blackberries and apples

My mum and I and then my girls and I, used to go blackberrying..so for me the rhythmic reach and drop for blackberries is rich with comforting memories..I once picked them from the back of Clava a big, liver dark, thoroughbred mare and the berries were the size of golf-balls that exploded and dribbled down her deep dark neck as we galloped home..magic. 

Well this years berries are mega big and sweet and shiny with the sun. The apples were my first proper crop...and maybe no-one needs a recipe for blackberry and apple crumble..just a few tips perhaps.

 Wash the blackberries as wondrous little creepy crawlies can be found munching ahead of you..happily surrounded in the purple juices..

 Use butter if you can as the rich taste of the crumble is unsurpassable when bound in the golden stuff..be generous with your creativity..add things to give it crunch and surprise.

Don't add too much water..but be generous with a sprinkle of unprocessed sugar..or yummy honey

Use your finger tips as if rubbing in for pastry..then pile it all together perhaps with stem ginger...hmmm slide it into the oven and serve when crispy hot with double cream..or ice cream...all glorious xxxxxxx

rachel wetzsteon

Rachel Wetzsteon:

Urban Gallery

'When the wind invades the treetops

and the trees agree, shivering

take me, take me, when their

stealthy perfume drifts down to waft

among mortals…'

I have just discovered her and am sad to find her already gone.
In Adam Kirsch's essay he describes her as the 'not quite' poet of her generation. She died aged only 42 on Christmas eve 2009.

New rescue chooks

Well, after spotting an article in the local paper..I dashed over to Old Gardens Animal rescue Centre, in Sidlesham and met Dave and Irene who have done a great job in getting 1000 or so girls out of the intensive system of farming. As well as these rather manky looking chooks they also had a lot and I mean ..a lot..of wonderful exotic breeds skittering about. Not just chickens all kinds of be-feathered marvels.
Pictures to come ...

Well they have all settled in and Helen and Sylvia have finally stopped hen-pecking them. They have learned to scuttle towards the hen house when I call 'bed-time girls!' In a particular lullaby , go to sleep now...voice..Well that 's how I imagine it to sound. ..Anyway they up skirts and hurry towards the door. Scrabble the Jack Russell, is so naughty she stands all aquiver waiting for them to file up the ramp and into the hutch. Given half the chance she'd pluck them all and parcel them up for supper. But she doesn't dare whilst I hover.
They are all characters but I have only named one of them so far..Minnie. She is the smallest and therefore easier to identify. It's funny how they all have such different characters...I do love my chooks.

What is this underfoot...soil!!! WOW!

 These brown girls have never stepped out into anything lush before..they set to work scratching up a row of dust baths and pecked optimistically at everything hoping scraps of stone might be bugs...

Shaking their tail feathers and getting ready up for a spot of line dancing!

Helen the resident Light Sussex is a great galleon in comparison..she is looking for a few combs to take a nip

OK I know..enough of chickens for a while

words to conjure with

Bedraggled
Be-draggled
Bed raggled
this wonderful word has always amused me.

Sunflowers and wilderness fringing the crops

 Bees and flying beasts are loving the strip of wilderness..and so am I!!

 Yellow is such a cheering colour

Sunflowers on the South Downs September 2013

Trees..

Poem

Joyce Kilmer was born in New Jersey in 1886. “Trees” is his best-known poem. It grew even more in popularity in the decades after Kilmer’s death, which occurred while he was fighting in World War I in 1917. Today, streets and schools across the country, a park in New York City and a 3,800 acre forest in North Carolina all bear Kilmer’s name.

Trees

By Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

There is something very magical about lying on your back and looking up into the branches of a tree. It somehow makes you feel whole and at peace...with perhaps Annie Lennox singing words of wisdom and loss in amongst the leaves.

I have found caterpillar's in my hair and robins in the kitchen but I quite like the idea of a robin bobbing along and whispering in my ear from the comfort of his nest entangled in my hair.

wishes

As my lovely mum used to say..'If wishes were horses then beggars would ride.'

At least I have the memory of when I was a beggar on horse back..

yawn...rubs eyes....

What to do with insomnia...!!!
Nothing so debilitating as spending a string of sleepless nights and having to do brain work during the day..I guess not being out with the scythe prevents me from chopping something off or decapitating a pooch.

At least the apple trees my old dad gave me a few years ago are bending with fruit this year. I know, I know I should pick a few off each cluster to improve the ones left..I'm letting a few wasps feast on the runty ones instead. We have a nice dialogue going on...

By now, a few days afters starting to write this post, I have with great care not to upset the yellow and black striped folk..picked off the rotting and half consumed apples..the trees are still so young and the fruit so heavy.