On Sunday archery coaching was freezing, but I could still make jokes. Red and purple really work for me together.

Then it rained. I really like riding in the rain; it feels protective and private.

Rain means I can wear my rain cloak (60s policeman’s kit). It felt so autumny. I wore my Capercaillie tam o’shanter and for the first time I was able to wear it properly – in the past I was so invested in “keeping it under my hat”, in a generally nervous sense, that I would pull all hats as far down as they would possibly go. That really doesnt work for this, it makes the head look like a pudding! I would be afraid that the hat would fly away if it wasn’t jammed on, or that someone would tear it off me, and then I would have to run after it, and things would be terrible. I would be ripped open!

The Capercaillie is a large woodland grouse. This hat’s tartan is desiged to conserve them; the profit from sales goes to looking after the species and its environment. I bought it at the Loch Garten RSBP reserve, which is beautiful. You should go.

I picked hawthorne to make hawthorne jelly. This shield bug came in with it.

I really like shield bugs.

Never too early.

Rosehip syrup, for.. vitamins? They had it in the war so it must be good.

Definitely not any poisons in here.

Would this face lie?

It’s deeelish, and I didn’t read the bit about it bringing on sweats if undiluted so now I’m having a big glass of water.

I didn’t know that elderberries made syrup, curative or otherwise (although.. obviously they could, if anyone wanted them to?), until Justin mentioned that he couldn’t spare the time or money to get some. So I dropped two dollars in his indiegogo fundraiser. Basically nothing, but I’ve got time and not money. Minescule thank you..

I like to eat. I like to not pay for stuff. I like to Be Able To Do Stuff. “Foraging” and foraged cooking: right up my lane.

It’s autumn, just about which is hedge berry season!

What you need:

House keys, basket, tea towel for dividing by type, bottle of water.

What I didn’t have: covered legs and sturdy shoes. This meant that when people had got there before me I was out of luck; when the bush is laden where there are nettles but bare where there aren’t your only option is to wade in protected. If you don’t want to get stung, you lose.

I’m going back in the week for rosehips anyway. I’ll prepare better!

Foraging is legal on publis land (inc. footpaths) so long as you don’t dig anything up or wipe out the stocks. Edible berries are absolutely fine to gather, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Don’t pick by roads, or where dogs piss.

These burrs aren’t edible! But they stick to hair or fabric like they’re designed to stick to animal fur – that’s how the plant gets its seeds about. Natural fascinator, y/y?

These above are not edible. The post is where I propped my camera to fake being cute (above).

Once I over-reached and only avoided falling into the hedge by being caught on the fingertip by a big bloody (now) thorn. Cruel to be kind? I guess..

I don’t take more than one in three, unless there’s an abundance of near-ripes surrounding. If it’s before the weekend leave the lower branches; if it’s an early school day it should be fine to look at child-height.

Cooked results and recipes to come. Don’t eat elderberries raw in multiple, because they’ll hurt you.

Shirt: Jane Marple via rinkya, belt: ebay, skirt: MODELLE via NASTY GAL, shoes: VW + Melissa

But this weekend actually! Actually quite busy. I’ll tell you about it.

See first of all, 8:15, I go to town to buy figs. My dad drove because he had some tennis to teach to eight year olds – so I had to wait a fair bit. I had a latte and some lemon drizzle cake, I read my Tom Waits interviews book. Then I went to the park and sat all over an entire bench, and read my Tom Waits interview book.

See the funniest thing is that at the start, Tom Waits is only twenty six. And Tom Waits at twenty six is a goon. I want to say, you dweeb Tom Waits, and push him. Not over – just a expressive push. Isn’t that the stupidest thing, though; That Tom Waits was once twenty six, and lyrically verbose in a noirish way that reminds me of feeling mean and miserable and bad, not cool-bad but just bad-bad? Tom Waits aged twenty six is ridiculous and I don’t like him. This makes me feel good: if someone has not risen, then what is the point of them.

