Making Hay while the sun shines, part 2.
My apologies for the late arrival of today’s blog. After months of insomnia I was able to sleep last night. The usual time for tweaking and posting the next days blog was used for sleeping.
This morning was always going to be busy with good things. An early morning dog walk followed by a swim in the sea. The dog walk gave me this revised blog title.
Our local nature reserve is having a second hay harvest only a couple of weeks since the last.Today was always about making the best of things. We’ve had a sad old week which I’m sure I will touch on in various future blogs. So our is a metaphorical ‘ Making Hay While The Sun Shines’ kind of day. It turns out that is is also an actual Hay Making day.
The early dog walk was planned to facilitate an early swim with some old friends, pre 9am at Cawsand Beach. We found a quiet, almost Mediterranean corner of the beach to swim from.
The access to the sea was easy but very definitely more Cornish than Mediterranean, as was the sea temperature.
We had a fabulous swim, completely life enhancing and happiness creating. Followed by coffee and breakfast in our little cove. Emerging from our quiet spot there was very quickly signs of things to come!
The beach ahead of us was crowded even at 10 am.
Trying to get home involved an almost 10 mile traffic jam or a half hour drive to a ferry with a half hour wait.
Obviously from the picture you can see we chose the ferry.
This was a difficult decision for all @theold mortuary. A much loved family member was killed on the road to Torpoint and we’ve not ever travelled that road since. Some tears were shed.
South East Cornwall is full to the brim with people and traffic. Time to get back to part of today’s original blog.
The only link I can find is friendship.
Apparently government guidelines suggest that gatherings of 30 people are acceptable, with appropriate social distancing. Even with new additions I’m not sure I could gather 30 friends together and certainly not 30 family members. So once again I am unable to comply with new government guidelines. Meeting with a lower number of people suits us just fine. 30 seems giddyingly too many.
Just before lockdown I met two women. One at an art gallery and the other at a gym. Lockdown created a unique time and space to grow new friendships at a distance, we have also rekindled our old friendship with our swimming friends and nurtured existing friendships with the gift of more time. I’m not sure quite why the pandemic promoted the ability to speed up the cementing of really solid and valuable friendships both old and new, it’s a lovely positive in puzzling times.
I suppose that is something to ponder on!
The pictures below are lovely gifts that arrived this week from the Art Gallery friend and the Gym friend.
Lovely bursts of colour from flowers and crocheted bunting.
The pandemic has taught us to value friends and family and everything closer to home. It is a lovely feeling.
Pondering on a Sunday is not always relaxing. This picture was taken when the day was very fresh. Ripe you might say , but as I write this the rain splatters regularly on the roof and the day is blowing out grey and grumpy. I never quite know how I feel about summer rain especially on a day that showed such early promise.Today I’m pondering the ineffectual way the English language has for describing the actual lived experience of summer rain. On the whole it has whimsicle or romantic descriptives.Soft, Shower, Precipitation.For a start there is the disappointment that it’s happening at all, no summer activity ever was enhanced by rain and yet there is no negative word for its arrival or its effect on life.Storms, Gales, Tempests, Hurricanes are all words for rainy weather in the three other seasons. But they don’t work in the summer. Squalls sort of fit the summer rain brief but there is no energy in that word to reflect my anymosity to the wet stuff in summer.It’s a limp word that gets no sympathy.” How was the summer fete?”” A complete wash out, there were squally showers”There is no dynamism in that statement.” How was the summer fete?”” A complete wash out, there was a tempest!”So much more impactful but who would ever say that.
So there we are a blog without end. A feeling of frustration that no English word quite sums up the annoyance of summer rain.
I took this photo in 2016 in a Catholic Church in Havana, Cuba.Unusually for sunflowers I find this image melancholy and I love it all the more because it subverts the usual feelings evoked by sunflowers. I’m pretty certain I will never take a better photo of sunflowers. I should probably stop trying.
This is another favourite, a sunflower next to a table light , artfully abstract, I like it but I don’t love it.Adoration, loyalty and longevity are the symbolic meanings attached to sunflowers in Western culture and in China good luck and lasting happiness .In Cuba, where my favourite picture was taken, the sunflower has a unique cultural significance. The sunflower is offered to the Virgin of Charity or Cachita as the mother of Jesus is informally known. Digging a little deeper the offering of sunflowers is a fascinating blend of worshipping girl power. In the Afro- Cuban belief system that is part of the Yoruba based religions, sunflowers are offered to Oshun who is an Orisha or spirit. She is a river goddess associated with divinity,feminity, fertility,beauty, freshwater, wealth and intimacy.The Virgin Mary in Cuba is habitually wearing a dress of sunflower yellow.Who knows why these flowers were left in a church, one of the many reasons I love this picture is the unpretentiousness of the bunch of flowers and that the imprint of the person who left them is still seen in the crumple of the newspaper used to wrap them.
The blend of Christianity and Yoruba are held together in this simple bunch of flowers.The same theme can also be glanced in this Cuban dance.
Full moons and quarter moons could be made, but they don’t have intriguing shapes for small hands.
Kyknos Tomato Paste is our favourite tomato cooking ingredient and the tin is very high quality, so robust enough to make a very fine cookie cutter in times of Pandemic resticted shopping.simply by removing both the top and bottom with a can opener.
Don’t be tempted to upgrade the bread , posh bread gives tatty edges.MethodButter 3 slices of bread.Spread cream cheese on 3 further slices of bread.Sandwich one buttered and one cheesed piece of bread together giving you 3 cheese sandwiches that are uncut.
Stage one cut a circle or full moon out of one of the sandwiches, repeat as necessary with the other sandwiches……………………………
Stage two, cut out two more crescents out of the remaining sandwich………………………..
Stage three cut two more smaller crescents out of the full moon/ circle shape. This miraculously will leave you with a waxing or waning Gibbous…………………………………
Pack moons into a sandwich box.
Lunar loveliness for adventurous picnics.
Today is the day in our corner of South East Cornwall. The Artichokes have burst forth their pollen coated flowers and bees are all over the place, apparently this is a buff bottomed bee. There were many bees of buff bottom fame.
Wikipedia suggests they are called White Tailed Beewhich is far less exciting.What is exciting is that we also had a Cornish Black Bee.
The Artichokes are a gorgeous blaze of hot summer pink at the moment. They will get bluer in a day or two, some summers they deepen to a Klein or Majorelle Blue.When the Artichokes get bluer they tend to attract red-tailed bees. Something to look forward to later in the week.Meanwhile back to Blousy. I’m not sure Artichokes quite fit the bill.
But they do have an essence of blousy. If an artichoke walked into a bar it would expect to be noticed. Not because of the unusualness of a walking artichoke obviously, but because it has a provocative way about it, it looks like a good- time plant, the plant that knows where the after party is and is confident it will brazen its way passed the bouncers into the VIP area.Very Impressive Plant.
theoldmortuary.design 