Come Rain or Come Shine

This is the sight that greeted me when I opened the front door this morning, wet street and puddles from where it had rained under a cloudy sky. What you can't see is the occasional rain and drizzle. Now, however, some 7 hours later, the sun is shining and the temperature is in the mid-60s. It's delightful. Don is out front preparing the ground between the pathway lights for planting. We have decided to plant a variety of heathers between the lights.

In the foreground of the photo you see my "wee basil farm," which is doing really well. In the distance, you see a tree with red berries. This is one of the two rowan trees (mountain ash) for which the house was named. They both are loaded with berries this year, said to be one sign of a hard winter coming. We'll see.

In the afternoon yesterday, I made spinach soup and bread pudding for last evening's dinner. The spinach was a gift from my hairdresser who had been given it by one of her clients, a farm wife. Lesley asked me if we liked spinach. When I told her yes, she said she had a surprise for me. As I was leaving, she handed me the bag full of freshly picked gorgeous spinach. You never know what surprises may wait in store for you around here!

While I was cooking, Don went out around the neighbourhood on foot distributing flyers for season's tickets for the upcoming season of the Strathearn Music Society. He came back a little after 5 saying it was so warm and humid that he felt positively wilted. This has been some summer!

We had a lovely evening yesterday, though. When Syd and Lorna came over it was still warm but with a light cooling breeze, so we sat at the table on the terrace, chatting and having our nibbles and G&Ts. Everything turned out just perfectly with the possible exception of the new potatoes we had bought at Drummond Castle Gardens last Monday. They got a wee bit overcooked and so were on the mushy side but the leftovers will be perfect for a bit of mash.

Now here's a bit more from Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain 1942 that I thought you would find of interest:

You will find out right away that England is a small country, smaller than North Carolina or Iowa. The whole of Great Britain--that is, England and Scotland and Wales together--is hardly bigger than Minnesota. England's largest river, the Thames is not even as big as the Mississippi when it leaves Minnesota. No part of England is more than one hundred miles from the Sea [actually, it's closer to 75 miles than 100].

If you are from Boston or Seattle the weather may remind you of home. If you are from Arizona or North Dakota you will find it a little hard to get used to. At first you will not like the almost continual rains and mists and the absence of snow and crisp cold. Actually, the city of London has less rain for the whole year than many places in the United States, but the rain falls in frequent drizzles. Most people get used to the English climate eventually.

If you have a chance to travel about you will agree that no area of the same size in the United States has such a variety of scenery. At one end of the English channel there is coast like that of Maine. At the other end are the great white chalk cliffs of Dover. The lands of South England and the Thames Valley are like farm or grazing lands of the eastern United States, while the lake country in the north of England and the highlands of Scotland are like the White Mountains of New Hampshire [and the Finger Lakes of New York]. In the east, where England bulges out toward Holland, the land is almost Dutch in appearance, low, flat, and marshy. The great wild moors of Yorkshire in the north and Devon in the southwest will remind you of the Badlands of Dakota and Montana.

Comments in brackets are mine.

Don has finished preparing the ground for planting so now it's time for us to go to the Heather Centre and select our heathers so we can get them planted.