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A Fruitful Summer

/ fgrtommo / 2 Comments

Summer this year has been consistently sunny and warm.  We have been able to plan on the assumption of good weather.  Day after day, with only the briefest of interruptions, we have appreciated our gorgeous local landscape in clear air and sunlight.  Although keeping the vegetables anywhere near watered enough has been a challenge, the fruit harvest – both cultivated and wild – has been huge.

On A Local Walk To The Shops In The Sun
On A Local Walk To The Shops In The Sun

Of course, we now know that it has been the hottest summer in the United Kingdom on record.  It has also been one of the driest and, for the first time in local living memory, the stream running through our hamlet has run dry for weeks on end.  That is a huge concern since we also know that climate chaos is here and only going to get worse.  Increasing wildfires, floods, oppressive heat and difficulties in growing food are all inevitable.  But even while knowing of this impending crisis, we have loved the summer weather and, almost as much, the recent rain showers that have started to indicate the onset of Autumn and started to refill the stream.

I picked and used or froze all the gooseberries and blackcurrants.  We also managed to consume, or give to friends, a rich harvest of gorgeous plums and damsons.  However, the wild bullaces (like small damsons) will stay on the trees this year and we have only picked a small fraction of our apples so far. 

Fruit Everywhere
Fruit Everywhere

Walking the local paths and roads, I have seen lots of buckets of apples offered up to passers-by by those with apple trees heaving with fruit.  And all those walks have tended to take a little longer than usual as I stop to pick and eat the blackberries along the way.  The familiarity with the local hedgerows I have gained since retirement, means I know where the best blackberries are as the summer progresses.  It’s wonderful how many varieties of wild blackberries there are, each bearing different tasting fruit at different times.

The only downside from all this fruit is that I’m gaining a few pounds of weight as I turn the fruit I pick into delicious but calorie filled crumbles.  Still, it’s only for a few months that I have this fresh fruit glut and then I will retreat to more parsimonious use of the harvest we have frozen.  I have time to get my weight back to target by year end.

There have been many other aspects of the summer that I have enjoyed.  In recent weeks we attended a lovely wedding of one of Jane’s nephews and his wife.  Of course, like so many days, this was bathed in warm sun.  That helped to make the event memorable and lovely.  During and around it, we got to see our sons, their partners and our grandchildren – all chatting and playing together.  That was an enormous treat. 

Looking For Grasshoppers With First Grandchild
Looking For Grasshoppers With First Grandchild

Another recent event that was enhanced by the great weather was an 11-mile charity pub crawl around 11 nearby pubs.  This started at our village pub (The Hog) mid-morning and, for the hardiest (not including me), ended late at night in a curry house or back at The Hog.  I managed half the stops (and pints) but had the excuse of wanting to divert up to Forest Green Rovers to see my team’s game mid-afternoon (we won!) before rejoining the increasingly noisy crawl crowd.  There was much merriment, new relationship making and well over £1,000 in fundraising for the MND Association during the day.  I look forward already to next year’s occurrence.

Pub Crawl!
Charity Pub Crawl!

Jane and I have been out and about a few times too.  We went to Frome to wander the pretty streets before heading on to Bruton and the Hauser & Wirth gallery there.  Frome is comparable to our local town of Stroud but is a little wealthier, has a few more independent shops and is a little more upmarket.  Stroud is moving gradually to that benchmark I believe.

Views Of Frome
Views Of Frome

At the Hauser & Wirth gallery we saw an exhibition of works by Jean Tinguely and his partner Niki de Saint Phalle.  We had come across Tinguely for the first time earlier this year when we visited Basel.  It was good to make the connection with that short trip and the mechanical sculptures we had seen in one of the parks there.  A neat touch at Hauser & Wirth was that, as in Basel, the sculptures were powered to show their intended movements.

Jean Tinguely And Niki De Saint Phalle at Hauser & Wirth
Jean Tinguely And Niki De Saint Phalle at Hauser & Wirth

The Hauser & Wirth gardens, by Piet Oudolf, are always worth visiting.  The planting is dense and constantly changing with the seasons.  Whilst many of the plants were still in full flower, others remained interesting because of their seed heads and textures.  The only strangeness is the building at the far end which looks like an elevated spot from which to view the flat garden space, but just isn’t. 

Piet Oudolf Designed Garden At Hauser & Wirth
Piet Oudolf Designed Garden At Hauser & Wirth

Even more recently we visited Edward Jenner’s house in Berkeley just a few miles away from us.  Jenner created the smallpox vaccine which has since saved millions of lives and eradicated the disease worldwide.  His house and garden are not particularly remarkable but his life was and it is well told through the exhibits on show. 

