welsh hills again

I wake up.  The light is streaming in because we never shut our curtains up here.  It is half past six and I turn over and drift back to sleep.  After years and years of dawn starts with small children and work and commuting, is there a greater luxury? As usual Ian must have got up without waking me because when I wake again it is a quarter to eight and he is not in the bed.  From downstairs I hear the sound of him in the kitchen.  He will have already made tea and porridge for his father and now the kettle is boiling again and he is making a cup of tea for me.  Double luxury! It is quiet here.  On a school morning faintly from the farm next door will come the sound of mothers calling and car doors slamming.  The cockerel might be heard crowing from the kitchen garden.  But there is no traffic, there are no trains or planes, just birds squabbling on the feeders and the cat calling meekly yet insistently for more food (not birds!). Break...

Sometimes it is the simplest things that make you feel good if only you can slow down enough to really notice them. A still clear morning, trembling with dew.  That stillness and sun has all blown away now in a gusting cold wind, but it was there, for a day. A visit on Monday from some blogging friends, mountainear , snailbeachshepherdess , bodran and bluestocking mum - tea, cake, more tea, even more cake and vast amounts of talk and laughter.  Things have not been easy for everyone over the last year or so and yet there seemed to be nothing we couldn't talk about or laugh at.  It doesn't happen more than twice a year but it's amazing how easy it is to catch up and how our lives intertwine. The sight and size and gentle furriness of the quinces which Felicity brought for me.  Aren't they beautiful? A full log basket and a fire in the woodburner. A full glass. Three perfect eggs from the Light Sussex hens. A video of my two year grandson sitting ...

Rain - teasing me, throwing drops on the greenhouse roof, darkening the flags, tossing the twisted willow, passing over leaving the sweetpeas still gasping. Wine - a glass by myself, FIL sleeping, my visiting parents in the cottage, Ian away.  Cliche tells you drinking alone is a bad thing, this feels like entirely earned luxury. Friends - a day snatched yesterday from normal life with people I would not have met without blogging but who are now woven into my life.  Lots of laughter, some sounding off, driving home smiling. Cake - made two lemon cakes which sank spectacularly.  Tasted wonderful as had to fill the hole with icing.

Are you an expert at anything?  I remember my son, who was pretty good at lots of things,  saying when he was a teenager that he would give up being a good allrounder if he could be really astonishingly good at one thing, preferably rugby.  What do you think?  Is it better to be generally ok at lots of things or a real expert at just one thing? I've been musing about this partly as a result of starting a new project, a machine-made quilt.  I will blog about this properly when I have got a bit further with it if it doesn't prove to be a disaster!  If it turns out well it will be a quilt for the double bedroom in the holiday cottage.  Here is a taster of the materials and how they are coming together. Here is the material as it begins to pile up in its squares. And here it is making up the nine block pattern which is the structure of the quilt. The pattern is I think called Shoofly and makes 12" square blocks. I really hope I can make something whi...

It's November, one of my two least favourite months, the other being February. It is dark by five, and going to be darker. The leaves are whirling and there are all those things queueing up in the garden which I haven't done yet, including planting ludicrous numbers of tulip bulbs. Last month it was warm and inviting outside. Now it is colder and wetter and I am feeling like a very fair weather gardener. Eventually I will be able to persuade myself into looking forward to Christmas, but I need to wind myself up to it so I am not yet ready to go into a wonderwoman, organisational whirl to distract myself from the beginning of winter. So I am going to indulge myself with a list: ten things that make me smile. Michael McIntyre. I don't know quite what it is about him. He makes me smile before he has even opened his mouth, a useful quality in a comedian you'd think. My three year old grandson in the park, "Grandma, lets go in the woods and have an adventure...

Things that make me smile: Chickens, the one left behind suddenly realising and running after the others like a cartoon chicken, suddenly panic stricken, legs akimbo, all flap and silliness. Cockerels shouting at each other, calling and fussing, gathering their girls to them for a particularly tasty morsel. Hens in a dust bath, settling, fluffing their wings, scratching and dousing themselves in dust as if it were water. My grandson, serious, silly, three years old, all blond hair and blue eyes. We are driving. A voice comes from the back. "Grandma." "Yes, love." "I'm beautiful." "Are you, love? That's nice." What is going on here, a very young narcissist? "Yes, and my mummy is very beautiful." "Well you're a very lucky boy." My father in law, telling me yet again, both amused and indignant, at his horror on discovering that the chocolate chip ice cream he had bought was green. "Green! I thought it was...