The Last Days of Summer

Notes from a late summer day out in Brighton

In the Elephant Topiary Garden

Fat Boy Slim show

Early Morning, Early September....

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. ~P.D. James


I haven't been sleeping well lately. I don't know what to attribute it to, but I tend to wake up before the sun comes up. Which isn't really that early considering our latitude and the time of year....

This time, I awoke to a perfectly crisp autumn morning. I slid out of bed careful not to wake the G or the furry Bisbeast sleeping at the foot of the bed, and headed out into the fresh autumnal sunshine for an early morning walk.

I wasn't the only one with the same idea and I came across these guys as well. I love the long shadows that early morning and late afternoon have to offer. Here's evidence of all the rain we've had lately.
And the first of the autumn leaves to make an appearance.
...And creatures large and small.This is one of the posts I never got around to putting up back in September when the pics were taken. Better late than never, right? Forgive me?

Project 52 Revisited

Photo Taken 12 October 2008

Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter. ~Carol Bishop Hipps

Lunch Break Update

Hi. Greetings from my place of employment. Can you believe that THIS is where I work! How lucky am I?

Over lunch (orange scented couscous with chicken and almonds - yum.) I've been enjoying the autumn glory here and here and feeling inspired to do a bit more of my own exploration through the camera lens.

I also want to urge you to pick up The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. What a cool book. I'm particularly enamoured by the idea of communicating with dogs only through posture and sign language - a language invented on an isolated farm in most-northern Wisconsin, no less.

That's about it for this lunch break. Talk soon!

Remember me?

Just hangin out
Originally uploaded by TheQueenBean

I bet you're wondering if I fell off the face of the Earth. Man, life got busy for me over the past few weeks. School started three weeks ago and I've been wiped off my feet with lesson planning and photocopying. You know how it is.

The weather's been better the past couple of weeks and every waking second is spent trying to synthesize enough vitamin D to get through the long and impending winter months. I've made up my mind to live more and sleep less this winter.

I've even made myself a list of Things I Want To Do. I split it into a timeline of This Week, This Month, In Three Months, Before Next Year, In 3 to 5 Years, and In My Lifetime. Sounds ambitious, don't it? An excerpt:

In 3 to 5 years, I would like to:

• Have visited most of the countries in Europe
• Volunteer to help with the 2012 London Olympics
• Complete a Masters Degree in Education
• Return to North America to live
• Be credit-card-debt-free
• Have a better relationship with my mind-body - explore spirituality?
• Have and raise a child/children
• Complete a Triathlon
• Finally begin writing that novel that's been spinning round my head the past three years
• Finish a quilt.....

You get the idea.

I'm listening a lot to Sera Cahoone, Fleet Foxes and My Morning Jacket. Resurrecting Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch. Wanting to hit the road with Jeff Tweedy.

I'm taking The Life In The UK test this week and reading my handbook: A journey to citizenship to jump through the seemingly endless hoops that being an ex-pat requires.

I'm taking my Driving License test at the end of the month.

Bisbee has a gaping hole on his head - battle scars from The Cat Fight Kitchen. Feral cats have figured out how to get in to the house through the cat flap and our kitchen has been showdown central. Another round of antibiotics for the Bisbeast and live traps for the Ferals.

The G started his new job in public health this week. Yay! I interviewed and didn't get a full time job teaching here at the college, but try and try again.

That's about it from here. I'll load some more recent pics up soon. I promise. XO, Bee

Heath or Heather?

I can never remember which is the summer one - heath or heather? I have a sneaking suspicion its heath in the summer, but all I can hear in my head is that old Sonic Youth ditty - the bull in the heather...... Anyway, whichever it was was in full bloom when we hit the Peak District a couple weekends ago.
It was as if the mountains were laid to rest under a lavender blanket. Here we are, trying not to get blown away.

Copy cat.

Here's me, log rolling down the last bit of the descent. My legs were like rubber after a summer of convalescence, I'm back to jelly legs. You'd do it too and you know it.

I got a kick out of how idyllic the place was. Just get a load of this typical Derbyshire courtyard.Masochists that we are, not only did we hike up the Kinder Scout plateau, we went nuts on a bike ride around Derwent Water the next day on aching legs- 17 miles in all, but more of the pretty heath-heather background and the enormous slice of chocolate cake at the Woodbine Cafe at the end of the trail made it all worth it.

The Siamese Sunflower and Other Gardening Disasters

There must be something in the water. Speaking of things not going exactly as planned in the garden, have I mentioned that I lost the complete crop of tomatoes to tomato blight? It's so depressing! They were just starting to turn a scrumptious looking red and within about three days all 10 plants started turning black and withering away.

I had this bright idea that I wanted to grow my own pickling cucumbers and make gherkins, but despite a good showing of flowers, only got one cucumber!! Here he is in all his glory...With a little help from the farmer's market, there's no shortage of summer bounty on the table. The three colour zucchini is coming up trumps and we've got quite a few sugar snap peas as well. That photo below made a kick ass tofu stirfry!! Have you had romanesco cauliflower? It's the green geometric one shown below. It tastes like extra cauliflowery cauliflower. Mmmm.

