties, I find that a real struggle.

August Sunflowers

We finally have a sunflower flowering, planting the seeds directly in the ground was not wildly successful, these are the only two that have come up.  Next year I think I shall plant them in pots and then put them out when they're bigger.

I love sunflowers, they are so cheerful, like concentrated sunshine.  Hopefully the birds will enjoy the seeds too.

Our tomatoes are also ripening thick and fast and I have harvested some every day the past few days.  There's something deeply satisfying about eating something that has grown outside your own back door and that you have watched grow.

An unexpected treat

This morning has brought an unexpected treat from a generous neighbour of a gorgeous bunch of sweet peas and a vegetable marrow.  The sweet peas have an intoxicating, powerful scent, utterly gorgeous.  I am so grateful for my lovely neighbours.



Now to look up marrow recipes!

Unfurling

A couple of days ago I took this photograph of some of the roses in the garden, attracted by the beauty of the tightly furled buds, their creamy yellow tinged with pink.



Yesterday afternoon I photographed the same roses again, as the roses gradually unfurled and the blush of pink began to fade.



And this morning they have progressed further still to a mass of flowers.  I am not greatly enamoured of the roses one gets in vases, with small flowers on long straight stems, but I adore roses in a garden, growing in a glorious profusion of blooms.



Despite the lack of sunshine the bees are having a good time, carefully climbing in and out of the snapdragons , whose nectar must be good for the amount of effort involved in parting the "mouth" of the flower and climbing in and then out again and rifling through the heavy bloom of a many petalled poppy.  Many of them are bumbling around the hebe hedge at the front in drunken delight.

The garden and its inhabitants are such a source of delight and refreshment, even on a comparatively cold, grey day as today.  Rest assured I am still knitting, gearing up for the current baby boom, I have finished one baby vest and started yesterday on another and have a fresh pair of bootees on the go to fill in odd moments.

Ceanothus

The ceanothus was only planted a few years ago but is already taller than me and is just, finally creeping into flower, slowly flushing with blue.  The air around it is full of the buzzing of bees and hoverflies and its honeyed scent and it has added a wonderful splash of colour to the garden.





I even managed to get a picture of one of the bumble bees feeding on the flowers, it is a little blurred, but my camera does not seem good enough to capture them, as they move so fast.  That or my skills with the camera are not good enough!

6am

Sometimes there's an advantage to being awake before 6am and thankfully I did eventually get back to sleep. I have got terribly behind with blogging and still haven't managed to write about our holiday. I had intended to post a photograph each day: I'll try to catch up soon.

Holiday day 2

Awandering down country lanes

Holiday day one

Sunset, day one

Holiday excitement

The past couple of "WIP Wednesdays seem to have drifted past me, never mind, these things happen and I have been feeling worn out and really rather out of it, as though the world were quite a long way off.

But, excitingly, on Saturday I am off on holiday for the first time in six years.  Previously I have always felt so tired and just could not face travel, but I have decided to take a step out and be brave and go away for a week.  So I am going with my parents to spend a week on a farm in Sussex.  Hardly a huge adventure or trekking in the Andes, but for me, who has not been outside London in a number of years and lately not even outside Croydon, it is a huge step.

When you are so tired and ill your world does tend to shrink, to places you have to go (hospital appointments etc.) and places you feel safe going and know you can manage, which tend to be repetitive (I can get anxious about new places) and close by.  So a distance that my parents would not turn a hair at as a day trip, becomes for me a trek and entirely new territory, new places to explore.



Naturally I am anxious about being away, about a different bed, new places, there are lots of unquantifiables, and so I am trying to quell my anxieties.  If I have been on the website of the place we are staying once I have been on a dozen times; I have examined the location and the surrounding areas and even looked on Google Earth!  I am packing things that help me cope with all eventualities such as hot water bottle and a fan and will have the internet while I am there so that I can stay in touch with my ravelry friends too.

