Rites of Autumn

Click here for the annual ramblings

The Christmas cards are designed, formatted, printed and for the most part signed and enveloped.  Martyn's recent move into painting means that instead of my usual ego trip of using paintings I've done during the year, we now have a joint effort.  (Another of his paintings is in the annual ramblings, qv supra.)  I print two cards per sheet of A4, alternating the front and back images, so we now have an even share of the front page.

We are very much into the soup season: we've finished the broth we made some time ago, and today finished off Martyn's excellent caldo verde.  Anyone heard of buttonhole kale?  Nous non plus.  That's what we used, and my contribution to the soup making was to strip the leaves off and discard the tough stems, and set about the leaves with the hachoir.  The purple of the leaves made for a slightly grey soup (caldo cinzento?), but the flavour was none the worse of it and, as usual, better at the second time of asking.  We put last weekend's chicken carcass to stock for use mid-week with the leftover chicken, sliced mushrooms, chives from the garden and some small pasta for a suitably comforting lunchtime soup.  I see we have some red lentils in the store cupboard, so shall haul out Ma's manuscript recipe some time in the week.

Today is mild, so I've spent a moment in the garden hauling the frosted beans and the antirrhinums from their respective sinks, and planting daffodil bulbs, the last of the polyanthus and the first half of the pansies that we've been bringing on from plugs.  The remaining bulbs and pansies will go in the sink that we can see from the kitchen window.  The sedums were starting to look pretty ugly, so they are now chopped down.  While there are still flowers on the rudbeckias, I'm not in a hurry to dig them out, so contented myself with some dead-heading.  Same goes for the roses: I've hacked back what I can to reduce the risk of wind rock, but can't bring myself to cut off flower buds, even though they may not come to much.  I am less enthusiastic about sweeping up leaves, however.  Our neighbours' oaks and silver birches are a bloody nuisance, and since we have just had a heavy shower I shall defer that task yet again.

I see that the EU27 have signed off the UK-EU divorce settlement.  The latest freshly-resigned Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union thinks the exit deal leaves the UK worse off than remaining in the EU.  I've heard it said, not that I could personally express a view of course, 'Well, what did you §%$ing expect?'.