As Busy As A...

And I'm not the only one.... Summer's grinding to a halt and with the onset of autumn comes a boat load of work to get going for the upcoming school year. Sorry I've been so quiet on the blog, but you know how it goes....
I've missed you guys! I'll make a sincere effort to post more often. See you soon. xx Bee

Go Team GB?!!

Personally, I'm obsessed with the Olympics. There's just something about seeing sports you never get to see in your everyday normal life. Take the triple jump, for example. Or the pommel horse. Or fencing. Ping Pong. Archery. Synchronized Swimming. When else do you get a chance to see these kinds of things? I really can't wait until 2012, what a once in a lifetime experience to watch crazy fools cycle round a cereal bowl in the velodrome. I'm stoked.

The thing I don't really get is how blaze' the Brits are about the games. Take this opinion piece entitled Go on, admit it, Beijing is boring. Let's call off 2012 in this weekend's Observer - the paper I almost religiously read every Sunday. So far, I think this pretty accurately reflects the attitude I've come across here this first week of the Games. I'm excited, I try and talk to my co-workers, friends and even the check-out girl at the store and they simply shrug their shoulders and say something like, I'm not really bothered about it. What? You're not bothered? But it's the Olympics! I plead. TV coverage is limited to daytime (while everyone's at work) and live coverage in the wee hours overnight. There's only a one-hour recap in prime time on BBC1 - which simply shows the heats that Team GB were involved in and not much else. It's really disappointing for a big fan like myself.

What's Happening in the Kitchen Garden...

I've always had a thing for butterflies....

I've been threatening you for ages with the tour of our kitchen garden. It's my first attempt at raising vegetables, especially from seeds, (and smuggled back from the US no less!) and I have to admit I approached it a little unconventionally by planting all the veg in the borders mixed in with the more traditional flower beds. Feverfew among the marigolds

It's been super successful so far and we currently have courgettes (Zucchini) coming out of our ears.Looking toward the end of the garden. Courgettes, corn, then euphorbia, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, blackberries, cucumbers, and pumpkin. Whew.

Courgette (Zucchini) blossoms

And speaking of ears. Look at the corns bloom! Amazing that each of those little flowers will be a corn kernel when it grows up. Yummy.

These little ganzanias make me happy.

Look! There's some sugar snap peas among the nasturtiums and dahlias. Can you spot the swiss chard?Stargazer Lily.

My lilies were a complete disaster. I had red lily beetle pretty badly and they completely decimated the lily crop. I only got 2 flowers from about 8 plants!

Here's looking back at the house through the tomatillos and even more tomatoes. What on Earth am I going to do with all those tomatillos? Salsa verde, anyone?


This is looking back at the house. Note the inviting hammock complete with lap cat.I'm convinced that Warwickshire must be the slug capital of England. I've been trying to get lettuce leaves going for the past 7 or 8 months and only ever got a half eaten leaf or two. I've had much more luck planting leaves in pots, starting seeds every three weeks or so in order to always have some fresh lettuce on the go.
This is the potting shed and shady sitting area at the farthest end of the garden. You walk under this archway dripping with honeysuckle and climbing roses to enter, but for some reason I didn't take a picture of it.
We haven't really set up the sitting area yet, we only just moved in about a month ago.... But I did plant a sunflower garden along the wall. Here's a closer look at the first sunflower of the year!
And finally, a little taste of our daily bounty.

The best thing ever

He emerges from the study where he's been finishing a project for work all weekend.
Him: That band is the best thing ever.
Me: What band?
Him: This band, the one you've been playing on repeat all day.
Me: I thought I was the best thing ever.
Him: Who is this?
Me: Fleet Foxes. Zoe loaned me the CD. Dreamy, no?
Him: Like a cross between My Morning Jacket and Midlake, but more mature. Better.
Me: With a dash of CSN&Y style harmonies. More hymnal like.
Him: Yeah. Hymnal. The best thing ever.

Making stufff: the 'and her bird can sing... 'throw pillow

It was Zoe's birthday yesterday and to celebrate I threw together this little beauty. It's my first attempt at proper quilting - I mean with a traditional pattern - the log cabin. The results turned out to be anything but traditional.
I'm completely obsessed with the idea now and have already set about cutting up all the fabric I can get my hands on into these little 2 1/2 inch strips.
Oh and the embroidery on the back! I just love this little bird, inspired by one I saw in Doodle Stitching by Aimee Ray- a book I've mentioned before here on the blog and another book I just can't help being inspired by. Go out and get it now, even if you've never embroidered before - it is positively overflowing with simple yet stunning designs that can be infinitely used over and over again in a hundred different contexts. Check out her latest work here.
(Tweet.)
And for dessert.....
There is nothing happier than birthday cupcakes, don't you think?