But despite all this I am genuinely excited, I am looking forward to peace, quiet and green - being able to see the countryside and see beautiful things instead of grey pavements and tower blocks.  I know there are limits to what I can do while there, my world there will be small just as it is at home, because I am not well enough to travel miles or go for day trips in the car.  But I plan to make the most of what I can do, seeing the animals on the farm, sitting with my knitting looking at a beautiful view, enjoying the fresh air and freedom from the Met Police's helicopters.  And I have a couple of little excursions I want to make, notably to Lewes, a town I have not visited in years, but used to love going to.



If blogger's interfaces and my little Android tablet get on then I hope to blog from Sussex; if not then I shall do a post (or two) about it when I am back from my great adventure.  For now I need to finish packing (itself a tiring, anxious process) and try to keep my fear and excitement under check, now I come to think about it they are rather linked emotions; for me this has all the emotions of a ride at Alton Towers.

The photographs in this post were taken at Coombe Wood, one of Croydon's hidden gems and well worth a visit.

Observations in a garden, between seven and eight on a June evening

I am sitting on the old bench in the middle of the garden in the cool of the evening. Little snatches of sunshine have made their way through the tall trees to the west and are illuminating a piece of the trellis, making the bark of the wild cherry shine in a fluttering leaf-filtered light and turning a few privileged leaves of the apricot tree translucent and more intensely green.

The biggest sensation around me is the wind, first in big whooshing gushes in the taller trees, then echoed down lower in the shrubs, bushes and smaller trees of our garden. The sound is all around me, gentle, rushing and persistent, putting into sound the scritchy-scratchiness of the holly trees as the leaves scrape against one another. Most of the sound is more gentle though, a soft constant, drowning out more modern noise, lifted and enlarged by bigger gusts, varied with sudden stillnesses when only the slightest breeze travels lightly across my hands and around my body.



The tall trees are like illuminated green tents, formed by leaves caught in evening sunlight, full of life. Around them insects dance and birds fly to and fro chirruping to one another. One young bird cries persistently, as though searching for his parents, or wishing to affirm his own identity.

This is the hour when often a blackbird will sit on an ariel above a neighbour's roof, or perhaps on a convenient chimney pot, singing to all the world, but tonight he is elsewhere. Often when I sit here I am aware of the birds around me, even if I cannot see them, hearing the little scufflings and hoppings and twitterings as they go about through the trees and bushes and fences around me, communicating with one another in a constant game of, "Where are you?" "I am here, where are you?". Occasionally a bold fellow, usually the robin, will come closer to see who or what I am and what I am doing in his territory, sometimes lingering to look over my shoulder and hovering near.

If you sit still for long enough you can be rewarded by the birds coming down to the seed feeder as though you are not there, scuttling in for a piece of sunflower seed before carrying their prize into the wild cherry or holly trees to peck it into submission.

My fingers are cold now but I have no wish to go in, the evening is so perfect, the sky so blue after so much grey and rain and I can smell the already dampening grass beneath my feet, speckled with clover flowers. In between the wind bears towards me the scent of the roses and honeysuckle, both blooming profusely and other scents whose origins are foreign to me. The wind ruffles my back and I watch the golden green leaves of the biggest of the trees fluttering too and fro, the branches pitching and tossing like the sea.






The adult robin comes onto the trellis, looks around the garden to check all is well, flutters to the fence and speeds off between the houses. Leaf shadows show like puppets across pots, plants and bows and a bumble bee, out late, investigates a likely looking nasturtium, crawling bodily into the heart of the flower. A snatch of song comes through the wind, comes closer and the conversation continues across the gardens, but I must leave the garden to its true owners, it is only ever on loan to me, and go in and attend to supper.


(As written except for corrections to typing and spelling errors, 30th June 2012.  Photographs from other occasions)

Late again

No surprises there then, I'm late again with the work in progress post for this week.  I've been very tired this week and a touch out of it (though my body is adjusting to another new medication, so I'll let it off).  I have finished the knitting on the baby cardigan, though I think it needs one more row on the ribbing, so I'll have to go back and undo the casting off.  Although it's a nuisance it will look better and I only skimped in the first place because I was worried about running out of yarn.





Other than that I'm plodding on with my lace cardigan, I'm finally half way through the body but I was right to think of this as a long term project.  Mind you, as ever, actually knitting the cardigan, instead of leaving it to its own devices, might help.



