Light, Shade, Shape, Form, Fun and Flavour

When you see a number of fruit and vegetable species growing alongside each other, sometimes, with the reflection of the light or the dew or whatever, you're drawn to look a little closer.  When the dust settles of an evening, you've finished watering/preparing dinner/cuddling the cat, shapes and forms so beautifully appear, to ease away the stresses of 'your workaday world' (as Terry Wogan would say in the trail for Terry Walton's Rhonda Valley Allotment)... And that's why I like sometimes to step back a few paces, inspired by my friend Gloria maybe, to absorb and let natures' beauty sink in some of the more peaceful moments of my life that I'd otherwise miss, giving thought to what I see through the eye of a lense, and then later, what I've captured in my photographs, because each photograph that I take these days, reminds me of my late father, and what photography actually meant to him, in its' importance, and the importance it is beginning to play in my own life..
And then out of the blue, half way up your three-storey building, one of my adorable garden birds has propagated A Sunflower.  That'll be nice company for the tree sapling that's growing out of our chimney pot in Wellie Towers then, obviously....!

Fert'n'Liza Flobalob are still recovering from their guest appearance on The Itton Village Produce Show Poster this year.  Foot-loose and totally 'hands-free', Wellie, being completely aux fais with all kinds of modern technology,  has banned them from any mobile pheramones, P-pods, U-boats, Z-Beds, U-Tubes, FaceAches or Twatters until they regain their composure and va va vacuum....?!

Just when you thought it was safe to come out of your kitchen......and having visited County Cork specifically to dine at Cafe Paradiso ourselves a few years back, who did I applaude from my very own kitchen once again last week on The Funny Farm Blog?  And my culinary hero has indeedy answered my prayers and written another book, which Trousers kindly bought for me within two days of finding it online after Emma assured me that he'd written a fourth.  Denis Cotter, I adore you.  There.  I've said it...... 

Unfortunately, we made the mistake of staying at a B&B a couple of doors away from his restaurant on that visit, where there was no chair in the room to sit down and put your pants or sox on from.  If you opened the wardrobe door, the weight of the door, without any hangers weighing it down inside, brought it crashing down into your face.  They 'unlocked the dining room' each morning to allure you in for brekkie for the worst case of a breakfast that has ever been witnessed in the history of mankind, and they charged us a fortune for the priv, priv, honour? 

Thankfully, I'm thinking that one doesn't even need to 'Go To SpecSavers' anymore, proverbially, because Paradiso themselves were starting to do B&B, and that should be up and running now so that you don't have to suffer the same fate as Trousers and I? 
What I actually really love about Denis and his culinary expertise, apart from the obvious, that he makes vegetarian food So Ruddy Gorgeous, is that he TALKS about it before he tells you how to do it, because when I bought his 'Paradiso Seasons' I had no idea who he was but read his book from cover to cover, because it was just so dead interesting.  His sense of humour is much like my own, and his writings/witterings intrigue me at every sentence, paragraph or turn of the page.  But the best bit of all, is that he makes your mouth water with every recipe that he creates, and if, like me, you actually grow the stuff outside of your own back door, he's bringing perfectly 'doo-able' restaurant  or homely food  that you're 'itching' to cook, right to your very fingertips, making it a part of your everyday life.
Trousers and I had the pleasure of a few words with Denis when we visited his restaurant, because we asked to, he won't remember, but as one of his biggest admirers, I'd like to pass on our good wishes to him if he were ever to read this, with my utmost sincerity for many more an inspirational book to 'Blow My Frock Up'.
Bless You Denis.X

 
We appear to have lost a photo or two in the translation of uploading this blog this evening children, which can only be Wellie's fault (!), but there was a rather spesh photo I'd planned for you, which showed, simply a mower, a garden rake, and an Orchard.
The story therein, relies on diligence, everyday 'floor-pickings'.  What I collect from the orchard floor is effectively 'Mine'.  What 'The Girls/Sheeps' see and eat, is 'Theirs'.  And having mowed the orchard floor this afternoon, raked all previously fallen fruit out of the way, anything that falls subsequently, unless into a big pile of Sheep Sh!t, if I get to it before they do, it's got Wellie's name on it.X

You're all very quiet....  Are you still there?!