Tag Archives: tea

The Epitome of Relaxation

I’ve just been to the doctor, which is not something to be undertaken lightly after my recent experiences. Fortunately I emerged with only mild embarrassment and a prescription for antibiotics and ointment.

I still look forwards to the day when I am allowed to keep my trousers on. This was, unfortunately, not that day.

My reward was a nice quiet sit-down in the pharmacy followed by test of willpower (swallowing a large uncoated pill which I suspect of having veterinary origins).

I then sat down to watch a number of obnoxious people competing to be judged as best value B&B. I can understand why people would want to go on such a programme to boost their business. I can’t, on the other hand, see why anyone would want to go on national TV to reveal themselves as the reincarnation of Lucretia Borgia.

Juli just returned from the hairdresser looking gorgeous. She has just changed because her last one, where she’d been going for 10 years, rang her to say they had closed down. Fortunately a new one has just opened round the corner, and it seems to be good. They will even shave my head for £6, which isn’t bad when you consider the contortions and safety aspects of doing it myself.

She just cooked beans on toast, with a garnish of sausage and bacon, plus a few mushrooms and some bubble and squeak (you have to remember the veg!).

Now I’m watching The Saint. it’s in colour and features Yootha Joyce and Tony Booth as Russian agents.

Soon it will be time to read a bit more, shout at some idiot quiz contestants and drink more tea.

Wife, tea, TV.

Does it get any better than this?

Just like Jane Austen

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The day started well, with a telephone call from the pharmacy. This allowed me to drive down to the shop and use the words “Incontinence Advisory Service” for the second time in three days. This time there wasn’t a crowd of people listening, so it was a less embarrassing experience than the first time.

I am now fully equipped for the next eight weeks and, as a result, feeling relaxed.

After that it was time for a trip to the jeweller’s. I don’t need any jewellery, watch batteries or repairs but I don’t really need an excuse to gossip and drink tea. With my current set-up I am able to drink tea without worrying about the consequences. It was a relaxing interlude, as it’s part jeweller and part antique shop. As I think I’ve said before I feel at peace in three places – church, antique shops and bookshops.

I also feel at home in “all you can eat buffets”, as you can probably tell from the self-portrait, but for some reason I’m never made as welcome there as I am in the other places and don’t feel so comfortable. The staff always seem edgy when I walk in…

The last visits of the day were to drop off some Easter cards. It involved more tea and a look at several gardens that I used to look after. One of the ladies showed me her 80th Birthday Album. She had spent the week in Whitby with her children and grandchildren. It looked like a good time was had by all, and the Birthday Cake was made by Botham’s teashop. The picture on top was a view of the Abbey framed in the Whitby Whalebone Arch.

Whalebone Arch – Whitby

As a result of getting out and about I feel much happier, even if the weather forecast is not good.

In fact, with all this tea and visiting I’d go so far as to say I feel very Jane Austen.

A Day in Derbyshire

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We dropped Number 2 son off in Sheffield after lunch and took a trip into the Peaks. It was a lovely day, the verges were full of celandines and wood anemones in the appropriate places and all was right with the world, apart from one thing. For some reason whenever we say something worth photographing there was nowhere to park.

I’m not saying Derbyshire County Council has designed the road system to stop drivers taking photographs but if they ever decide to do so it will be difficult to improve on the current situation.

Despite this I did manage to get some shots of scenery, or fields and rocks, as Julia pointed out. With a bit more enthusiasm I could have parked and walked a bit more, but that would have meant spending less time at the Brierlow Bar Bookshop.

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We’ve been there before, as regular readers will know. The tea is still up to standard and we had some very acceptable cashew and banana cake (though it was a little rich, even for me). I think my new healthy diet might be blunting my ability to appreciate cake. It’s a stiff price to pay, even for a few extra years of life.

I’m afraid a high price has also been paid by the book stock. The Nature section doesn’t seem as strong as it used to be, and the Poetry section seems to be depleted, although my other favourite sections seem either the same (History) or expanded (Crime Fiction). Julia says the Craft section is much smaller too. I like tea but I like books too. I am conflicted.

Hope Valley

Celandines

Hope Cement Factory

Hope Valley

I suppose I should have bought a guidebook to the Peak District to address my ignorance but I bought one on stained glass, one on War Poets and one about an archaeologist who solves murders.

That’s why there’s a lack of information on Lead Mining, sheep and Blue John in this post. In future posts I will try to address this failing.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

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Yes, we’ve cleared the board of the autumn display and put up some more Christmas decorations. We’ve signed a few Christmas cards the group are sending to other groups they belong to, hat making is under way and we all sniffed the Christmas cake this afternoon – it’s smelling good.

