Blog Hols

I'm going into hospital on Friday for an operation.
It shouldn't be too long an affair.
I may not feel like posting for a while though, so I thought I'd tell you that I shall be taking a Blog Holiday.

On the other hand...you might find I have so much time because I'm not allowed to do anything for 6 to 8 weeks and I feel so much better, that I post all the time.

Warning you either way! ;)

'Tis the Last Rose of Summer

It's official. The first day of Autumn is 22nd September.

Tell that to my roses who are blooming their little hearts out. I have several once a year flowerers, which, after a little judicial pruning from an experienced hand ( not mine, Stephen's ), earlier in the year, will flower again in the late Summer early Autumn.

Nay... in fact they will go on till Christmas!

My Madame Isaac Pereire is going great guns ( if one can say this about such a delicate creature ).

It certainly felt like Autumn this morning. There was a decidedly chilly edge here in rural Northants. Right on cue, the Robin is singing his Autumn song - slightly more melancholy than his Spring/ Summer one and this year's baby Sparrows, who use our garden and all it's differing levels as an avian playground, are bobbing around like little round fluffballs. Oh how cute they are!

Never mind the dog....Spot the Sparrow

This year we have had a bumper crop of baby birds. The Sparrows which nest in the eaves of the house opposite have had their usual three clutches and many of them have survived - much to the glee of the local Sparrowhawk. He likes to circle around and keep a beady eye out. But the Sparrows are always it seems, one step ahead and are masters of disguise.
They are extremely hard to pick out against the gravel and from in amongst the foliage of the shrubs and trees, so well camouflaged are they. Now and again the baby Dunnock, pretends to be a Sparrow and hangs around with the flock. He ( or she ) is a real cutie. And very hard to distinguish from the herd. For a good reason in our house, the females are all called Maud and the males, all Crim. ( They are named after characters in a Medieval whodunnit. Well...why ever not?

I've noticed that, this year, most of the babies are female. There are some males but out of our thirty or so surviving chicks we have only about four males. I wonder what this means? Who says that garden birds are declining. Not in this garden they aren't. The curly hazel tree ( left - Corylus contorta ) is to our birds what a bouncy castle is to a three years old. They love it and spend hours a day hopping in and out, sitting nestled amongst the leaves, preening and stretching. I can lose quite a lot of time at my washing up, by standing at the kitchen sink, watching them, chuckling to myself. They are as good as a funny joke any day, for a jolly good laugh.

One by one, they dive over to the pond and take a bath on our little trickle stone, put there specially for the small birds. Back they come bedraggled and darker in colour and one by one they begin their odd little ritual of stretching and waving, preening and primping. Passer domesticus Pilates, I dubbed it! There is, however, always ONE on the lookout for trouble, always one who stays till last, constantly scanning the skies for 'you know who' and who waits until the rest have done their thing, before she too plunges into her bath.
What would these last days of Summer be without my little friends?

Or without the last flowering of the late plants who give a final splurge of colour before the real Autumn display.

Our Sedum - Autumn Joy

I shall try to capture some of this colour in my latest project. I've acquired another embroidery pattern and will work on it in conjunction with my Tapestry stamp piece I spoke of in the last post. This one is MUCH bigger and so requires a very different array of stitches, or the same type of stitch worked in a different way. It's a long time since I did anything so large.

I can do them both together - little and large. This is how far I have got with the tiny one - tiny in that the designs are small.

And this is the beginnings of the larger one. There are some large flowers on here- a Roseworks pattern. Go HERE for the link to their page.

So, I'll try to prolong Summer as long as I can, by embroidering my own flowery season and, when my babies have all grown their adult plumage and have ceased to be quite so cute, I'll look forward to the new batch next Spring!
If you want to listen to the title song of this post....
The Last rose of Summer. 
with Renee Fleming. A little slow but that I think gives it the pathos it has.

"Are you Sitting Comfortably?"

.....Then we'll begin...as they used to say in my youth whilst sitting listening to the radio and Listen With Mother on the BBC.

I shall be doing rather a lot of sitting and lying down shortly after my op. And listening. I'm vowed to listen to lots of soothing cd's that I haven't opened in a long while. While I'm doing this, I shall
need a project that I might, as they say, get my teeth into. Not literally, of course.....food will probably be the last thing on my mind. On the other hand occupying myself will be of paramount consideration.

My friends tell me they will keep me company. Good. But sometimes one needs just to sit quietly occupying one's hands. I don't do television - we haven't had one since the early 80's.....and can well live without one.

So I got out my Tapestry Stamps ( and got very excited about my new sets - below! ) and created a pattern, on some calico, starting in the middle of a circle with a dandelion bloom.

I branched out and out....and out, using as many stamps as I could realistically get into a design - for the moment ;) It may grow even bigger - depends how it goes.

I am going to embroider all the leaves and flowers I have stamped. I used the stamps that would be the easiest to transfer to stitches, though I might add a few more later which are not so easy....just to see.
I've oodles of embroidery threads and can send my perfect and willing husband out for any I run out of. I'm so organised! :)

I do hope that with handling the design will stay put, but if not I'll have to re-stamp but I'll do a bit at a time. I used a brown ink which I thought would blend into most of the colours I'm going to use in the work.

So now, all there is to do is begin in the middle and work outwards. I shall start it before I get to hospital, that way, it won't look as if I don't know what I'm doing. ;)

I'll keep you posted.
But only if you'll sit quietly like good children. :)

< Sigh> Those were the days!

The Whole Duty Of Children

"A child should always say what's true
And speak when he is spoken to,

And behave mannerly at table;

At least as far as he is able."

-Robert Louis Stevenson