My birthday today but I don’t have much heart for it.  I think Tora is on his last legs now.

Spooky time again.  I carved a not very expert pumpkin.

I had a go at a technique I saw on GBBO to make a smart swiss roll for my Mum.  Basically you colour a  little of the sponge mix and pipe it in a pattern on to a piece of baking parchment.  Then you carefully smooth the rest of the uncoloured mixture over the top […]

This was lying on the path outside the door today.  It looks like a seagull’s feather but we hardly ever see them up here – although for three consecutive years we did have a solitary one-legged seagull we called Beaky. I suppose it could be an owl feather – we have loads of tawny owls […]

Tora is very frail now.  He sleeps all the time and I only hope he is not in pain. It has been three years since we lost his twin brother Schrodi to cancer, and we had the courage to have him put to sleep when it became apparent that he was suffering.  I have seen […]

Getting dark substantially earlier now.

I picked what was left of the easily accessible brambles today.  When I was a child we used to say that on 1st October the devil spat on the brambles and you shouldn’t eat them after that.  There is some truth in the date thing because as autumn progresses they tend to be either wizened […]

A nice walk up to the waterfalls – still looking quite summery.

They seem to be everywhere this year.  Unfortunately I never quite have the nerve to pick and eat any.  A far cry from when I was a teenager living in West Cumbria right out in the countryside.  Gypsy boys used to come to the door with baskets of vast field mushrooms the size of saucers […]

I felt like doing some baking today, so I rustled up some sausage rolls.  I am not ashamed to admit that I used shop bought puff pastry, because although I am a big fan of homemade things, and also can make it myself successfully (honest I can), it is way more trouble than it is […]