For me, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the displays was how they showed the vehemence of opposition to compulsory smallpox vaccination in the 19th century.  Scepticism about, and opposition, to vaccination was, it seems, as strong then as it has become again now despite all the health gains in the meantime.

Edward Jenner's House And Garden, Berkeley, Gloucestershire
Edward Jenner’s House And Garden, Berkeley, Gloucestershire

It’s been a very good summer.  We haven’t done any a big holidays but the weather at home has helped my retirement feel like a big, comfortable holiday at home.  Waking up to clear sunshine, wandering into town for the newspaper and daily shopping, pottering around the thirsty vegetables in the garden, indulging in the burgeoning fruit harvest and relaxing in the evening sun has all been very pleasant.  Now, as Autumn approaches, maybe we will think about getting away for a bit…..

Sleepy Sheep In The Summer Sun
Sleepy Sheep In The Summer Heat

A Stag In Active August

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Retirement in August has felt busy so far.  There have been several separate events to enjoy.  In between these, I have been walking while listening to political podcasts, tidying our field and garden, visiting the local recycling tip with multiple dumpy bags of green (mainly thistle, bramble and bindweed) waste, and enjoying our local community hub: the village pub. 

I visited my Dad and sister in Nottingham for the first time since the end of his innovative and apparently very successful cancer treatment.  I’m really proud of him; he has stuck with all the hospital visits, the injections and the infusions and they have not only benefitted him, but furthered cancer research.  It was great to catch up with them and, for a change, win at our games of Mahjong. 

Dad Ringing The Hospital ‘Ward Bell’ To Celebrate His End Of Treatment

The football season has restarted and, during my brief stay in Nottingham, I managed to get to Boston in Lincolnshire to see my dear Forest Green Rovers treat me to a rare, stonking win.  After two successive, distressing relegations, we seem to have found our natural level again.

Boston Football Club: Nickname The Pilgrims Because So Many Original Pilgrim Fathers Migrated To The Americas From Boston

Whilst in Boston I had time to climb the church tower and take in some aerial views of Boston and the very flat surrounding landscape.  The church is large and the tower is impressive.  The port and its surrounding sluice gate system was also substantial but is now looking run down.  Indeed, much of the town looked as though it needs a face lift.

Views Across Boston, The Port And The Church
An Attractive Part Of Boston Next to The River Witham With The Tide In

Also in August, Jane and I have visited Bath, dropped in on Second Grandchild in Bristol, hosted Youngest Son (YS) as he has worked his way through his busy month of multiple stag dos, weddings and video shoots, and attended a talk on artistic gardening in Stroud. 

Amid all this activity the most unusual event for me was the opportunity to attend part of YS’s own Stag Weekend.  That was a lot of fun – even though I opted out of the most boisterous activities and those requiring the heaviest drinking penalties.  It was lovely to be invited and great to catch up with old friends and meet a few of YS’s best mates who I didn’t already know. 

Sunset Over Stag Weekend Tents

Middle Son kindly gave up his bed to allow me a relatively comfortable, though rather hungover, sleep in a large tent also shared by Oldest Son; it was my first experience of something resembling camping since YS was at Primary School and a lot more restful than then!

The main purpose of a visit to Bath was to equip YS and myself with light suits for YS’s wedding and for the wedding of one of Jane’s nieces in Italy next month.  With that aspect of the trip satisfactorily achieved, I visited The Holburne Museum to see a Henry Moore exhibition. 

This was a small exhibition of Henry Moore’s small works.  Many of his familiar themes such as mother and child, helmets, family groups, reclining figures in stone, wood and metal were covered in a single room.  The breadth was admirable but it took a while to get used to the delicacy of the work having been used to the more massive Henry Moore sculptures I have seen in the past.  In truth, only a few of the displays in this exhibition really stood out for me but a couple were lovely and it was worth the visit.

On the way out I popped into a separate exhibition in the Museum by Mr Doodle (aka Sam Cox).  He is clearly into fun art and the room completely covered in his ‘doodles’ (see below) certainly raised a smile.

Closer to home we went to a talk on ‘Where Gardening Meets Art’ at the Museum in the Park in Stroud.  The Museum has a lovely terraced and walled garden that I hadn’t visited since shortly after it was built and planted several years ago.  The sun was shining and the garden looked splendid.

The Walled Garden At Museum In The Park, Stroud

The talk itself was preceded by an exhibition of gardening and plant inspired artworks by Cleo Mussi, who’s work we know well, and Fiona Haser Bizony, founder of Electric Daisy Flower Farm.  I liked several of Cleo’s mosaics, especially the simpler ones, but we quickly moved outside to the garden in evening sun and a small bar offering locally brewed beer.

