Caws Pob

Since the clocks have turned back, my bike ride after work is when it’s starting to get dimpsy.  Dimpsy is an old Devonian word for twilight dusk.   I notice the smells and sounds so much more when I can’t see the colours and details of things.  The sleepy songs of roosting birds, the smell of woodsmoke from chimneys and bonfires, the pungent cedar tree by the old stone bridge and owls hooting in the apple orchard at my bus stop.

I normally have a 15 minute wait for the bus and haven’t been sure about how I’ll feel sitting in the dark (in the spring and summer, I can catch up on my reading).  But, I like watching the night settle in.  There are no street lights for miles around and the few houses at Farrant’s Cross have warm, yellow glows in their windows, so I have some company nearby.  Last night I remembered that when I lived in L.A., when the darker, silent days of fall and winter arrived, the city would get even brighter and noisier.  In the country and in a still rural part of England, the villages and people adapt to the season – tearooms and pubs reduce their opening hours and people stock up on wood, eat warming foods and move their activities indoors.

The trees were sillhouetted against the deepening blue sky.  In a few weeks at this time, the sky behind them will be black and they will have stars caught in their branches.

Steve was due home after me, after a long drive from a meeting for his work, so I decided to make something quick and warm and comforting for dinner.  Welsh rabbit, or Caws Pob isn’t rabbit at all, but a thick cheese and ale sauce spread over toast and grilled until it’s bubbly and browned.   Quick to make and really yummy.

Caws Pob

• 2 llwy fwrdd of fenyn
• 2 llwy fwrdd of flawd
• 1 llwy de of fwstad Dijon
• 1 llwy de o saws Worcesterchire
• ½ llwy de o bupur du
• 60ml o gwrw porter
• 200g caws Chedda
• bara

Yn gyntaf dylid todi’r menyd mewn sosban cyn ychwanegu’r blawd a’i gogino am ddau funud (heb losgi’r blawd). I’r gymysgedd yma dylid ychwanegu’r mwstadd, y saws Worcesterchire y cwrw. Wedi cogino’r cymysgfa am tua pedwar munud dylid ychwanegu’r caws wedi ei garfellu ychydig wrth ychydig gan sicrhau and yw’n llosgi ar waelod y sosban. Tra mae’r caws yn toddi dylid tostio bara ar un ochor a phan mae’r caws yn barod dylid ei dolldi ar ben ochr amrwd y bar cyn ei roi o dan y gradell i liwio pen y caws.

buddha

Welsh Rabbit

• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• ½ tsp black pepper
• 60ml porter beer or brown ale
• 200g Cheddar cheese, grated
• sliced bread

Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the flour. Cook this mixture for about two minutes, ensuring that the flour doesn’t burn. Add the mustard, Worcestershire sauce and the beer. Cook for about four minutes then begin adding the grated cheese little by little, ensuring that it does not burn on the bottom of the pan. Whilst the cheese is melting slice your bread and toast on one side under the grill. When the cheese has all melted turn the part-toasted bread over and add the cheese mixture on top of the uncooked side of the bread. Place back under the grill until the cheese has coloured a golden brown.

To Autumn

The year is slowly turning away from the bright yellow and high green noons of summertime and towards the golden-syruped long afternoons of autumn.    One evening in the Cotswolds last week, we went to dinner at a country pub in the bottom of a valley.  When we got out of the car, the still green trees on the ridgetops were for a moment sun-honeyed and golden from the rays of the setting sun.  Then as dusk fell, summer returned.  Another moment that has stayed with me is time spent in the apple orchard at Lacock Abbey.  The trees were heavy with fruit and a skirt of windfalls lay around each tree.  The perfume of apple cordial permeated the air, heavy and sweet.

The autumn equinox is on 22nd September this year.  The autumn equinox is universally observed as a time for celebration and gratitude of both harvests and of the hearth as a symbol of family, friends and the home. The name “equinox” itself is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), therefore the length of night and day, light and dark are equal. On the day of the autumn equinox, the sun enters the sign of Libra: the constellation appropriately represented as scales and balance. It is also associated with apples as potent symbols of death, rebirth and transformation.

For our ancestors this was time to reflect on the past season and celebrate nature’s bounty and accept that summer is now over. The autumn harvest festivals mark a time of rest after hard work, and a ritual of thanksgiving for the fruits of nature.  This is the time to look back on the past year and what you have achieved and learnt, and to plan for the future.