And then suddenly he’s thirty two and married and nice again (“again” from when he’s older, when I first cd-knew him), so that’s okay.

Then it was time to go home to buy meat and make more cakes. Which we took back to town, to feed to adult tennis players (for money). Of course again I had to wait.

As you can see it’s quite nice there, so I didn’t mind the wait again. There’s nothing so wrong with being in limbo.

The cakes that I made were: beetroot and chocolate, lime and coconut, fig and almond, victoria sponge and apple-cinnamon turn-over. Dad made a cherry and ginger one; it’s his stand-by.

I whisked.

And you know, for the first time there was cake left over at the end? We made just over half what we did last time. I am taking this as a personal insult. A pox on all tennnis.

Only one person took lemon in their tea, so I ate the leftovers.

But then it was time to stuff my bag into a leisure centre locker and rollerskate for an hour and a half.

And that was the end of Saturday.

On Sunday, I taught archery to children and teens and they made definite improvement. In return, one of them told me the Hunger Games book one. That was nice.

In the afternoon my dad and I saved maybe six hunnert pounds by re-fitting a kitchen window.

I got to use both the green expanding insulation foam and the smooth white putty stuff (in gun form), both longstanding ambitions.

You know something about my dad? He has never once, in my whole life, made me feel that I’m working with him instead of a non-existent brother.

Outfit one: sweater: baby, the stars shine bright, belt: ebay, culottes: old Brownie Guide uniform, tights: Tesco. Outfit two: shirt: GAP, jogging bottoms: my sister’s Sheffield uni ones that are too short for her and thus now mine.

Now I’m gon’ pick berries. Peace!

Been a good weekend for celebrating nature’s bounty. After the rare wildlife of yesterday, more commonplace flora today. Yet, with a decent blackberry harvest from the garden and verges as well, there was tonight’s pudding, further proof that the best things in life are free.

I went on a walk today – the fifth-to-last one in my project to walk all the 214 ‘Wainwright’ fells in the English Lake District – and you can read about that on my other blog, and see many photos that are a lot better quality than this shoddy, out-of-focus shot. (Give me a couple of hours and I’ll have them up later today.) So why is this crappy picture the ‘Photo of the Day’, then?

Because this is a golden eagle goddammit. There are two – two – golden eagles in the whole of England. Scotland has quite a few – at least, if farmers and landowners can be exhorted to stop poisoning them (a disgusting example of environmental carnage, which the RSPB have long been campaigning against) – but England has just one breeding pair, who reside in Riggindale. This is a valley at the southern end of the reservoir of Haweswater, in the east of the district.

I was within a mile of that valley today, above the deep and remote coombe of Threshthwaite Cove, near the summit of Caudale Moor (fell #205). I saw this large bird fly through the cove and swoop up onto a promontory. I didn’t think, at first, what it might be, but I’d seen where it landed and saw that the rocky promontory was being touched very well by the sunlight, so I stopped for a few minutes to see if I could capture it. The more I took of it the more I thought, hang on, this is far too big to be a hawk or even a falcon. This picture above was my best effort, as it really was quite a way away and even at maximum (70x) zoom this is as good as it got. But I got enough other pictures, including of its face, to be very sure that what I saw and photographed here is, indeed, quite literally, the rarest bird in England.

I once knew someone who was completely inept at golf, a total novice, but who once flukily hit a hole-in-one, witnessed by many people. Seve Ballesteros went his whole career without hitting one. I feel like I may have done the birdwatching equivalent here. Sorry to anyone who has been twitching for decades and never got one like this, then. But now, at least, you know roughly where to find it.

I knew that if I could let go of my fears and resistance, things would have to lighten up.

But it was so hard.

In fact, it was SO hard, that when I tried to toss a bottle with a message into the mighty Mississippi River on a cold winter day, the bottle wouldn’t flow downstream.  It got caught in an eddy, and circled around and around, going UPSTREAM, of all things.

