Departing House Martins and Swallows

Hi everyone, I hope Thursday is everything you hoped for and more.

As I snuggle into the autumn weather and adapt the house to suit, I notice the house martins and swallows are gathering on the telephone wires ready to make their long trip south to warmer climes, a little later this year than last, always a lovely sight to behold, pointed tails flicking as they sit on the wires taking in their horizon and getting ready to fly away.

I used my new needles last night and found that I knitted for longer and was much more comfortable than on previous nights.  Only an initial comment, as agreed I will give it a week to see if the benefits are really there.

I spent some time on Tuesday clearing out the tomatoes, courgette and beetroot beds, all need digging over ready for new crops, not this year as we want to re-arrange the garden and build a bigger raised bed for next years veggies, our winter project in the garden, and hopefully remove the old diseased apple tree, which in summer completely shades the old greenhouse!  Another project is erecting my washing line which moved from Devon with us,, this is a lovely large rotary line which winds up to gain extra height for drying, just needs putting in the ground, but whilst I have a little battered rotary plonked in an umbrella stand, the urgency seems to have disappeared, however, having had the smaller one blow over on many occasions I think the time has come to resort to the better line.  One of my frugal savings is the use of the tumble dryer, in the past used liberally and unnecessarily  now I monitor the met office weather site and check for good drying weather, get the washing done in that window and air on the maiden in the spare bedroom, just one of my changes to a more frugal life.  That and of course with autumn upon us, more casseroles with cheaper cuts all done in the slow cooker and soups for the weekends again done in the slow cooker. Fabulous.

Have a wonderful Thursday everyone wherever in the world you are, and I leave you with a picture of The Swallow a poem by Ted Hughes.  Thank you for reading and I will be back tomorrow.

A Swallow  (Ted Hughes)

Has slipped through a fracture in the snow-sheet

Which is still our sky –

She flicks past, ahead of her name,

Twinkling away out over the lake.

Reaching this way and that way, with her scissors,

Snipping midges

Trout are still too numb and sunken to stir for.

Sahara clay ovens, at mirage heat,

Glazed her blues, and still she is hot.

She wearied of snatching clegs off the lugs of buffaloes

And of lassooing the flirt-flags of gazelles.

They told her the North was one giant snowball

Rolling South. She did not believe them.

So she exchanged the starry chart of Columbus

For a beggar’s bowl of mud.

Setting her compass-tremor tail-needles

She harpooned a wind

That wallowed in the ocean,

Working her barbs deeper

Through that twisting mass she came –

Did she close her eyes and trust in God?

No, she saw lighthouses

Streaming in chaos

Like sparks from a chimney – She had fixed her instruments on home.

And now, suddenly, into a blanch-tree stillness

A silence of celandines,

A fringing and stupor of frost

She bursts, weightless -

to anchor

On eggs frail as frost.

There she goes, flung taut on her leash,

Her eyes at her mouth-corners,

Water-skiing out across a wind

That wrecks great flakes against windscreens.