Outside my window the moon is riding high and clear in the night sky. I stood at the door half an hour ago and heard an owl hooting from further up the valley and a fox barking. I hope the hens are tucked safely away for the night.
I am thinking of all the things to do in the garden and of the need to get my own laptop fixed. I am writing this on Ian's laptop while mine displays the black screen of death. Have I everything backed up on memory stick? What do you think?
From the kitchen comes the smell of white thyme bread. Ian has been experimenting with sour dough bread again and today I had a go with the natural leaven. If you haven't come across this before, it is a way of creating leaven using the natural yeasts in the atmosphere. The process of making the leaven takes a few days but when you have it you can take from it every day and keep the leaven alive for as long as you wish. It produces a bread with a flavour and texture which is totally distinctive. I shall blog in more detail about sourdough when I have my own laptop and some photographs. Today I made a bread with fresh thyme and green olives which is just delicious and as different from shop bought bread as good wine is from coca cola.
I am reading Beth Chatto's "A Woodland Garden" given to me three years ago by Zoe when I first started contemplating making my native tree walk. Some gardening books are instructional and some are inspirational. This one is a book I keep coming back to, loving the careful clear prose and the ideas which it provokes. No matter how many times I read it something new always comes out of reading it again.
I am thankful for the fact that Ian has disposed of the Scots Dumpy cockerel (apologies to those of a sensitive disposition). He looked beautiful but he had taken to attacking me every time I went in to collect eggs or feed chickens. Peace reigned today in the chicken run.
I have just finished a piece of white thyme bread with salty Welsh butter. Bliss.
Thanks to Pondside for the format. I enjoyed her blog based on this so much that I have pinched the idea.
0 Yorumlar