This is my favourite time of year and it is definitely Autumn now. The sky has that shade of blue reserved for now and the warmth that is is the air has an undertone of the cold that is on the way. Walking around I love watching the golden fields bobbing gently and how they are turned into wiggly lines of piled up corn before a machine comes along and seemingly sucks in the corn only to spit out a perfectly round bale at the other end. Soon all of the fields will have standing bales, corn henges, dotted around them. We cut the grass yesterday, well my OH did, and the smell of the grass was a reminder that soon it will be the last cut as we get ready for Winter.
In the kitchen I am taking stock of the jars of preserves and working out what we will want for the next few months. Last year the blackberry gin was very popular so there will be more made as soon as the berries are ripe. With all of the sorting and reshuffling as I check for jars, bottles and kegs while making space on the shelves and in the freezer JR has been watching from under the huge kitchen table. He has been continuing his persecution of the postman but he has been spending a lot of time with his bone. This bone has been chewed but was maybe a teeny bit too big for him and remains quite unchanged despite his every effort to nibble, knaw, and chomp through it.
Another sign of Autumn is that the buzzards are back in the field next to the house. Last year there were three and this year we have seen two but they might not like having so many pheasants so close to them. Fat Pigeon is still very much in evidence and getting fatter seemingly by the day. The other day I looked out of the window and saw him strutting around the yard out front before he took off and flew to a nearby tree except his wings were creaking and working overtime to get him there. This is the only time I have seen him flying as he usually wanders up and down the bank behind the house, eating his way through the undergrowth and fluffing his feathers at any sparrows and robins that come close. This morning when I opened the curtains he was perched on the small gate at the top of the bank, he was watching me as if to say that he knows I've been telling you about him, although I really can't imagine him flying up there even after seeing him in flight; maybe he walks up the gatepost like SpiderPig in The Simpsons. The crow that knocks on my front door is back and if someone in the village hadn't told me they knew of him I would swear he is a figment of my imagination as he never appears when my OH is here.
Despite the menagerie I have never wanted to be a vegetarian although I have been perfecting my favourite meat free pizza. A couple of months ago we went camping in Wales and on the site the was a fabulous pizza business (it wasn't a wagon or a shop, just an oven and tressle tables under a tarp) and there I had a pizza with goat cheese, rocket and balsamic vinegar. I have changed it in that I use my homemade sourdough bread base, add onions cooked down with balsamic vinegar and seasoned with salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar, tomatoes, basil, chillies and rocket from the greenhouse, goat cheese slices and a little mozzarella. Yum.
Hugs from Haggis Land
Jx
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