This morning I met up with a friend for tea and cake. We shared a lemon muffin chosen on the basis of eeny-meeny-miney-mo, or however it is actually spelt. Sharp, sweet, light and very good but how you eat an entire one on your own I am not sure.
My friend loves books - we used to be in the same bookgroup. She likes the kind of books where nothing happens but there is lots of meaningful dialogue and deep and intensely thought provoking ideas floating around. I like thrillers, murder mysteries, nature books, history and straightforward biographies. It is a good thing we are different, as it allows our ideas to cross-pollinate.
Currently I am reading Monty Don "My garden world" which is when my friends tells me I am becoming very middle aged. She has a huge crush on Monty Don - I once tried to find her a calendar featuring him, but obviously I wasn't too successful. Firemen, footballers, nature scenes but not BBC2 style garden show presenters. I tell her that I am a one woman weed destruction machine, having spent several hours clearing what friends jokingly call "Armegeddon" - a patch of nettles, thistles, grasses and the odd gnome and dog toy that ramps joyfully at the back of their equally generously built house.
I like the book. He has a gentle countryman's style, and it is written as if it were a series of seasonal blogs, describing the flora and fauna in his extensive garden and Welsh hill farm. It feels soothing after a day of staring at screens. Some of the plants I know, most I don't so it is slowly educating me.
As for the fauna - I loved reading that Pine Martens are more common these days. I remember my delight in seeing a stoat on the footpaths around Lee Abbey and the thought of seeing this beautiful little predator with it's neat creamy chest, compact ears and chocolatey back makes me very jealous indeed!
I enjoy his writing on birds the most. Woodpeckers, sparrow hawks, cuckoos, garden birds. Lots to enjoy. It has been a busy few weeks. I realised, today, sitting in the garden with a glass of rioja and a decent sausage casserole, that I hadn't had a spare Saturday for a while. Even going round Morrisons felt like normality.
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