We put the Christmas tree up again. It looks like they had a private party at the weekend and knocked it over. No harm done but annoying all the same, particularly as they left a messy table and a strange smell in the air.

You may note that the tree is decorated with the remains of the saltdough animals we have been using for school visits – waste not, want not.

Apart from that I attended to the bird feeders, as noted in the previous post, wrote a post on kalettes for the other blog, put a goat back in the barn and lurked outside getting cold as I waited to photograph more birds. I came close to photographing a male bullfinch, but it was too quick for me. Apart from that there was little excitement until the table collapsed, flinging tea and telephones to the floor.

Paper flowers

Hat making the Quercus way

Our tree, with saltdough decorations

As we tried to clear the mess from the floor we were accompanied by wailing about phones. My reply (“That’s why we tell you not to bring phones and electrical equipment to the farm.”) didn’t go down too well. On the other hand, when you’re up to your ankles in tea and glitter you don’t want to know about phones, or hear the eternal “It wasn’t my fault.”.

Initially we were left with a mass of glitter in the joints between the floorboards but we managed to clear it out eventually. Well, Julia did. I lost interest and carried on writing about kalettes.

Great things kalettes, a proper old-fashioned cross between Brussels sprouts and kale (that is important as these days people tend to think any cross is a Frankenstein genetic modification job). It doesn’t need peeling,cooks quickly, tastes mild, is crammed full of goodness and looks decorative on the plate.

Kalettes – new superfood or Emperor’s new greens?

Escape to Derbyshire (Part 2)

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After lunch, the sun went in, which was a shame because I had wanted some shots of autumn colour and what is scarlet and gold in sunlight is just shades of brown when overcast.

After buying our selection from the shop we decided that the cafe, despite some excellent reviews on Tripadvisor, looked a bit busy and cramped so we decided to give it a miss.

At that point I decided to chance my arm and mentioned in a casual manner that the refreshments at the Brierlow Bar bookshop were always acceptable.

“We aren’t buying any books.”

“Nothing, my dear,” I said, “could be further from my thoughts.”

As a salesman I was always told that sincerity was the hardest thing to fake, but I like to think I’m pretty good at it.

Half an hour later we stepped into the shop, turned to the toilets (it’s my age, you know) and…

…they have built a whole new cafe.

My jaw dropped.

Change, I find, is not the same thing as improvement. However, in this case the change does seem to be an improvement.

We had prize-winning Novus tea, served in a pot, with extra hot water, tea strainers and milk in one of those little bottles that looks like an old-style school milk bottle. The tea is bright and golden when poured and tastes very pleasant. I’m afraid I don’t have a wide vocabulary of tea terms.

Being (a) surprised and (b) thirsty, I didn’t really take in much else about the place. The tables have good chunky tops and varied ironwork supports and the chairs are a mixed bag of second hand items (or an eclectic mix as we bloggers call them). However, the important things to note are that you can browse the cookery book titles whilst seated, no important books have been lost to the cafe and after two large cups of tea we still couldn’t see the bottom of the pot. I like that. Quality is good in tea, but quantity is even better.

In the end I was allowed to buy four books – two for me and two for Julia, so I’m still wondering who did best out of this visit.

Tea, Tact and Talent

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We sat under the awning to eat lunch and drink freshly brewed mint tea and the first thing I saw was a large reddish brown dragonfly. It was about twelve feet up in the air and flying strongly so after consulting the internet I’m thinking it may have been a brown hawker. They are widespread and common, so it seems like a good ID. I’m always suspicious when people like me (with little knowledge and an internet connection) claim to have seen a rarity. Unfortunately I didn’t have the camera but if I had I doubt I would have got a meaningful shot.

As we ate, I was concious of a lot of movement and raucous calls in the trees that line the boundary. Eventually two wrens popped out. There may have been more, they move so fast I’m never quite sure. Once they decided to show themselves they spent a good ten minutes perching on fence rails and the edges of raised beds. Oh, for that camera again!

I like wrens, though they always sound so cross.

Last Saturday, I spent the afternoon at a food festival run by a local school. It’s completely out of context here, but I’ve nowhere else to put it. I was surrounded by people giving out free food, mainly fruit, which was irritating because I couldn’t get away to eat any. As we packed up I did notice that someone had a poster up claiming they could sell you a vitamin supplement to make your kids more intelligent. They haven’t met mine.

I suspect that it was mainly snake oil, though the weren’t the only ones peddling a good line in…er…the latest fad. Note how I select my words carefully. Note how I carefully add a link there too, in case anyone thinks I am accusing local vitamin pedlars or being cruel to snakes.