Like me.

Meanwhile, only yards away, the Mississippi flowed easily down toward the Gulf of Mexico, powerfully moving millions of gallons of water just past me, churning downstream. I stood there, defeated, and watched a giant log float by, moving swiftly and easily downward, while my bottle spun upward.

In response to this story, a smart friend told me that it was possible for me to find ease, to discover a way to let things move easily around in my life. I started meditating, deep breathing with trippy yoga music, trying to free my mind.

A few weeks later, walking along the river, I saw this:

…..just laying there on the path, and I knew it was a message from me, for me. The EEs that I had been seeking……right there on the ground, staring up at me.

It was in me, not outside somewhere. Within.

I relaxed.

And it worked. I let go a little, and bit by bit, day by day, found ways to let the ease in and let the stress out.

Ever since, I notice Es appearing in nature, and always take it as a reminder that I control the way I see the world, nobody else does that. And I’m in control –  ease or not – it’s up to me.

Nowadays – I’m expecting Es everywhere. And guess what?

It works.

Since Sunday I have spent the great majority of my time sat on my butt, working. It needs doing, but it doesn’t make for many photography opportunities. What you’ve been seeing here are just snatches of time, unrepresentative of life, really.

Today I was working at home all day and yet, still, there are these little bits and pieces of things to see, moments where the familiar territory of my house of 11 years shows me something new or different. This strand of honeysuckle reached down from the front wall and into the well below the kitchen window by our shed (where the cave spider lives), giving some colour to a grey and autumnal morning.

When I was  in the Lousiana swamp a few weeks back I saw alligators – we definitely don’t have them in Yorkshire. Cypresses and wolf spiders, spotted on the tour, are also not usually seen round here. But when the guide pointed out a sleek, tall drink of water of a bird with a beak like a dagger, a fish’s worst nightmare – oh yeah, we have them in Yorkshire. Really? Yes, really. Herons often fish in the river that runs through the centre of town. And here is one, just to prove it. Handsome beast, isn’t it?

No added comments today except RIP Joan Hall, 28th April 1924 – 13th August 2012. My maternal grandmother – her funeral was today.

Perch are teeming at the movement of the tides – head out as the tide is going out or coming in, and you’ll have plenty of perch for your supper, for your neighbor, and a few to put in the freezer.

Fishing is a great way to spend Labor Day Weekend. Good clean fun (for everyone except the fish). A very sharp filet knife will serve you well, and you won’t worry about bones at all. Remember, if you’ve got access to a crab trap – you can recycle those perch heads and tails for crab bait.

The wildly optimistic part of me still thinks that come September maybe we will get a run of nice warm and sunny days, but even if September in the UK can often be fine that is probably clutching at straws. The day was a largely pleasant one but there was just something autumnal about the morning, a crispness in the air that foretells the cold to come.

So, it’s my birthday. I’m 43. The name of this blog is now out of date but I might as well keep it. I could have tried to post a picture that represented the celebrations somehow but I didn’t do anything particularly different – although the afternoon was a fun one and spent with friends. While sitting at the Shoulder of Mutton pub in the centre of Hebden Bridge there was this parade of husky dogs, there must have been some kind of meeting of an owners’ club as they were everywhere. And why not show them off, because they were truly beautiful creatures, and obliging models too. So we’ll start the second year with a picture of one of them.

Four days ago I said this:

My rule & advice is: if a novel makes you feel real-er, do a thing that someone in the novel does. I mean.. It's just obvious.—
Claire (@illusClaire) August 18, 2012

And it’s true. It got a +fav from Iris as well, which was emboldening.

There’s a lot in it, but a recurring theme of Our Tragic Universe is, what is the point of non-pointless stories? Why do people tell each other variations on the same narrative cycles, does it even make sense? Is it a panacea? Is it a placebo? The characters kept annoying me about it, wrestling with the same question and not approaching an answer until eventually I stopped again (I was so worried about getting to the halfway point because then I would be “nearly done” that I kept my reading in short bites – so unlike me – until I got to the halfway point and got over it) and said to my sweetie, the reason that people tell each other bottle-of-oil stories* is that otherwise the whole world would be nothing but everybody telling each other what to do all the time and that would be an incredible drag.

