welsh hills again

The clocks went back today. Yesterday was a vivid blue day but today has been dank and grey. All day thick cloud sat on the top of Penycloddiau. I was working in the shepherd's hut, snug and warm at my little desk by the window. I look out towards the hedge which has just been cut. A rowan tree and a horse chestnut rise out of the hedge and a new little oak tree, grown from an acorn by the stonemason who worked on our utility, is growing at its base. I watched a tiny wren hop in and out of the newly shorn hedge, disappearing into its depths. It is an old hedge, even when just cut it is still about six foot thick. Later I made bread, scones and turned the last of the pears into an intensely sweet and fragrant pear crumble. The kitchen smelt like a hug from your mother. Tonight it was dark when we sat down to eat. I am not a winter person but even I have to admit that it is cosy in here tonight by the woodburner with the cat sprawled ecstatically in front of it on the rug.

A busy time with my parents staying and work to do.  I look up and find I haven't blogged for nearly a fortnight and I have missed the September End of Month view which I have been trying to keep going, now in its second year and massively useful when it comes to winter thinking about the garden.  I have had a bit of a lull with the garden but find myself being gently tugged back again.  I have ordered bulbs and some bare rooted plants to define the corner where the shepherd's hut goes and I find myself mulling things over again.  It looks as if the spell is not broken. So here is a mix of musing and pictures for October. The sun comes up on a chill October morning.  I shall cut back the wild rose which is growing on top of the wall outside the kitchen door but not just yet, not while the rosehips are shining. The side garden has gone over now.  I know it is possible to have a garden which still sings in October (see Karen !) but although mine n...

Let's be honest here - I have been trying to learn Welsh for a very long time!  We have lived here for just a few weeks short of seven years so I think it must be around six years ago that I walked through the door of the first class.  To begin with we had a class twice a week which ran in our local pub.  Numbers have fluctuated, people have come and gone, the class moved up the hill into Caerwys, first to a room which is now part of the butcher's and then into the Institute, handy but not quite as cosy as the pub and with no glass of wine as a reward after either.  The twice a week classes shrank to once a week so we moved from two lovely tutors to one.  But week in, week out, I have trundled down with my files and my dictionary.  I have sat exams: Mynediad, Sylfaen, Canolradd, roughly equivalent to Entry, Foundation and Intermediate.  While I might not be fluent you would have to grant me my commitment! Now numbers have settled to a small hardcore ...

Two reasons for coming down from the hill this week.  The first was the most flying of visits to Oxford and London. Weeks ago Ian had suggested we see the  production of Timon of Athens at the National Theatre .  We could drive down to Oxford on Tuesday, stay with daughter and son in law and see grandson on Tuesday night, get the Oxford Tube (a coach service) into London in the morning, have lunch, see the play, get the Tube back again and drive home, achieving the whole thing while only being away from home and father in law for a single night. The arrangements were put in place for father in law care and off we went.  I am struggling a bit with living so far away from various parts of my family at the moment so seeing my daughter and her family was both lovely and oddly hard, yet I am amazed and delighted at how firmly Joseph has bonded to me, following me around talking nineteen to the dozen and insisting that Grandma does his bath.  I should take that as...

I wish I wasn't so erratic about gardening.  I really thought I had cracked my tendency to lose interest in the garden in August.  Inspired by Karen  I have begun to engage with September and October in the garden and while my first love will always be spring, I have come to love the golden light of late summer and early autumn.  Maybe it is like a biological clock - you know, the stuff about whether you are a morning or a nighttime person. Perhaps you can have the same thing with times of year.   I have been keeping gardening diaries for ever. Year after year the detailed planning entries and commentaries on what is working and what's not from the early months tail off in mid July into disgruntled little notes "Looks tired", "No colour", "Everything's flopped" or even worse the pages of emptiness where I have clearly got fed up with the garden and gone walking. But the thing about Helen's end of month view posts is that the discipline m...

Even the most confirmed country dweller needs an injection of city energy every now and then.  Today I went into Manchester for lunch with an old friend.  Sometimes going into the city overwhelms me for a while with its noise and dirt and crowds, and it takes a few hours for me to stop gawping at the traffic like a country bumpkin.  You wouldn't think I had lived and worked in Manchester and London for years.  Seven years up here on the hillside has created a world, internal as well as external, which is green and quiet and empty of rubbish and crowds and noise.  But today for some reason I just slipped right into city mode like an otter into water. It helped that the city was quiet this morning.  I caught a bus into the centre after Ian dropped me off.  At home in North Wales we walk or we go in the car.  Public transport is thin on the ground in the country.  It was a pleasant surprise to sit on a bus and watch the university buildings pa...

Last week my sister came to stay with her two children.  I haven't lived near my own family for years and years, in fact all my adult life.  I left home to go to London for university and never came back.  Despite that, I am close to my family and my sister and I have managed to twine our lives together, picking up where we left off when we see each other, sharing the same sense of humour, the same tendency to take on too much, the same taste in clothes and houses and men.  Ten years ago she moved back to Devon and now lives near my parents so we often  see each other when I go to see them.  We tend to whizz in and out: a couple of days' visit, full of people and snatched conversation, lovely but squeezed.  So when she suggested she might come and stay for a few days I was delighted. It was so good to have time to cook together, to eat together, to chat over a glass of wine in the evenings when her teenage children had gone to bed.  It was good ...