RIFT
Not homeland,
but sourceland;
scored in genetic code;
branded in bone:
thorn trees’ jasmine scent,
red pepper dust on the tongue,
sifted on skin,
while beneath our feet
obsidian’s glint,
shards of the earth’s dark heart;
the Rift,
riven,
wide
open
copyright 2015 Tish Farrell
This story doesn’t begin here, although this is my first ever photograph shot using a tripod (plus a Kodak EasyShare M380 on macro setting). You do not, however, need the tripod for the recipe coming up below, although it could come in handy for balance if you’ve sampled too much of the end product some months hence.
So: the story actually begins at the allotment, and a case of TOO MANY strawberries. Gilly at Lucid Gypsy has also been suffering from the same dilemma. In fact as I was picking all these juicy fruits under a very hot sun, I was wondering if this was indeed a subject for some serious philosophical debate. I mean, can you have too many strawberries?
(N.B. These next two photos did not involve a tripod, only a hot and bothered biped in ‘pick ‘n shoot’ mode.)
So can you have too many strawberries?
It is the sort of question that inevitably leads me to Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book (the companion to her Vegetable Book). She is just the cookery writer you need when you have any excess produce. And it is thanks to her that I will pass on this morning’s activity at the kitchen table in Sheinton Street.
Strawberry Vodka
Jane Grigson’s instructions then are that you place the jar in a cool, dark place, and turn it over from time to time. After a month the strawberries will look wan and floppy, and you can then strain the lot into a new jar, using a double layer of muslin. Or you can leave the fruit as it is for several months more.
The resulting cordial can then be drunk as a liqueur, and used to pep up sorbets, fools and mousses. My mind is tending (albeit perversely so on this steamy July day) towards thoughts of Christmas trifle.
I should add that I have never tried this before, but so far it is looking good, and that’s where the tripod came in. I shall definitely be using it again. As to the strawberry vodka, only time will tell.
copyright 2015 Tish Farrell
Photography-wise, you could say this is a case of learning from one’s subject.
Anyone who joined me on last week’s walk around Windmill Hill, will probably know that this drift of yellow is commonly known as Lady’s bedstraw or Lady’s tresses (Galium verum). When dried it smells of freshly mown hay, and so was once added to mattresses. Given these supine associations it seemed fitting that the only way to capture its essence was to lie down with it in the grass.
And lying down certainly reduces operator wobble, although there wasn’t much I could do about the summer breeze. So I caught that too. And since I have yet to devise a ‘scratch and sniff’ widget, you must now use your imagination to summon a fragrance with subtle notes of gardenia plus a dash of fresh acacia honey. Mmmm. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a snooze coming on, borne away on a tsunami of sweet, golden, flowers. Happy dreams.
copyright 2015 Tish Farrell
Inspired by Jennifer Nichole Wells One Word Photo Challenge: tsunami Go here to see Jennifer’s fascinating miniature world, and other bloggers’ interpretations for OWPC.
I’m also linking this to Lucile de Godoy’s Photo Rehab at Bridging Lacunas. Please visit her and her community of photo bloggers for a great boost to your creativity.
This week at Thursday’s Special, Paula has asked us to interpret ‘a bird’s eye view’. I’m not sure that four storeys up in Shela’s Island Hotel quite constitutes a bird’s eye view, but it’s as high as I’m going. I’ve written about our stay on Lamu in other posts. One thing I will say here is that we had a room that was ideal for someone as nosy as I am. Three sides were entirely available for nosiness, overlooking the centre of the village. I didn’t know which way to look first.
In the next photo you can see the village square with its donkey park under the thorn tree. There was only one vehicle on Lamu at the time of our visit – an aged Land Rover, and donkeys were used for all forms of land transportation. They were left under the tree until someone needed one to move something. In the bottom corner you can see blocks of quarried coral rag used for house building.
Please visit Paula at Thursday’s Special for more views.
There’s clearly something in the air over Wenlock Edge. Last night as we were sitting on the garden bench watching the sun go down – with our glass of wine and pot of olives – there it was. A rainbow. And it had absolutely nothing to do with rain. Most of the day had been hot and fine.
