We are almost in the halcyon days of summer when it seems to stay light all night long and for once the weather is beautiful. Every thing in the garden is at its best and the dawn chorus is still sweet, this morning there seemed to be a blackbird in every bush. Our strawberries are ripening fast and from now on I shall be making one sort of preserve or another at least twice if not three times a week, depending upon how lucky we are with the fruit.
My son is happy again, he has been very concerned about the dwindling stock of strawberry jam, we were down to our last few jars. He looks upon the strawberry jam as his own particular preserve as it were and I must confess that I hoard our supply of this jam seldom giving any away. Last year the mice pinched half of my crop of strawberries and so the jam was a trifle scarce, this year the absence of rain is the cause of a smaller than usual crop....a gardener can always find something to moan about!
Enough of this frippery. Late last night Pa took a tumble down the stairs falling down almost from top to bottom. Here was am almighty crash, a yell and I was out of bed and wide awake at once, Pa was curled up at the bottom of the stairs on a pile of boots, I was convinced that this time he had done some serious damage, thank the Gods that he was lucky yet again. How on earth he managed such a fall without even a bruise to show for it I will never know. Lifting him was almost impossible as I too am a little infirm but between us we managed to sit him up. I checked him all over for breaks of bumps, all seemed fine. He could not remember if he had tripped or bumped his head as he fell and this leads me to suspect an attack of Cataplexy. This morning there were no bruises and not a bump in sight, all the same I can not help wondering how long we can continue to have good luck.
Last night I promised Pa a special breakfast of toast and scrambled eggs with grilled pannchetta ans I was as good as my word, it was good to see him tucking in so heartily after last nights scare. After the fall Pa went back to bed and slept quite well, I on the other hand did not sleep at all, as a consequence of this I have been drowsy all day long and the heat just made things worse.
After breakfast I used up the left over mashed potato and with the addition of a little flour and melted butter produced twenty four potato cakes, these have been frozen and will make a lovely breakfast next Monday when my son finishes his week at work. The kitchen was hot bur I bit the bullet and baked five dozen cookies, half cherry ones and half walnut topped ones, the biscuit tin has been raised by so many visitors this week and besides it was certainly cooler in the kitchen that it was in the garden so the baking kept me out of trouble.
In between taking the batches out of the oven I labled the jars of strawberry jam made yesterday, this is a fiddly job, before he was so unwell Pa used to make the most wonderful labels for our produce, this year I have downloaded some templates for the internet and Applied a little colour using my water colour pencils. They look quite good I think.
Dinner tonight was two kinds of pasta, chicken pomodori fro my son and mushroom fettuccine for Pa and I, tomorrow I shall definately make a much simpler meal!
While I was out this morning I noticed I field which was white with camomile, such a beautiful herb en masse and yet so unobtrusive in itself. Looking at these lovely flowers reminded me of a someone I was fond of, now dead, it would have been his birthday in three days time, camomile time.
“To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie to deep for tears.”
William Wordsworth.
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