I shall illustrate this post with a couple of recent pictures from the garden (since I have no new project photos), which is looking thoroughly overgrown after all that rain.  Some of the nasturtiums have already reached three feet, climbing up through the ceanothus.  The great tits and other birds continue to fill the garden with movement and chirruping, you can see even in just a week how much they've grown up.  I love to watch them "sun bathe" (for want of a better word) stretching out all their feathers to their full extent in the sunshine and pressing their bodies flat against the ground, or the tree, as two blackbirds were doing earlier in the week.  This morning the great tits were sunbathing on the shed roof, an excellent location as they were well camouflaged.


Verdant chaos

WIP Wednesday

I've remembered to post on the right day this week, which is a start.  I'm currently recovering from doing a lot of cooking in preparation for my sister's birthday, which was this Sunday, everything went down well including making a proper (non-packet) jelly for the first time ever - and mercifully it did set!



Meanwhile I'm still ploughing through my Pomme de Pin cardigan, it's now at seven and a half inches long, only ten and a half left to go, although I will try it up against myself as it gets longer to check it doesn't become too long, as I'm not especially tall.  Luckily I'm still enjoying knitting with the alpaca and getting the hang of the lace pattern and I can just about knit it in front of the television.



The improved weather has been such a relief and has provided lots of opportunities for watching the fledgling birds on the bird feeders, especially a whole group of great tits who spend hours on the feeders and a beautiful juvenile robin, who is yet quite to get the hang of the feeders.  I managed to get some photographs of the birds, by sitting very still in the garden holding the camera focused on the feeders and clicking away, although the slightest movement sent them flying for cover.  The juvenile robin, however, was most interested in what I was doing in the garden and spent a lot of time looking at me from the safety of the holly bush and chirruping away.  I do enjoy watching the birds and I'd recommend it, especially if you aren't well as it is a low energy, very cheering occupation.

WIP Wednesday

Nothing that exciting to show you this week, sometimes that's how life goes, just working away on the same projects.  I've this minute finished the purple lace socks and they are currently in the sink having a soak, I also finished the turquoise Wollmeise lace socks and sent them off to their recipient (in the Ravelry group British Banter's first ever sock swap).  Since I seem to be very much into socks at present I can see a new pair coming into my future very soon, possibly Cookie.a's Thelonious.



Meanwhile I am working away on a cardigan in turquoise Drops Alpaca, in the shade (prosaically named 7240m) I have been dreaming of using for ages, making Pomme De Pin cardigan by Amy Christoffers, a cardigan I knew I had to knit immediately as soon as I saw it.  At times it felt as though the 24 rows of K1P1 ribbing with which the body commences would defeat me, but I am through it and beginning on the lace pattern, although prepared for it to be a long haul project.



The weather has suddenly warmed up, inside two or three days I went from cold to too hot and my body is struggling to keep up with the change in temperature.  But the roses are thriving on it and have finally flowered.  I am out everyday photographing them and watching their progress, while in the pond a group of frogs have emerged from the undergrowth and are sunbathing, part submerged in the water.

Sunday afternoon

A beautiful sunny afternoon, a shady garden, a comfortable chair, some good reading material, some knitting and that classic retro treat: a strawberry split. The birds were singing in various trees and bushes and next door's cat was fast asleep at the bottom of the garden.

Above me an awesome sky. Gloriously relaxing.

Shaking off the black dog

I've been meaning to write a less "heavy" post for a while now, but haven't quite got around to it as I've been feeling a bit down and apathetic and lethargic, which is not me: I hate it. So I'm trying to shake it off, remember the good things.

Spring and early summer are particularly easy times of year in which to find good things to celebrate, even when it's been raining constantly as in the past few days, especially as we have needed the rain so very much. There have been plenty of birds in the garden, yesterday a wren was making a disproportionate amount of noise for a bird so tiny while feeding its young and a fledgling robin has been making his fluffy first attempts at solo life and visiting our bird feeder. So birds and their song: there is good thing one.