Fire rainbows are rare and technically called circumhorizontal arcs, and thus they are HORIZONTAL. i.e. More like this one, faintly seen, a little later and slightly north of the first iridescent cloud.
But if this isn’t a ‘fire rainbow’, but part of an ordinary rainbow, then the colours are the back to front, more as if this is part of a double rainbow, but with only the reflection visible. Curiouser and curiouser, but a wonder to see over one’s garden fence. Perhaps it is a Wenlock Edge phenomenon, the angle of the setting sun in relation to the cloud above it. Anyway, this is what was going on in the rest of the sky over the bean field. Someone has clearly been sky painting.
Happy Monday everyone.
At 15 degrees this castle has ‘more lean’ than the leaning Tower of Pisa, although all that remains of this 900-year-old Norman castle is this blown up tower. It is now now a feature in the sedate Castle Gardens in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, my nearest market town.
The ruins have been in this state since Britain’s Civil War in the 1640s, when Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarian forces laid siege to this key Royalist stronghold. The Royalists meanwhile had set fire to the town before retreating into the castle. The fire then reached the Roundheads’ gunpowder store just outside the castle wall. This duly exploded, and the upshot of all the firing and blasting was that the Royalists surrendered, and Oliver Cromwell ordered the complete destruction of the castle. As you can see, the tower defeated the demolition gang, and so there it stands, apparently defying gravity for the last 368 years.
Below is the view over the River Severn that you might once have had from the castle keep. When Charles I first visited the place, he is reputed to have pronounced it “the finest view in all my Kingdom.” Sadly for him, he did not live too much longer to enjoy either the view or the kingdom.
copyright 2015 Tish Farrell
This week at Paula’s Thursday’s Special, she is inviting us to share Traces of the Past. She has a truly impressive castle to show us, one that was being built at much the same time as the Bridgnorth stronghold.
I never grow tired of watching the rook and jackdaw ballet that takes place every twilight behind our house. I thought I’d share it once again.
copyright 2015 Tish Farrell
A big thanks to Yvette who is Paula’s guest over at Thursday’s Special for giving me the chance to post this photo again. Her challenge is street portraits, and this is one of my favourites, taken on a brief trip to Harare in Zimbabwe.
We were living in Zambia at the time, and had driven down to Harare to meet friends who were flying in from the UK to spend two weeks with us in Zim and Zam. At the time, life was a bit tense in Zambia. The first year of multi-party democracy had already yielded one attempted coup. Destabilisation by stirring up a crime wave was part of the strategy. The national football team had been killed in an air crash and left the country devastated (see link * below for this story). There was cholera in the townships and members of the unpaid Zairian army were coming down to Lusaka on looting sprees. It was thus a relief to find ourselves in a city where the atmosphere felt so open after Lusaka. This was in 1993 I might add. I know Zimbabwe’s seen some bad times since, and Zambia’s fortunes have greatly improved. Things can change so rapidly on the African continent.
But it’s the spontaneity of the security guards’ reaction that I love. I’d just crossed the road from the post office, and they were about to start the night shift and waiting for a lift. Smiling faces like these are what I remember most from our eight years spent living in Zambia and Kenya.
copyright 2015 Tish Farrell
Related:
It was late September when we headed for Southern Maine. By ‘we’ I mean Graham, my sister Jo and her chap, Bob, and I. The trip had been Jo’s or G’s idea, we couldn’t agree who had started it. But it felt like a jaunt, or as G put it later ‘Four Go Mad in Maine and Mass.’ We were going with the aim of meeting up with our third cousin, Jan, whom I had never met (being away in Kenya when she and Craig had visited the UK). Jo had met them, though, and shown them around Shropshire. Now Jan had kindly invited us to stay in her beach cottage for a week before travelling on up to Richmond to the family alpaca farm.
The day was hot as we drove up from Boston, but already I could feel summer slipping away. There was a dreamy, dusty air about the small towns we drove through, the civic gardens still brightly neat with flowers, yet with that ‘nearly over’ look. Salem, Gloucester, Portsmouth, Kittery, Biddeford, Saco, we passed on through, except for a quick pit stop at Kittery, and our first taste of Maine clam chowder. The first of many ‘tastes’ I should say, since we all became hooked on the stuff.
