On beauty and overcooked vegetables

 

On beauty, and overcooked vegetables

4/7/2025

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A very good friend asked me what my next blog post would be about. We chatted about writing and I explained that I have recently been having difficulty working out what is OK to say in my blog. Before I gave up alcohol completely I found that a glass of wine helped me to find the perfect balance between saying too much and holding back on what I really feel. Now I am mostly  just holding back...... but let's see how this goes.....

This week OH and I celebrated 43 years of marriage. I explained to very good friend that 'celebrate' was probably not the right term to use. For we have never felt the need for romantic dinners, anniversary gifts or sentimental acts. We barely manage an exchange of cards. Each year it is a test of memory. Who will forget this time. In the past we have had all possible combinations of forgetting. Both, just me, or just OH ( my other half). The rememberer always gets to feel good. Phew! I made it this time.......

This year we both failed in different ways. OH took himself off to find the Mediterranean Sea for a few days, for a 'proper summer break'. No matter that we have a heatwave here in England. This was his way of dealing with the fact that he has agreed to go to Norway for our summer holiday. No weather guarantees there. I don't enjoy humidity or heat. OH thrives on sweating in the sun whilst climbing an ancient ruin. I just want to jump into a fridge. So he left an anniversary card for me at home, forgetting that I, also, wasn't at home. I had escaped the heat of suburbia for the cooler climes of Camber Sands. 
I remembered that the anniversary was looming too late to put a card into his suitcase, and had to make do with a vastly inferior e-card. Almost as bad as no card. Perhaps worse... it certainly felt desperate.

So we spoke on the day. He from a castle in Corfu, sweating in the Mediterranean sun, and me from the sunshine of Camber Sands, fresh and glorious. We laughed at our joint ineptitude, and all was good.

Which brings me to the cabbage ( and mange tout peas). How is it that after 43 years OH still cannot cook either in a way that allows one to enjoy their freshly picked, home grown delicious flavours? How can it be so hard not to boil them to a soggy mess, and serve them dripping with water, onto clean white plates? There. I said it. No going back.... and yet we have 43 years. Some things are just not worth worrying about. 

I have pondered long and hard about whether it is OK to blog about this, and realise that fear of getting it wrong was stopping me from writing at all. All this indirect communication through blogs is turning into a family specialty. Son does a wonderful job of communicating all sorts of things with us via the written word. And surely it is OK for me to reciprocate. So much that needs saying gets said, and our lives are so much richer for it. Maybe not the cabbage bit, but we all get to understand each other a little better, and that is the strength of words on a page.

And in the middle of writing this OH and I popped off to Norway where it was unvbelievably hot and sunny every day for 8 days. 27 degrees and barely a cloud to be seen. No moody landscapes on this trip.

It was so hot, and so beautiful that I barely took any photos, and my camera stayed in my suitcase for the whole trip. I fell in love with Norway, and knew that I couldn't do it justice in such a short space of time whilst on the road. I will have to return at a gentler pace.

So I soaked in the beauty, swam in the beauty, and hiked in the beauty. And that was more than enough. 

Morning sun, near Oslo airport.

lockdown life

Springtime in suburbia..... I once made a book about it.

Endless days of sunshine in April.

Unusual. Enjoyable. Surreal.

For last time we had weather like this in April I was studyimg at Central St Martins for a PG cert in photography.

This time I am locked down. Day after day. Week after week.

My other half (OH) and I confined to quarters, together in a way that we have not been together for many years.

Normally OH is travelling for work, and I am travelling for photography or to visit family in Canada, or both.

I am not going to go into details of the pandemic..... you know about that.

I am going to share some good things that have come out of this time instead.

Firstly, we have gone mad in the garden. Ripping up lawn to plant vegetables.

Digging for sanity.


The kitchen floor a mass of dodgy looking seedlings.

Secondly, OH has tidied 20 years worth of papers from his study.

You have no idea how happy that makes me.

OH has also become bread maker and soup maker extraordinaire. When I enquired of his plans for today he advised that he was going to be 'very busy'. He has bread and soup to make, and dinner to cook.

I will have to amuse myself writing, and watching my seedlings grow.

messages in the woods

The house is a lot cleaner than it ever has been.  The only items in my once busy diary are a daily instruction for which room to clean today ( somehow I can only make myself do housework if it is in my diary).

Later today my phone will beep to remind me to put the garden waste bin out for collection. Who would have dreamed that we could all be so excited by a waste and recycling collection. Some of our neighbours have had boxes out for days......

Secrets of a lockdown life revealed.....

recycling

There are no secrets when the recycling doesn't get collected.

And duck for a dog?

Then there is the simple pleasure of  'drying socks on the garden table'..... so much time saved by just throwing them all down in the sunshine.

It would be fair to say that we have had our moments.....

but we have overcome these with vigorous amounts of walking and cycling. OH disappears off on his bicycle while I walk to the woods, or dance in my front room gymnasium.

Youtube exercise videos have kept me sane. My favourite is a short burst of total exhaustion with Train like a ballerina.

Here is my gymn.

But what of creativity I hear you ask.

It has been a time of feeling unsettled and that has impacted on my making.

So I have been incredibly grateful to join a zoom painting class with Nick Archer of @artclassesinrye

I find it a welcome distraction and a way to connect with friends at Rye Creative Centre.

I have never painted with acrylics, and it is a love / hate relationship, but I have so enjoyed learning about colour, how to mix colours, and the discipline of not being satisfied with a colour that isn't right.

I started painting a piece of white paper on a white background.

It turns out to be all about greys and shadows, and I got so frustrated with it in the end that I painted it all over in black with a view to starting again.

I have rediscovered how much I hate getting charcoal all over everything, and how it is hard to know when 'enough is enough'. 

Next week we are looking at mark making. A chance to go a bit wild....



After watching the Royal Academy film "Painting the modern garden; Monet to Matisse" I am raring to go.

This documentary is an absolute delight, and I now see the pond in my local woods as akin to Monet's waterlily garden; a bit of an obsession. Monet became obsessed with the reflections in the water, just as I do.

pavement selfie

Every day I walk, and mostly I go to the woods.

There have been some lovely surprises...

another good thing that has come from this time.

When the sun shines, the spring leaves are vibrant and fresh.

the stream

But to capture the wild garlic requires softer light.

wild garlic, hawkwood

And the highlight of this week has been the rain; so welcome after all those endless dry sunny days. 

The woodland refreshed, and watery ripples on the pond.

rain drops on the pond

pond reflections

rain

 So we have settled into a fairly content routine.


And I am beginning to be able to get back my creative mojo.

Here is one from the pond, inspired by Monet.

Rain dance 7 © Caroline Fraser 2020