Then the plants, oh the plants, coming up in merry profusion and confusion, self seeding, growing back from apparently lifeless twigs, we have had a baby cherry tree, several cow slips and a single rogue daffodil coming up in the middle of the lawn, plenty of nasturtiums growing from last year and flowering gloriously, with a golden colour that looks like condensed sunshine and roses, so many roses. Around the roses, which are past their first flush of glory, are two flowering Jasmines, which are smelling heavenly - I go out into the garden and stand by them and inhale! Our garden is starting to look like a garden and less like an untidy patch of ground. The vegetables are coming along nicely too; the runner beans in particular, appreciating the rain and having astonishing growth spurts. Bees of many varieties (hard to identify as they do not stay still long and are very small!) are busy all through the day on all the flowers, particularly around the Hebe hedge by the front door.

Inside there have been some good plays on the radio lately, including some on the Plantagenet kings and a Terrence Rattigan season celebrating his centenary. Some good books, though the only one I can remember having read recently is Dorothy Whipple's High Wages, an engaging and interesting novel about life in a Lancashire in the early twentieth century. The protagonist, Jane, is a very likable character with real spirit, at times when reading I found myself 'cheering her on' as she took on the attitudes and set ways of the community around her.

Naturally I have been knitting still too, socks, baby items for the ongoing population explosion among my friends, hats, a cardigan, the usual things. But my heart is not quite in it just now, I am not sure why, but I can't quite settle or focus. My concentration is not good, yet I am bored of simpler patterns. Though looking through my recent photographs I have finished a couple of major projects recently, including a baby blanket, so I should perhaps expect a bit less of myself?

Were I physically well the depression would be so much easier to shake off through keeping busy and doing new things, changing things, exercising. I can do so little of any of that and it does get to me sometimes. I am trying to keep going and battle on, keep trusting Jesus and staying positive, but goodness me there are times when it is hard!

Avoid direct sunlight

Warning: this post may contain traces of self pity

So after a couple of years of recurring skin infections, over the details of which we shall draw a delicate veil, I have been put on a three month long course of antibiotics to see if we can clear up the problem. As usual the leaflet accompanying these pills is thoroughly terrifying, though comfortingly death isn't listed as a side effect, which I have seen before, so that's a start. However, aside from the stern instruction to drink a full glass of water when taking this pill (why? is it that bad for the insides? And what exactly is a glass of water - how big?), the instruction that has thrown me the most is "Avoid direct sunlight".

This is written on the pharmacist's label on the box and repeated inside and given it is now May and that the three months will then take in June and July, dismays me considerably. You see, until a couple of years ago any sort of warm weather would leave me limper than last week's lettuce, trying not to move and seeking out coolness where soever it could be found. However, bizarrely at the start of the winter a couple of years ago I suddenly discovered that I could not get warm, a problem that has continued subsequently, to the point where the woolly sock and fingerless glove season now stretches from September to May, with the summer months only offering temporary respite. Great news for opportunities to knit, but not so good for pain levels or comfort.

Conversely now I find that not only can I tolerate really quite warm weather, I even enjoy it, soaking up sunlight and warmth like a salamander or lizard, loving the feeling of relaxed comfort it brings to my muscles and joints after the painful cold of the winter. I have loved the sunlight of the last month, sitting out when I can and letting the heat soak into me, while being careful to avoid sunburn and skin damage. Sunlight has become one of the simple pleasures of my life, even in winter when I enjoy it streaming onto the sofa in the bay window.

Now it seems that this pleasure too is gone and I have to admit to feeling sad. In fact I have felt sad all day, ever since reading this pronouncement, even the purchase of a new covering up linen/cotton blend cardigan from Boden in an eye-wateringly bright turquoise has done little to alleviate my sadness. Yes, this is self pity: I admit it. However, it is also yet another adjustment to new conditions, yet another loss to mourn, albeit hopefully only temporarily. There are things I can do to ameliorate this situation - linen long sleeved tops, high factor sun cream, discovering what exactly avoiding direct sunlight means, shady hats, pretending I am a high status ancient Greek lady using my paleness to advertise my wealth and freedom from having to perform outdoor work in the sun. (I was scraping the barrel rather with that last one I know). But it will reduce the amount of time I can spend in the garden, a much needed haven, since sitting in the direct sun has been the only way to stay warm enough while sitting outside; in the shade certainly so far this year I have often felt too cold. It feels at this moment like the one time of the year when each day is not just about staying warm and trying to get through the day, the time of year when I have a slight chance of living a little, has been taken away too and I'm left with nothing to make up for the misery of winter. Melodramatic maybe, but it's how it feels.