And so well and severally chowdered, we sped on northwards up route 95. The trip was taking longer than we had reckoned on. Being the end of the holiday season, the highways department had started digging the road up for what seemed like miles. We could spot no useful turn off, and we were keyed up in the knowledge that Cousin Jan was meeting us at the cottage with the keys at 3pm. Back at the farm, the alpaca moms were busy having babies and she was on tight schedule.
But then just when we thought we’d never get there, there was the sign we’d been looking for. Ocean Park. We turned off the highway into the maze of pretty lanes and avenues that make up this quaint seaside community.
Our destination was in fact just a step away from the beach, in what had started out as a single storey, verandahed cabin, but later had been jacked up on cinder blocks to provide another floor. The verandah had been enclosed and turned into two rooms. Jan told us that the cottage had originally been the 1920s retreat of an Englishman who had lived in India. Many of his books were still on the sitting-room book shelves where he had left them. He had apparently later created the lower floor for his mother so making two little houses in one.
Jan was sitting out on the lawn reading when we arrived. The sunlight had that honeyed September glow, but the sea breathed autumn at us. Jan was worried we would be cold at night since the cottage had no insulation. She had come armed with extra duvets from the farm. It was an odd feeling that meeting. Although we were strangers, I felt instantly embraced by family affection. For one thing, Jan so looked like my Aunt Evelyn.
Apart from the occasional and poignant call of a passing train (a sound we grew quickly to love), Ocean Park is a serene and leafy enclave. A place out of time. Most of its houses date from the late 19th century when the Free Will Baptists founded a family summer resort there. The presence of water and a grove of trees were requisite for such a retreat, while religious and educational meetings and all round self-improvement were the focus of the gathering’s activities. The Tabernacle Temple meeting hall is still there amongst the pines and maples.
Meanwhile, a couple of miles along the beach, the resort of Old Orchard Beach aka OOB, could not be more different. In season it is teeming with humanity, the coastal strip lined with cheap boarding houses and motels. It is not the sort of place we would normally go to in any season, too much razzamatazz and bustle, junk takeaways, and nowhere to buy real food. But now, at summer’s end, it did hold a certain doleful fascination – you know, the kind of fascination of the David Lynch Twin Peaks sort.
What else can you say, off-season resorts are simply desolate. When summer ends they lose their reason ‘to be’; the body is there, but someone has switched off the blood supply. We wandered up and down empty streets, feeling somewhat perplexed. Most of the shops were shut. The rides at Palace Playground had been wrapped up for the winter. There was scarcely a soul around.
It was only when I had a notion to take the Downeaster train to Portland, and we ended up in the library, trying to find out how to buy tickets (the station machine being terminally out of order), that it was all change. Inside the library it was humming with cheerful librarians and young moms with kids. And so just when we thought we were all alone on Planet OOB, lovely human life was discovered. The librarian even let us use the phone to reserve train tickets, and then print them off from her computer. So thank you Libby Library, you surely know how to give good service – in or out of season. We hope, too, that by now you have reached your building fund target. ‘Support Your Local Library’ – that’s something we all need to do.
copyright 2015 Tish Farrell
Follow the links for more bloggers’ off season off centre posts:
Ailsa’s Travel Challenge Off Centre at Where’s My Backpack
In case you don’t know Meg she is presently in Warsaw, and if you want to get in lots of vicarious walking with fascinating things to see (and sometimes eat) please join her there. Anyway, this wild orchid is for her, and so is this walk, since it took me back to Windmill Hill (which is actually only across the road from my house), to search once more for signs of spring.
At least last Friday the sun was out, but we still have a continuous chilling wind. As I may have said elsewhere, it feels as if it has blown across an ice sheet before ending up in Shropshire. Brrr. So far it looks as though ‘clouts’ will not be cast in June, never mind in May. I, for one, am sticking to my many garment layers, which may or may not include a vest.
