I know, I know… my crown as blog-mistress is not just tarnished. It’s trashed and bent out of all recognition, lying lonely in a field somewhere, intriguing some curious magpies - sigh... Just like Terry Wogan and his “other listener”, I shall be searching high and low for my “other reader” (I’m assuming at least one of my parents will have kept the faith..). I thought I’d better do another posting before tomorrow, in case it got mistaken for an April Fool (the April fool number I pulled on the 30,000 inhabitants of Murayama City in Japan has doubtless left me with bad karma on that front for all eternity.. but more on that another time!).
So what have I been up to?.. No photos since the field trip to Wisley I’m afraid, but I have been taking some baby steps towards tackling a key skill deficit with respect to my future career in herbal medicine, my distinct lack of ‘green fingers’!
Firstly I went out and bought myself the latest equipment for the lazy botanist, a flower press… that takes just 5 mins to press and dry plants! The secret is that you stick the whole contraption in the microwave, so you can kiss goodbye to stacks of yellow pages and weeks of thumb-twiddling while the specimens dry to (usual dubious) perfection. I tried it out on some flat-leafed parsley first, and bar a slight hitch with a piece of root that got a bit charred, it came out fine (and without setting off the smoke alarm ;)
Secondly I’ve started growing about 8 different varieties of herb from seed, courtesy of the “sow n’ grow” system for dummies! I just poured warm water over a tray full of what looked like a load of small brown circular discs. These then promptly swelled up into little “oil drums” of soil, about 6cm high and 3.5cm in diameter. They seem to be held together with some sort of gauze.. Anyway, all I then had to do was press a few seeds down into the centre of these little drums with my fingers. The miracle is… some of the seedlings have actually started coming up! If I can manage to keep them alive to adulthood I can use the little puppies for my botany assignment – hey hey ☺ (yes I’m afraid the poor things will live and die purely for science, but I promise to treat them humanely and maybe some of them will eventually be allowed to progress kitchen herb status ;).
Besides developing green fingers, I’ve been pretty busy on the music front, with another fabulous jam session with the ‘old bankers’ on 16th (of which the highlight was certainly our gender-bending rendition of “Sunshine of Your Love” by the Cream courtesy of our fab base and guitar players and yours truly on vocals.. at the very bottom of her range!) and at the other end of the musical spectrum, a (mercifully) successful performance of Mozart’s mass in C minor on 24th with my choir, London Docklands Singers. We actually got a smile out of our tireless (and surely saintly!) conductor, AC, at the end of most of the movements, even if we were flying by the seat of our pants somewhat in the “Osanna”.. Never a dull moment I can tell you ;) Thankfully we arrived safely at the end of this great work without anyone losing their shirts, let alone their trousers (I am assuming this “flying by the seat of your pants” thing is a North American term?)! You guys (OK assuming I have one more reader..) should really try to make it to our next big one in November. We’ll be doing the Verdi Requiem in Southward cathedral with two of Andrew’s other choirs. It should be a blast – literally! ☺
However, the thing that’s been keeping me away from the blog the most though, is the small matter of an essay on Herbal medicine I had hanging over me for waaaay too long! I finally turned it in last Sunday and felt like I had finished a prison sentence! I hope I’ll get used to this writing lark soon, or the next three years could be quite testing!
Anyway, I have just got back from 24hrs in the lovely Wiltshire countryside and feel thoroughly windswept and full of the joys of Spring. However, as it’s Saturday night, I’m off to remove the more obvious clues to my recent bucolic jaunt (I’ll have to stop chewing this piece of straw for starters ;) and prepare a more urbanite look for the next-door-neighbours’ housewarming tonight. Yes, I am finally as old as our neighbours at no. 34, who for as long as I can remember have been a succession of 30-something couples playing house in the burbs for the first time – yikes.. how did that happen? ;)
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6 comments:
Glad you're back -- growing your own herbs is great, no? I still have dirt under my nails from putting in rows of mustard greens and fennel and broccoli rabe this afternoon. You can't beat that feeling of standing in the kitchen in need of basil and then just popping out to the garden to grab a handful fresh off the stem.
I envy you your windswept Wiltshire springtime...
Wow! That's what I'm aspiring to.. Just today we looked in at a local pottery (http://www.whitehorsepottery.co.uk/) and I think I am going to order some half-eliptical pots that I can hang off the side of the fence that is immediately outside our kitchen door. At the moment, our chives and parsley etc. are not exactly "grabbing" distance from the stove..
Yes, we missed you. Glad the musicking is going well and that you had such a good reason to stay away.
Now more importantly, tell us about Murayama. *tapstoeimpatiently*
Glad to see you have found time for your literary "exercises" again. Am alarmed about the idea of an earthenware pot hanging on the fence striking down the gardener as he comes through the door. 14 steps to the parsley and back in the summer shouldn’t be that crippling? ;-)
Music sounds great. Keep it up. Love Mum
You'll thank me when it's blowing a gale outside and the rain is horizontal :)
The Murayama April Fool goes something like this: In my bi-monthly article on cultural issues for the local paper, published in this instance on 1st April, I decided to introduce the good people of Murayama to the concept of "April Fool". I did this by writing a load of cobblers about my former glorious career as a chart-topping folk singer in the 80's (along with an adulterated digital photo of me with a shock of blonde hair and enormous glittery earrings), followed by a paragraph explaining that it is traditional for our UK newspapers to write similarly spurious stories on 1st April every year to see how many people they can fool... Problem was that no-one ever read my articles to the end! I still had people coming up to me almost a year later asking how it had been to be a famous singer.. ;)
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