Jottings - 25th October - Autumn

 

If there's such a thing as a theme to these ramblings, then this week's is about enjoying autumn - from delighting in the glorious colours of the trees or kicking up fallen leaves, to searching out new seasonal recipes, it's all mood-enhancing, and an antidote to the gloom of political and coronavirus events. If the weather's been fine, I've been out walking. If it hasn't, I've watched the leaves drifting across the lawn, and searched my recipe books for warming dinners.

I started the week with an afternoon at Kedleston. The weather wasn't great but it stayed dry, and we had an enjoyable potter under the trees of the Long Walk, spotting various sorts of fungi on the way. 

Being determined to keep my new exercise habits, I've been out walking near home several evenings, when even a suburban tree becomes beautiful, with streetlight glowing through yellow leaves.

 And of course, with clear sky and a bit of clever timing, there's always a sunset to be seen.

At home I have a variety of trees - apples, birch, cherry - but this week two have been particularly delightful. The rowan outside my window is an absolute joy on a sunny day, and even the far-too-large-for-its-space sycamore or field maple just outside the garden, which annoys me most of the year, now looks wonderful glowing against a blue sky.  

A little wind brings the leaves falling  over the lawn in a golden shower and settling in my vegetable patch where they contrast sharply with the dark cavolo nero kale.

It's getting colder though, so time to double-up skater boy style by layering two t-shirts; a Sean McGowan shirt (from the old days of going out to gigs) with an appropriate slogan for this week - When people are divided, people can be owned. (don't start me on the way Manchester has been treated or the despicable way the government has got out of funding free school meals for half term because this is meant to be an upbeat sort of post)

Having got back into the habit of cooking more dinners 'from scratch', I've been on the hunt for warming autumnal meals. I spent a busy afternoon immersed in cookery books tracking down recipes that would use the produce coming from the allotment. The Abel and Cole Cookbook, being centred around seasonal produce, was particularly helpful with lots of ways to use pumpkins. There's a sad lack of ideas about how to use the constant supply of kale, so that's back to my inventiveness. 

We have beans as well this week, as the plants have been cleared out, so I decided on 'borlotti bean and squash stew' - though these Kentucky Wonder Wax beans are nearer to cannellini, and I used pumpkin instead of squash.

It was another week ending on a good note and a family visit. This time from our toddler grandson (and his parents). We went kite-flying on the playing fields and then for a walk round the wood, though with a toddler in charge of the expedition we ended up in mud! 

Life at the moment is, I feel, a lot like this photograph taken from the far side of our local wood. Just out of shot is an encroaching housing development, which like the virus, and the restrictions to contain it, could spread across enjoining areas. For this winter, I'm going to keep my sights on the field and countryside beyond - not going out further other than to places I know are safe, finding good things around me, and trying to not worry too much about things which are out of my control.

Fungi and autumnal foliage at Kedleston

This week's day out took me back to Kedleston Hall for a stroll under the trees of the Long Walk.

The day wasn't as bright as I'd hoped but the turning leaves made up for that, and it seemed perfect weather for fungi-spotting.

Off through the gates leading to the Long Walk. 

So many different sizes and shapes of fungi! I have no idea what any of them are.

At the end of the walk we took a slight detour to visit something we've not seen before - the Splash Pool. I'm guessing it was effectively a private swimming pool, formed, as the lakes are, by damming the brook which runs through Kedleston grounds. I'm rather glad I didn't find it in summer as a splash in it would be hard to resist.

 

Jottings - 18th October

 I feel a bit (lot) like we're heading into a deep, dark (quite scary) tunnel for winter. While my area hasn't been put into any of the increased risk covid zones, there's talk that Nottingham, just down the road, having been put in Tier 2 this week will be going up to Tier 3 soon.

 As an antidote of sorts to all this worry and gloom I'm thinking of going back to my 'what did I get up to this week' posts, with an emphasis on the small pleasures in life -  cooking, crafting and art, and above all getting out whenever possible and enjoying autumn.

I've already set myself a number of 'winter resolutions' as I think this year they're needed more now, when the days are getting shorter and darker, than they may be in January when spring can feel just around the corner, and I'm hoping they will keep me focused and occupied in the months ahead.

This week has been a bit up and down, and it's impossible to ignore the sadder moments.

On Tuesday I watched a livestream gig and I was reminded of how many times I must have casually said 'see you next time you're up here' to performers, expecting it to have been only a month or two away, not next spring. It's in such odd moments that the enormity of this year strikes home. How self-employed people in the arts are surviving I don't know. The government of course is advising them to retrain (not a particularly helpful suggestion!). I did the questionnaire and my suggested new occupation is 'quarry engineer'. This sounds quite fun - I get to blow things up (cue Michael Caine 'you're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off'), play with diggers, and maybe discover dinosaur fossils. For me though, it's a bit of fun; for anyone affected, it isn't.