But back to the orchids. This one took some finding, but I had promised Meg I would look. She had read my mention of limestone-meadow plants in an earlier post about Windmill Hill, and wanted to see more. This lovely little plant, about a hand’s span tall, has the plain name of Common spotted orchid. It was growing at the foot of the hill, and I had seen the darkly spotted leaves a week or so before. They are definitely being slow to flower this year. They probably don’t like the wind either.
To find them I went the long way round, once more up the Linden Walk whose ancient limes are now bursting into juicy green clouds. Soon (I hope) they will be flowering, and then I can get high on the scent, as well as on the sight of them. (Herbalists use lime flowers as a sedative, quite a strong one, so don’t use the flowers without expert guidance). Good old Dr. William Penny Brookes, Much Wenlock’s erstwhile physician, and the man who planted this avenue over a hundred years ago, knew what he was at on the life-enhancing front. Bravo Dr. Brookes.
Once out of the Linden Field and onto the hill, I’m taking the low path around the bottom when along comes octogenarian, Jimmy Moore, our local marathon man. He’s out on his morning run – an example to us all. He’s raised over £30,000 for charity. Seeing him approach in his buttercup yellow shirt is enough to lift the spirits sky-high. Keep on running, Jimmy.
As he passes me, he still has breath to crack a joke, and to say my photo of him will doubltless be worth a fortune. He speeds away, and I meander on, peering into the meadow grass.
The cowslips are over, but there are low growing clumps of Common bird’s foot trefoil, Lotus corniculatus if I am not mistaken in my identification from the classic Keble Martin work on British flora. As you can see from its pea-like flowers, it belongs to the legume family.
Up the hill to the windmill and there are carpets of buttercups, and a little family pretending the windmill is a castle. I like overhearing their interpretation of these remains. I shall think of them differently from now on:
The search for orchids next takes me along the hedge line where the open meadow becomes woodland. And here I find the first elderflowers of the year. I love their creamy colours, and they make the most delicious sorbet (recipe at the end).
The flowers also make a fragrant tea that is anti-catarrhal, and when mixed with peppermint is a good remedy for colds and flu. The elder tree itself has magical connotations, and features in many traditions of indigenous peoples around the world, including North America’s First Nations’ tales. The dark purple berries are of course now used in a commonly available anti-viral that goes under various names that derive from its botanical name Sambucus. The berries’ efficacy was trialled some years ago by Israeli scientists, if I remember rightly, and used to treat HIV- patients. They are thus, not by any means, ‘a quack cure’.
Into the wood, and the flowers of my earlier spring walk (which you can find HERE) the arum lilies, violets and wild garlic, are over and, beyond a few tiny wild strawberry flowers, there’s not much to be seen until I reach the roadside verge. First the Oxeye daisies…
And then the orchids, although so far only a handful are in flower. Here’s what they look like before they bloom, along with a glimpse of a wild strawberry flower at 3 o’clock:
And now as promised a recipe:
Elderflower Sorbet
8oz /1 cup/ 250 gm fair trade unbleached granulated sugar
1 pint/0.5 litre water
2 lemons
2/3 big heads of elderflowers
First pick the elderflowers when they are freshly open , and on a dry day. Shake out the bugs but do not wash. Keep the heads intact.
Pare the rind finely from the lemons, and squeeze out the juice.
Heat the water and sugar in a pan, starting gently until the sugar has dissolved, add the lemon rind and then boil briskly for 5 minutes.
Remove from the heat. Add lemon juice and elderflower heads. Leave to cool.
Strain into a suitable container and freeze. After an hour or so, when the sorbet is slushy and starting to set , you can give it a good mash with a fork to break up any crystals, and return it to the freezer.
Alternatively, strain and churn in an ice cream maker.
This sorbet is delicious with fresh strawberries.
And guess what, as I finish writing this post the wind has dropped, and it is suddenly HOT. Just the weather for sorbet. Hurrah!
P.S. It didn’t last, so we had broad bean soup instead.
copyright 2015 Tish Farrell
Please do drop in on Jo’s Monday Walk and Meg’s Warsaw2015 if you are up for some more interesting excursions.