To celebrate, Steve and I are cooking a feast for six of our friends.  Our first dinner party!  What’s on the menu?

Civet of Rabbit with Pickled Mushrooms and Caper Toasts
Chicken with Pomegranate and Walnut Sauce
Roasted Parsnips
Steamed Chard
Rice Pilaf
Pear and Walnut Tart

We’ll drink a toast to the equinox with Somerset Pomona, a Cider Brandy aged in oak barrels.  Pomona is the goddess of fruit trees, gardens and orchards.

I’ll use my laburnum oyster tray I made when I was in furniture school a few years ago.

We’ll also light a beautiful candle given to us at our housewarming party from two of our friends.  This will mark the transition to spending warm, cozy candlelit nights inside in the warmth of our home during the autumn and winter months and celebrate sharing our hearth and home with friends.

To Autumn

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained
With the blood of the grape, pass not,
but sit
Beneath my shady roof, there thou may’st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe;
And all the daughters of the year shall dance,
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

- William Blake

Two White Horses

Two white horses

in a summerlush meadow,

the longest day is gone.

The time of tiny white feathers

We are still in ‘the time of tiny white feathers’.  It starts sometime in February and goes through late May.  I find them snagged on branches, lying on the pavement and curled up beneath hedgerows, sometimes floating on a breeze.

buddha

buddha

buddha

I have quite a collection of semiplume feathers at home, which I’ve gathered over the course of a couple years. I think they are strewn about when birds shed their extra winter layer and also use them to line their nests.  Semiplume feathers are half-way between a contour feather and a down feather.  They occur between contour feathers and help to supply insulation.

Warmth and home, insulation and protection . . .

Feathering the nest!

buddha

budd

buddha

I carry them between the leaves of my moleskine notebook or tucked into the change pocket of my wallet.   I found one batch in the side pocket of a handbag I hadn’t used for several months.

It’s curious that this year, I haven’t been noticing and collecting these semiplumes.  I’ve had the idea of a soul shelter coming into tangible form inside of me for about a year and I think that my collection of feathers will come in handy when I get down to making it.

Letting go

Riding to work on a breezy spring day, I pass through a sudden flurry of brown leaves. I have to laugh. November in April! The tree had held on to the wizened, dead leaves since the end of last year, until the new growth finally made it necessary and possible to let them go. Or perhaps it was the leaves that had held on, reluctant to fall away.

I think of my own life and patterns of growth. Sometimes I am very brave and certain and willingly strip away all that is superfluous, outmoded, no longer necessary. I stand naked in the void and give myself to whatever is next.

At other times though, I cling so tightly to an old pattern or habit, place or thing, mindset or relationship which no longer serves me and may even be harmful. Even when I know full well that I would be better off without it.

Why is this? On one level there is my desire for familiarity, comfort, habit, the security of the known. However, if I go a little bit deeper and probe beneath my longing for a comfortable existence, I find a sheer fear of not knowing, not having, not being. Where and who will I be without this? And what is next?

Then to make matters worse, I start to beat myself up, chide myself for being a ‘coward’, set impossible deadlines and generally add to my misery.  And in a funny way, maybe the dying, outmoded behaviour is reluctant to loosen its hold on me.

Once again though, in their gentle manner the trees and the seasons teach me a lesson. Sometimes, I need to have the old and the new at once. To give myself the time to stay with what I know, even as I cultivate and grow something new. Then when the time is right, last year’s leaf will gently fall away.

Wild delight

After work today,  I cycled home along the footpath that goes through Sowton Mill.  The setting sun cast its honeyed light on the bank of the river that I rode along.  I paused for a while, basking in the lazy golden sunshine and drinking in the beauty of the wild daffodils, primroses and celandines – the heralds of springtime.

buddha

buddha

In his book Divine Beauty, John O’Donohue writes about the delights of yellow:

“The colour holds such warmth, brightness and attraction for us because it is the colour of the sun, the source that sustains us.  In terms of its physics, yellow has absorbed red and green and then reflects yellow back.  Red is the colour of life, blood and fire; and green the colour of growth and hope.  Little wonder that yellow has such a life-giving brightness. . . .  Goethe says: ‘Yellow brings with her the nature of brightness and has a delightful, encouraging, exciting and soft quality.’  We see this in spring with the daffodils.”ddha

buddha

buddha

Wild daffodil and wood anenomes