The next day I went 'home' to change the flowers in my parents' memorial vase at the church. In part because it would have been their wedding anniversary this week, but also because replacing the real flowers with artificial will keep it looking relatively tidy throughout winter - and as the village is in Nottinghamshire I don't want to visit too often. Going there is always a sad occasion, yet part of me is relieved that my parents weren't still alive to be caught up in the chaos of coronavirus.

On the other hand, the boring supermarket 'collect' trip was made glorious by sunshine and autumnal leaves. 

Thursday was our 'day out' day, or more accurately afternoon. Making an effort to go out walking once a week at National Trust properties or similar has proved really useful, in terms of a change of scene and in getting fitter. This week we went to Calke, to the garden to see the pumpkin display, and then around the park. I clocked 10,000 steps on my fitbit, and rewarded myself by eating reheated chips from the previous day's takeaway dinner.

It's a busy harvesting time of year in the garden and at the allotment.  There's an ongoing balancing act dealing with produce, sorting, storing, cooking anything that won't keep. Pumpkins sit on the kitchen windowsill, apples fill baskets in the porch, tomatoes wait to fully ripen before freezing. Dinners as always revolve around what needs to be eaten, so this week that was apples - with bacon chops, with custard and oaty biscuits, with porridge - and kale - in any way you can imagine; chilli, pasta sauce, added to stews, roasted.

The large chest freezer in the garage is now so full that something has to be taken out and eaten before anything else can be added! It's good in a way (and settles any fears I have over food shortages due to Covid and Brexit) but troublesome when runner beans and cabbages are being picked quicker than we're eating them. Partially to help cope with this abundance,  I've decided to add another winter resolution to my list - to cook something new from a proper cookbook once a week, rather than stick to the same old trusted meals week in, week out.

I prefer watching box sets to live TV, so I end up running through a series much quicker than the tv channel does. Fortunately the BBC have caught up with me, and Season 3 of The Bridge has turned up on I-player. I've seen this before but like so many things my husband hadn't. We got through it in about four nights though, so I need to find something else to watch. 

The week ended on a curious note. First the fun bit. My youngest daughter and her bubble partner came down on Saturday, and we had a great time. It's ages since I saw her, but the minute she's here that's forgotten and it's as if I saw her only last week. Sunday though was a weird day. I felt rather like a child who's had too much fun on their birthday or at Christmas, and doesn't know how to settle back to their 'everyday' routine. Fortunately in the evening we found something fab to watch - Armando Iannucci's The Personal History of David Copperfield with Dev Patel in the title role; just the kind of fun, engrossing viewing I needed.

Calke gardens, and a walk in the park

Last week was mainly damp and drizzly so my day out had to wait till Thursday. Having waited so long the sun was glorious.

I'd chosen Calke as our destination because of the fantastic display of pumpkins and squashes they put on show every autumn. So first we headed past the house and up the hill to the gardens.

For some reason the one-way system has been changed since our last visit in summer, so we side-tracked slightly up the avenue of trees which leads to the church, and which looks beautiful with afternoon sun slanting through. In spring there are snowdrops under the trees; now there are clumps of cyclamen. It's a very short detour, up the path, round the church, back down the path, and on to the gardens.

As you enter the walled garden to your left in an auricula theatre, built to show off those spring flowers out of the rain. At various times of year there are snowdrops, or geraniums, or, yes, auriculas, but for autumn pumpkins take centre stage. There's such an amazing range of colours and sizes - grey, yellow, orange, green, mottled, smooth, little, large, round, pear-shaped, even  super-long cucumber shapes. Most are edible but some are grown just for ornamental use, and others can be hollowed out as musical instruments.

The sun was still shining brightly through the palm trees but the flowers and foliage had a distinctive autumnal feel.

It wasn't particularly busy, but this scarecrow was wearing a mask just in case we decided to get too close.

The kitchen gardens are hidden from the house by a small wooded area so we left following the paths through there, hoping to catch sight of the noisy rutting stags but they were somewhere further away in the deer park.

From here, it was downhill to the house, then back up to the stable block, before heading out into the park, in a different direction to the one we took last time.

From outside the house's gates we headed along the exit road, then through sheep pastures, to a some ruins, once a shelter designed to attract deer closer to the house.

There are various marked routes around the park and I'd intended to follow the 'red route' till distracted by the sight of this stile, without fence or wall, but which led to a well-trodden path through trees back in the vague direction of the car park.  

 The earlier clear skies had clouded over, and, though we didn't get caught in any rain, someone somewhere must have got wet for this rainbow to appear as we headed back to the car.