I’d watched Saturday Kitchen before going to the fair and Jay Rayner had stated quite clearly that there was no such thing as a superfood – just a marketing opportunity. Now, I’m not qualified to judge, but I do find merit in his argument that a varied, balanced diet is healthier than a load of superfoods.

Imagine my surprise upon finding myself next to a stand from a well-known supermarket and two staff members who kept saying “It’s a superfood, you know.”

Now, I’m not one to bear grudges, but that particular supermarket branch refused to let me have a day there for bag packing when Nottingham Outlaws Juniors needed new shirts. When I applied to their community fund for backing they turned us down. And when Julia tried to see if there was any way we could work together on the education side we were told that they only worked with farms that supplied them. It’s a good thing that I’m not one to bear grudges, as I say.

I was tempted to quote Jay Rayner, and I was also tempted to say that the best thing about chia seeds is the hour of amusement you get from picking your teeth after eating. But I didn’t, after all, do we really need more sarcasm and ridicule in the world?

Unfortunately, though I’d like to share a photo with you, I don’t think it would be ethical. Plus I’m having trouble cropping it to hide identities

. However, there’s a message on the shirt – “Farm to Fork – I’m helping children learn where their food comes from”.

Their table was heavy with water melon, mango, avocado, pineapple and chia seed, so I suggest that they must be teaching kids that a lot of food comes from far away.

The eyes in the top picture are something Julia bought – we are rehearsing for Britain’s Got Talent. We don’t have much talent so we should fit right in.

The Unprogress Report

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I really did mean to write a progress report to tell you what’s been happening, but I haven’t actually made a lot of progress.

The tea is looking a bit better, though it’s in a mixed condition – some glossy green leaves and a few scorched brown ones.

The hollyhock growing from the compost bin is looking taller, though it’s an accident rather than something I can take credit for.

The blewits still haven’t shown any inclination to form mould so I’m wondering whether to wet them again or to stick them in the fridge to try and jump start them. The grey oyster mushrooms are still in the fridge because the polytunnels have been so hot most of the time I thought I’d delay trying to grow them.

The experimental bed, also known as the accidental permaculture bed, showed the benefits of organic matter in the soil as the fat hen grew quicker and taller in that section. The beans, meanwhile, don’t seem to show any benefit from it. The trouble there is that cutting winds just after planting the beans out set them all back and killed several so I’m not convinced we’re seeing a true result.

Failed bean experiments – note lack of fat hen in the bed on the right!

Same goes for the experiment with saved runner bean plants. After planting,the cold winds caused havoc, as with the other beans, and seemed to do more damage to the old plant than they did to the new ones. The old ones have recovered and are looking a bit better than the younger ones but there’s not a lot of difference. I’m going to try and measure the yield, but as someone has already helped themself to some beans we might struggle to get a proper figure.

We also lost the fat hen out of the accidental permaculture bed when some mystery gardener weeded it all out and we’ve had a bay tree taken from one of the polytunnels, which is extremely annoying, to say the least.

There’s probably other stuff I should report on too, such as the willow water (er…haven’t actually done anything about that), the calendula hand cream (er…ditto) …you get the picture….

So, no progress, enough good intentions to pave a fair-sized road and still no Lapsang Screveton.

I will just have to take comfort from the words of George Bernard Shaw.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Possibly…

Confessions of a Mediocre Gardener

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Twenty years ago I’d have had to go to the library to find answers but today, courtesy of the internet, I’m a coffee-growing expert.

Of course, I was a tea-growing expert at one point but that hasn’t worked out too well. I first thought the deteriorating of the tea plants was due to over-watering and/or scorching. So we shaded them and let them dry out a bit. It hasn’t really helped; they still look a bit shabby and down at heel. Then it occurred to me – we’d been doing a lot of watering with tap water. Tap water contains lime and tea plants, liking acid soils, don’t like tap water.

Seems like a good bit of deduction but trying to get the group to remember is more difficult than you’d think. Then, after more research, I find that it might not be a problem from tap water.

(And before you tell me to get more rainwater storage, I generally have enough, but people will insist on using the hosepipe for ease and speed. I confess that I do it myself at the end of a long day.)

So I’m going to add some ericaceous food, some organic matter and tap water.

They look slightly better here than they really are.

The coffee plant looks in need of a little help too, but according to the web all I need to do is replicate conditions on a tropical mid-level mountainside and all will be OK.

Should be easy enough in a mock-Tudor semi in Nottingham. Apart from the tropical bit, and the mountainside…

So – humidity (gravel tyray), good drainage, temperature above freezing and preferably above 65 degrees F (18 degrees C), plenty of sun (but not direct) and it likes acid conditions and orchid fertiliser.

I reckon I can do this.

But that’s what I said about the tea.

Looks better than the tea, at any rate.

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Life after the Care Farm