So I will try to adjust and hope and pray that I escape the side effects of this medication and that it works to solve the problem in hand. I will try to remember that in the context of the suffering going on all over the world at this moment this is nothing. And of course I shall seek Jesus, who is as good, patient and kind as when I got up this morning, who has not changed and who ultimately offers true hope that things will get better, sometime.

Sunflower progress

It's out and flowering! And proving very popular with all sorts of insects in the garden. I love it, so cheerful and yellow! Later on I hope the seed head will be good for the birds too, if any ever turn up in our garden again, there's been too many cats around of late. I do hope my robin is doing alright, he's not normally away from the garden this long. Of course, he could have been there when I've not been there.

I'm still trying to recover from my manic week last week, wondering why August seems to have forgotten that it is supposed to be a summer month and knitting a cover for my new mini hot water bottle, as my bottle sprang a leak and life just isn't the same without a mini hot water bottle. If it works I'll post the pattern here, in case anyone else has a mini hot water bottle and urgently needs a new cover for it.

A new ambition

Today we visited our neighbour Jane's allotment, where they were having an open day. Jane herself was jubilant as she had won the allotments' "best newcomer" award and seeing all the beautiful plants growing on the allotments has inspired me. Next year I intend to try my hand at growing courgettes. I am fascinated by the way they emerge from the plant, with their beautiful flowers perched on the end. The colour contrasts of all the greens and the bright yellow of the flowers are quietly lovely.


In the meantime our self seeded tomatoes are thriving and starting to produce actual tomatoes. We thought we had two, but looking closely at the photos I've taken I think we've got three. Not a lot yet, but give it time!Apart from that it's been a quiet weekend; bit dull... not feeling great. Been playing around with the crochet still.

Edited to add: just went out for another look at our plants and there are loads more tomatoes beginning to form!

Peaceful weekends

This weekend has been lovely, peaceful, quiet, social, but not in an overwhelming way. Yesterday I spent the morning watching Time Team on More4 and knitting; they make a good combination and enable me to engage with history (my main academic love) in a way that my brain can cope with. I also like the programme's good humour, lightheartedness and the willingness of the archaeologists to enjoy a joke.

In the afternoon, after posting a birthday present to a dear friend, I went to knitting group in central Croydon. We meet on the first Saturday of the month in Cafe Nero in the Allders end of George St, near the George St tram stop and opposite 'The George' pub, from 2.30. Yesterday afternoon's meeting was lovely, sociable and relaxed and the combination of air conditioning and iced drinks made a welcome relief to the sheer heat of recent days. If anyone reading this lives in/near Croydon and feels like joining us you would be welcome, we also meet on the third Thursday of the month from 6pm, generally in Cafe Aroma in High St. Although we're called "Croydon knitting group" other portable crafts are very welcome, we have done knitting, crochet, spinning, tatting and cross stitch at meetings between us so far. Naturally some crafts are always going to be more difficult to do out and about - bit hard to heave a pottery wheel down to a coffee shop! If you want more information feel free to email croydonknittinggroup@googlemail.com

Today I haven't done anything in particular, listened to Gardener's Question Time on BBC Radio 4 and then to the Classic Serial - P.G. Wodehouse is perfect for a Sunday afternoon, particularly when it stars Martin Jarvis and Patricia Hodge. As ever with Wodehouse I struggled a little to keep up with who all everyone was, particularly among the younger set; I tend to find it works best simply to listen/read on and go with the flow of the story, it's just as enjoyable as understanding what exactly is going on and infinitely less mentally taxing! The only pity about Wodehouse dramatised is that one misses out on the sheer creativity and wit of his prose in his descriptions of people, places and what have you.

Alas despite all this I still haven't managed to finish knitting this blanket for SANDS, I'm not far off, just need to persist. I have garter stitch fatigue! So I'll get on with knitting it while hoping it starts to rain before plant watering time! (There are some promising clouds up there... anyone know a rain dance?!)