I'm a bit late with the October photo and the leaves are falling and the conkers have gone.
Collared Doves are much neater birds than fat pigeons and very shy so these are awful photos through the window. They nearly always visit the garden in pairs.
Have you watched the new series of a TV programme called Winter?
Then I read a book by a new to me author, the first in a series.
I came home from a visit to YD and EGD via the Co-op in Debenham for the locally made Lane Farm sausages and while I was there looked at their range of 'artisan' (that just means expensive!) cheeses, to try something different.
Choose this smoked cheese from a producer I'd not heard of .
After googling I found they'd been around for 25 years...
I love cheese, any cheese, and there hasn't been a cheese I've tried in the 19 cheese tasting posts that I've not liked at all, but I'm afraid this one really wasn't good. Has to be eaten rather than thrown out but it's hard with an odd after taste.
Aldi don't have their multi grain crackers/biscuits that I used to get so I got these Salt and Pepper ones and goodness they really are peppery which is good as it overpowers the cheese!
I was excited to find Jacqueline Winspear - author of the Maisie Dobbs stories - has a new book being published next year, three years after writing the final Maisie Dobb story. I added it to my list to reserve at the library next year. It's titled ' Charlie Bright' and should be published in March. Hopefully the start of a new series.
Already on my list are several other books by favourite authors due.................
Anthony Horowitz has 'The Vanishing Jury' also due April this is in his Horowitz/Hawthorne series
A New-to-me author, Sarah Hilary, has the second in a series due to be published in April
Jane Thynne's new book 'The Woman with No Shadow' is out in May
Alan Parks has the third in the Joseph Gunner series due in July
Rachel Hore has a new book due in June 2027 'Song for a Suffragette'
The third book by William Shaw in the DS Eden Driscoll series is being published in July 2027
Tracy Chevalier's new book 'My Name is Agnes' is due in September
and in October next year Ann Cleeves is publishing ' The Final Vera'
Tomorrow, October the 18th, is St Luke's Day (unless you are reading this on Sunday in which case it's today and if you are reading any later than Sunday - it's gone already!) and in the books of weather sayings they always mention St. Luke's Little Summer. This is a spell of warmer, dry days that often occur around this time. As October 2026 has, so far, been warm and mainly dry anyway this won't be much of a change this year.
Below is the illustration from the St Luke page of the Calendar Of Saints book. The description says mosaic in S.Vitale, Ravenna.
Luke was often in religious pictures accompanied by an ox with horns and this led to fairs being held on his feast day called 'Horn Fairs'. A notorious one was in Charlton in Kent, where the parish church is dedicated to St Luke. Horns were the theme, there would be horns for sale and merchandise made of horn and people would wear horns on their heads. People found the wearing of horns very amusing because of their sexual link. The crowds flocked to this fair until it was condemned for it's rudeness and indecency and eventually in 1872 it was banned.
Not so many books for me from the mobile library this time 'just' 12. 11 were reserved online and one plucked from the shelves.
Unusually there are four non-fiction this time.
The four non fiction are on the right although one is a thin book and hidden and I couldn't be bothered to take another photo.
As Kingfishers Catch Fire is a book about books and birds
Angels in the Cellar - A New life in a vineyard in France - no idea why I reserved this
Don't Forget We're Here Forever - no idea - must have seen it somewhere
Autumn by Kate Mosse is the one hidden
The fiction are as usual mostly crime except for September by Rosamund Pilcher which someone mentioned - not read any of her books for years.
Last month I came home with a huge heap of reserved books and have managed to read the majority. There was some really good reading and I even got on well with new-to-me authors.
These are the books from the the photo read and enjoyed in the last 4 weeks, copied from my Books Read 2026 page
I brought in the last apples from my little Falstaff tree. Almost every apple this year has been damaged by critters, probably codling moth larva.............
The codling moth or codlin moth is a member of the Lepidopteran family Tortricidae. They are major pests to agricultural crops, mainly fruits such as apples and pears, and a codling moth larva is often called an "apple worm"
When BiL was here doing the hedge last week he tried one of the apples and wondered why I'd let so many fall off. I said I hadn't 'let' them fall off but they've gone bad from the inside out and fell off. I've been eating apples everyday and couldn't pick them for keeping due to their damage.
In our orchard at the smallholding we always hung Codling moth traps and then painted the trunks with a ring of black sticky stuff to stop bugs crawling up the trunks. It didn't seem worth the expense here for five small trees and this is the first year there has been damage.
(Someone wondered if BiL was moving too. Had to laugh at that idea! He has only ever lived in two houses in his 67 years, a confirmed bachelor and very set in his ways. His Dad also only lived in the same two houses in his 80+ years. The house where he lived as a child, moving to a tied cottage on a farm when he married and back to the first house with the family when his parents died. Of course Colin was the same ..................... until he met me!)
At this time of the year as the colours change you can see all the different trees across the field.
A few weeks ago I mentioned the tins of carrots tucked away at the back of the cupboard that had a Best Before End Date of 2024, I can't find the post now but I know several people leapt up to say that BBE dates are only advisory about quality (yes I know!). Then I found the Lindt chocolate rabbits at the boot sale also past BBE but perfectly fine with enough sugar in to preserve for a very long time and the coffee which was years out of date mentioned ages ago.
