Easing..or rather rushing...from Summer to Autumn hasn't been easy.
We had a lovely warm two weeks away, but returning to the cold and wet has been hard going!!
I've been working through the bags of fruit..12 jars each of damson, and damson and apple jam. Four pounds of damsons in the freezer and another four pounds in the fridge.
Sorting through the pears, many are well bruised (after dropping from 20 to 30 feet...) have hard lumps in them and what looks like codling moth damage.
Two trays of pear slices in the dryer with two of apple rings,and a bowl of pear bits in water and lemon juice for a pudding tonight.
I'm hunting for a fresh fig and date chutney recipe....
Plenty more apples to be sliced for drying and juiced for freezing. I might try one batch of cider....
Pirate is fitting shelves in our kitchen cupboard...not the easiest of jobs as its 134 centimetres long.. and is at its widest 40 centimetres....and has an ordinary door to access it in the middle!
Much banging and a modicum of swearing...and stops for tea and toast with vegemite!!
It will mean the kitchen bench will be (fairly!) uncluttered and the preserves and cordials can be stored in the kitchen cupboards instead of the living room sideboard.
We've had one half-day garden job...paid in kind...overnight stay, supper, breakfast and lunch and a bottle of Rioja wine! Four others are waiting for the grass to dry (some hope!) but that does mean things are getting done here. I'm planning on moving the fruit bushes from their pots into the present deep beds, and starting on new beds for veges...so they need to be ready for the autumn planting of garlic,onion sets and broad beans.
I've had weird computer problems since updating the linux/ubuntu operating system...some have been solved by changing from firefox to chromium browser...but then have disappeared! I'll keep firefox as a backup in case of more problems. However it sits on the "front page" for five minutes before flashing through a problems report page so fast that you can't read it...the general consensus is that something is interfering with plymouth, the front page programme...a plug-in or some such that didn't get deleted during the system upgrade... I have access to people with knowledge of linux, but not in person here!
Everything is eating into our Travelling to NZ cash..getting wed, keeping the car on the road, possibly getting a new laptop (or tablet).....all sorts...but we are determined..Pirate is 80 next year and reckons that this will, sadly, be his last trip to the other side of the globe.
So we are back into a sort of routine, ticking along, trying to keep warm and fit.
Whilst away I caught up with a potter friend...and now I know how to get the flue on the kiln!!...Now I need some breeze blocks to start the job....
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4 comments:
It feels comfortable to know you're beginning a routine for winter. If only we could skip through this year.
Looks like you are going to have a busy winter!
We are hoping for one of our long warm falls. Temps have dropped a bit, but I am acting as if it’s still summer. Well it is for another week.
Work hard to get that final trip to NZ. We visited it twice when in our early sixties and I have always regretted that I did not experience that wonderful country when younger as we would surely have emigrated to it. It simply ticks absolutely all the boxes where we are concerned.
I, too, am 80 this year, but since a stroke I could not contemplate such an aggro filled long journey again. Do it while you can - you never know what's round the corner!
I am 78 and couldn't imagine undertaking a trip like that. But he looks like he is much more industrious than me so his stamina is probably better.
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