I hate to do what I’m told if I haven’t just woken up. And even then, only if it’s basic and sensible. “Drink this”. “Go and get a chair”.

But I love to look at what other people are doing, re-callibrate it for myself, and then do that. When I was wee and in a crafts workshop I had to make a paper sculture of a frog; these two tall kids who thought themselves so alpha figured out a way to make their frogs’ eyes stand up. I saw what they were doing and I thought “hmmm”. When they started whispering loudly that I had copied them, I just looked at them. But in my mind I was saying if you would just look, you’ll see mine are superior.

The blurb caused me to assume that there would be an actual knitting pattern in the pages of this book. There is not. So that was out.

I went for the flower remedy.

At first I thought I would poach protag Meg’s mixture (gentian, holly, hornbeam, sweet chestnut, wild oat and wild rose) and do a Mr Y. style psychological summoning but three things swayed me to a no. They were money, a discomfort with the idea of squashing my head beneath someone else’s, and the conviction that Meg would not be an actively useful person to embody: she does most of her living on the inside, and I have quite enough of that already. Plus of course, it would be an anti-summoning anyway, because flower remedies are supposed to stop you from being ways that you are instead of help you to be ways that you’re not. There’s semantic fault in that sentence, but I think you follow me.

On the one hand I secretly believe that flower remedies will work because I secretly believe in magic. On the other I unsecretly believe in placebos. So I am confident.

And honestly I’m a little bit fucking desperate.

WILL flower remedy help me to go to sleep? CAN I stick to my slowly-improving schedule of Gettin’ Stuff Done? SHOULD I feel as witchy-placid as I do dropping these liquid moments on my tongue?

Stay tuned.

*It’s in the book

I’m in the Lakes again. After today, 18 to go. The picture is taken on Middle Fell, near Wast Water, but in the background is Yewbarrow, and if there was a super-dooper 100x zoom you may well be able to see the same sight as depicted way back on Sept 2nd, as that’s Great Door over there. More to come from the Lakes for the next few days, I’m here until Thursday.

Johnny Oyster Seed sent a cool video of time-lapse photos taken on Friday, where he and his crew blew 750,000 oyster seedlings off his handmade barge and into the creek near Solomon’s Island. A project of the Southern Maryland Oyster Cultivation Society, the goal is to re-establish oyster reefs around Solomon’s Island to the point where the creeks are self-sustaining and the water is clean once again. This is an impressive group who are really making a difference in water quality in their neck of the woods. Hats off to SMOCS.

Wow, there’s something growing in the garden. Believe me, after the year of weather we’ve had, this is something of an achievement. It’s not edible yet, but we’ll see how it goes.

Returned from Tampere to Helsinki today and have the weekend here before heading home on Sunday afternoon. This is taken in a market near the square of Hakaniemi. Fish, potatoes and berries seem to be the staples of the Finnish diet, which is fine by me.

Does the plastic bag spoil this shot or help it? I also like the little flag in the background, just in case I forgot where I was.

DANG!

Oh, you are so busted, my little rodent friend.

Tolerable weather today, by recent standards, and I got a Lake District walk in – photos are on my other blog (or will be soon, when I post them). This guy doesn’t get the day off though. He was hard at work as I passed him outside the village of Mungrisdale, Cumbria.

Over the course of this blog I have quite got into taking photos of wildlife: animals and plants make good subjects, they don’t get self-conscious in front of a camera. You can’t persuade them to stay in shot and in focus, but they don’t mind having cameras pointed at them per se.

By the way, I have one more month of this blog to go, at least to get to the full year that I set out to do. However, I am going to continue for a second year and finish, finally, on 25th August 2013.