It's a good thing I don't take any notice of BBE dates.
The tinned carrots and the Lindt bunnies were all perfectly good as I knew they would be.
After 'finding' the tins of carrots I also 'found' 2 tins of potatoes, a small tin of ham and two cans of mandarins in syrup, all several years past BBE. (I say 'found' because I knew they were there, just not how long they'd been there!)
I'm eating my way through them .
I've just realised that with the mandarins being dated BBE January 2021 they were bought before I moved here and therefore must have been in storage when I moved between holiday lets. Good grief!
Not the sort played in a four walled box, with a hard bouncy ball. I went to watch someone play once - vicious and much too energetic!
My squash are 5 Butternut and I only had one plant - they obviously really loved the heat. There are 3 others too but they're not ready yet and probably won't be suitable for keeping.
It's a good thing that as long as they are kept dry they'll last ages until I can use them all.
Random Stuff..................
Yes!
After the 2020-2021 move to here which dragged on for 7 months including nearly 9 weeks in holiday homes in between, I thought it best not to mention moving until I was sure it was happening, but, fingers crossed, all seems to be going well.
After just a couple of years here I knew I shouldn't have downsized so drastically. After living on 5 acres at the smallholding and then 1 acre I really missed the space and open outlook of Clay Cottage (the cottage at the end of the lane).
My bungalow has been for sale for 18 months and finally found a buyer who then pulled out after 4 weeks just as I found something I liked (I viewed about 10 properties in that summer heat, most were too tatty or too expensive.) Luckily just as I'd almost given up hope, a new buyer was found for this place and a bungalow I liked and could afford and had viewed in August came back onto the market, and it all fell into place in the space of 3 busy days.
So now I'm heading back toward the East coast, just a few miles from the sea, and just 4 miles from YD and YGD. Son and DiL have their house for sale and hope to move nearer the coast too.
Mad? Probably!.................. I'm excited but nervous.
No idea how long it will take but the chain is short - just 4 people. So maybe before Christmas?
I wanted to get back to a hobby that I'd not done for a long time and have been looking on ebay for a tapestry to stitch.
Eventually this came up. It said " Has been opened but not started" and looked as if it had all the wool still included. It's just the sort of picture that I might have bought to stitch years ago but are now a bit out of fashion.
It's finished size is 12 inches by 18 inches which seemed a size that I would be able to find a picture frame for.
My small stitching frame has those twisty clips to fix but the big frame is very old and the tapestry has to be attached by stitching it to a canvas strip at the top and bottom, which isn't the easiest thing to do. Eventually got it onto the frame.
Now I need to sort the wools.
But in the meantime I'd started on the small X stitch Christmas tree decorations and had all those 15 library books to read, so the wool tapestry has been put on hold for now.
This tapestry to stitch is one would have been apt for this year, with the Bayeux Tapestry (which isn't a tapestry and probably not stitched in Bayeux) being here in this country for a while.........but not at £86!
For a Christmas present £1 - My Essex friend likes traditional ways of doing things, including using proper handkerchiefs.
Pack of 6 suet blocks for the birds £2
And something from a charity shop that will be part of YGDs birthday present. £2.50 for a pretty photo frame.
All useful without breaking the bank.
I've always bought clothes from charity shops whenever I can but I looked at a secondhand winter tunic top in the Barnardos Charity shop it was £8. I looked at a new tunic top in Asda and it was £12. I didn't buy either, I can manage with those I have for another year.
I looked at used tee-shirts in charity shops in the summer and they were often £6.
For the grand total of £5 I bought three new from the car boot sale. They are ex Original Factory Shop - a company that closed down last year. They'd been sold in their shops for £8 each. Someone had bought-up a lot of their stock.
Choosing what's best to do (planet or purse?) used to be easy - now not so much .
................from this author.
Rachel Hore's books are always so well researched. This is her latest and is the fictional account based on two real women who showed courage and resilience in World War II.
"In my novel I have simplified historical events and the large cast of characters for dramatic reasons and to avoid writing a multi-volume work!"
and the book really does race through the 6 years of war but as she says it was the best way to do it or the book would have been huge.
I've enjoyed many of this authors books and this is another really good read.
Filling regular blog posts means sometimes they are very boring! and this one comes with a warning as this is the first of three posts about car-boot sale finds.........sorry.
I found a pair of brand new heavy duty oven gloves at the Sunday boot sale for £2. They looked just like the ones I like to use that come from the Lakeland company but the packaging wasn't the usual Lakeland labelling, although that little tag looked vaguely familiar.
Here are the October events from my little Almanac book and the way the months rush by it'll soon be Halloween, and of course the shops have been full of Halloween things for weeks already.
Looking back at previous October 1st posts and I've already written about so many weather sayings. There were several HERE in the October 1st post from 2024.
So instead I looked in the Illustrated Country Year book by Celia Lewis and found these lovely Thrush illustrations in the October section.