Cleo Mussi’s Hands Mosaics At Museum In The Park, Stroud

Jane had booked the evening and I didn’t know what to expect from the talk.  In the event, it was efficiently introduced and a thoroughly entertaining.  The main speaker was Charlotte Molesworth who has a renowned garden in Benendon, Kent.  She was terrific.  She had a lot of good sense to share and did it very amusingly.  Her anecdotes were warm and lovely and she had a great answer to every question.  The whole evening exceeded my expectations severalfold.

Charlotte Molesworth Speaking About Where Gardening Meets Art

August – and, unfortunately, summer – is now drawing to a close.  The final week will be punctuated by further visits to The Hog, our local pub, for its Summer Bank Holiday Hogfest (a beer, music and food festival) and then the monthly quiz.  I am also looking forward hugely to Forest Green Rovers’ first home game of the season on the club’s brand-new, hybrid (5% plastic) pitch. 

But then my thoughts will turn to our family holiday in Italy prior to Jane’s niece’s wedding in Rome.  I can’t wait to see the two grandchildren together amongst our sons and their partners.  It is going to be a real treat to have everyone together.

In Praise Of A Clear Head

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I have been monitoring the number of my alcohol-free days since 2005.  Over a decade ago I was drinking alcohol almost every day, and often drinking a beer alone in my flat after work in London.  Now I have a target of 50% drink-free days each month and I have achieved that for the last three years.

When I retired 5 years ago, I realised that although I was starting to achieve the target number of drink-free days, I was way off the target for units of alcohol recommended by doctors.  To galvanise myself for change, I set a monthly target for alcohol units consumed too.  That target is 100 units of alcohol per month.  That is still almost twice the recommended level but 50% less than where I was in my first two years of retirement. 

I have achieved this personal target for the last two years but it’s been a struggle, especially this year (for reasons I’m yet to quite fathom).  On days when I drink, I find that I average 6-7 units; that’s two thirds of a bottle of wine or three pints of beer (not, I think, an unreasonable amount of pleasure to have on a sunny evening in the garden, at a celebration, or in the pub garden on a lazy Sunday).  But multiply that by 14-15 days and I’m closer to the 100 unit target than I would like. 

Alcohol Units/Month Consumption Since 2019 (I’m More Consistent Now But Consistently Only Just Below Target (100 Units)!

I have been helped in recent years by the advent of decent no, or low, alcohol beer; I like those from BrewDog especially.  But now I have a new helper: ‘Clear Head’, a low alcohol beer served on tap at our village pub.   It’s quite a refreshing, hoppy and nice tasting pint.  Its recent availability on draft means that I can visit the pub more often and feel as though I’m having a proper pub drink (not the soft sugary stuff that I generally avoid, or mineral water that I can get out of the tap at home), while keeping my alcohol unit consumption down. 

One of the Best Low-Alcohol Beers I’ve Had

The net effect has been that Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) and I have visited the local pub more often during this summer, especially during the recent heat waves, but I have still stayed within my alcohol unit target.  That’s good because the pub is so central to the community and our visits create opportunities for us to have impromptu meetings with other villagers and we just enjoy hanging out in the relaxed atmosphere there.  The only downside is that LSW is probably drinking a bit more alcohol because she usually goes for a can of the relatively strong craft beer rather than the low alcohol variety, but then she drinks slowly and so is well below the recommended unit levels.

Another bonus is that 5% of Bristol Beer Factory’s revenue on sales of Clear Head go to Talk Club which is the valuable charity organisation that helps establish and organise Men’s Mental Fitness chat groups such as that I have been attending in recent weeks in our village.  The sessions that I mentioned in my last post have continued to be fulfilling and have had the side effect of making me feel even more a part of the community.  The pub landlord, who helps run the sessions, even gives participants a pint of ‘Clear Head’ to accompany us through the meetings; really nice!

On Draft At Our Local Pub But It Comes In Cans Too

So, the heat waves are over for another year it seems.  The cost of living crisis seems to be drowning out concerns about the climate and related biodiversity crises.  However, the recent weeks of intense heat have underlined the need for us all to think about reducing our carbon footprint and adapting to the new climate that is inevitably going to envelop us. 

Local Lake Dried Up In The Recent Heat And The Same Lake Two Years Ago (With Cow)

LSW has planted most of our flower beds and terraces with relatively drought resistant plants so the garden has looked great throughout the summer with just minimal watering.  However, during the greatest heat, we had to have the blinds down all day in our kitchen/diner extension with all its glass.  Rather than be able to look out over the garden from the extension, we spent much of the heat wave sheltered in the cool of the old part of the house. 

Dry Garden And Sun Through Meadow Grass

We are thinking about ways to further adapt to persistent high temperatures in the future at the same time as trying to work out how we can isolate rooms we want to heat in winter so that we reduce overall energy demand and so save money in the face of escalating electricity and gas bills.  We won’t be alone in that.

Later this week we are off north to Edinburgh to see First Grandchild and his parents again.  The relative cool of Edinburgh may look an increasingly attractive medium/long term location as the south of the UK feels the impact of our changing summers.  Short term, though, I’m sticking to home in our village and an occasional pint or two of ‘Clear Head’ on draft.

Nearing Pub Normality

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Yesterday, Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) and I went to the village pub: The Hog.  Whether relieving the coronavirus lock down at this point in vaccination programme and while new coronavirus variants are swirling about is sensible or not, I’m not sure.  But after almost 6 months of missing out on going to the pub, it felt like progress.  It felt like near-normal fun!

The Big Red Bus Bar Parked In The Garden Of Our Local Pub

The pub was well organised in catering for an excited bunch of villagers amid the continuing social distancing guidelines.  The pub garden was very tidy, new table service app worked, the sun was shining and the beer tasted good. 

The pub management are a lovely village family who have been very resilient during they took over the pub lease just before the first lock down last Spring.  They have done a lot of work to make the place a pub with a traditional, drink-focused and village feel.  The improvements inside and out look judicious and practical and all we need now is good weather without onerous social distancing.

Hopefully lock down will continue to be relieved (with just cause) and we will soon be allowed use of the inside of the pub as well as the (still rather chilly) garden area.  That way, we customers can benefit from all the effort and investment the management have made and the pub can again become a full, vibrant focal point for the community and for impromptu gossip and discussion.

The only downside is that the re-opening of the local pub will put pressure on my alcohol consumption.  I’ve done so well in the last year to reduce my alcohol units consumption and to increase alcohol-free days as advised by doctors and the press.  Hopefully the restraint of the last three months, in particular, has left me a sufficient contingency as I strive to meet my New Year resolution targets for 2021.  I can certainly see those targets are going to come under pressure now the pub has reopened, and I am enticed by the long awaited pleasure of beer drinking after weekend walks and on days of celebration – like pub reopening day, yesterday!

Recent life has otherwise been fairly unremarkable, although we did go on a new (for me) and delightful walk last weekend around Sapperton and Edgeworth a few miles north east from where we live. 

Walk From Sapperton (Top Right) to Edgeworth; Lovely!

I have also continued to busy myself with local village activities.  The Neighbourhood Plan which I helped develop many months ago, is finally being presented to the village for a referendum for approval or rejection.  After so much effort by so many over several months (nay, years!), rejection cannot be contemplated so posters and leaflets have been prepared to encourage a ‘yes’ vote.  I’m discovering some previously unknown nooks and crannies in the village as I deliver some of the leaflets.

More From That Sapperton To Edgeworth Ramble

Work with our village climate action group has also rumbled on.  Somehow, involvement has crept up to, I estimate, an average of over an hour a day.  The focus in recent weeks has been on a phone around of people in the village who have expressed interest in the group and who receive our seasonal newsletter.  Now the focus is on the Spring edition of that newsletter and on following up the points raised during the phone around including discussion of how we embrace the Ecological Emergency as well as the Climate Emergency. 

None of this is exactly earth shattering but it all takes time and, despite the availability of almost infinite discretionary time in retirement, I do need to maintain boundaries around this stuff.  Otherwise, I can see I will get frustrated by lack of attention to other areas of pleasure such as walking, reading and gardening (nothing gets in the way of watching Forest Green Rovers!).

I have also, rather fleetingly, been involved in a proposal to establish a Community Land Trust in the village.  The idea was to find funding from the village, loans and other financial means to enable purchase of a house and its 13 acres of woods and fields, and then run the assets from a Community Land Trust that would provide affordable housing and preserve the excellent biodiversity in the fields and woods. 

The opportunity was precipitated by the death of an old and rather famous activist in the village who had been generous with both the house and the lands by providing young people with accommodation and allowing community cultivation of some of the surrounds.  Unfortunately, the scale of the financing for the purchase and the short timescales in which the funding needed to be raised proved to be insurmountable obstacles. 

Entrance Sign For the Horsley Orchard On The Site Of The Land Proposed Community Land Trust

The idea has therefore died for now.  However, the need for affordable housing in rural areas like ours and the desire to increase local biodiversity remains and finding out how Community Land Trusts work was engaging.  It was good, too, to make some completely new and interesting acquaintances during the ultimately aborted process.  Maybe there will be a chance to get involved in similar projects in the future.

The Horsley Orchard – Now At Risk Of Further Abandonment Following The Demise Of The Community Trust Idea

Meanwhile, another trip to the local pub needs to be scheduled…….