Five minus one sleep: reminiscent of Christmas Eves...

Five minus two sleeps:Trial Run...

Five minus three sleeps (Mummy, isn't it very 'citing?)

21. Voltaire and his Candide22. Apple trees that work!23. Nearly five years of Jojo24. The redemption that I understood from his birth25. The burning desk that didn't burn in my classroom26. The hills, whence cometh mine aid27. The fact that September 2009 is nearly over28. The knowledge that grace will be there if October is no better29. The knowledge that there is a bigger, longer picture for my suns30. The home where is my heart, even if there are still more dirty dishes...

Daddy, there's an apple on our tree!

I was in school on Friday, but it was all texted!

One apple, after three years, gobbled on six slices of toast for breakfast today- Harvest Sunday in the Land of the Strawberries!

Makes me feel better about reactivating FarmVille! Not only in the virtual land do we plough the fields and scatter...!

It's much funner on this side of the wall!

This is Prince Charming's natural habitat...



But we all know that strawberries need the right conditions...



...with the promise of easier walking at the top, on the other side of the wall...

Careful nurturing may be required,

and meeting nice friends for lunch in the middle helps, if you can find them...

You know that the views will be good,

but they are invariably better when the light comes on...

Good times had by all!

Happy Birthday, Arthur

Booky porridge

I'm back to the university library tonight for my twice weekly, term-time only jaunt into hushed and hallowed stacks. I am also to be found at the Issue Desk- much less hushed and hallowed! But still great work and lovely colleagues. Anyway, it occurred to me that returning to the library might necessitate taking back the books that I had taken out on summer loan...

These are some of them! The little blue one on top was Ibsen's Ghosts. Short, succinct, slicing. I'd be interested to see this on the stage, because I did find some of the dialogue stilted on the page, but my goodness, how the hopelessness of fate falls down like the grey rain on the fjord. Or maybe less a preordained destiny of fate than a chosen traditional path fating sins of fathers and omissions of mothers on child, legitimate and bastard alike. I've long mistrusted those who intransigeantly walk the traditional route. With freedom somewhere urban and distant. The Church fares not well at all, in the cowardly Manders. Discuss!

I took Ghosts to read in the GP's waiting area this morning, which is right beside the Library area (and above the pool) in our Wellbeing Centre. So I did make a childless foray into those stacks too- much more hushed and hallowed without suns- definitely a lesson learnt! So today's theme would appear to be love gone awry...

Or love goes awry meets gingerbread theme of this autumn with the Bean's gingerbread steamers, lattes et al...

And finally, moving from love to gingerbread to all things delicious and good...

Places to potter (when other mums are doing your school runs!)

11. Rhubarb bundles12. A clean kitchen13. Suns who tell you that they love you- and daddy too14. 12 clean socks, six clean sweatshirts and four pairs of clean shorts15. Sad friends who begin to speak with purpose16. Happy friends who text all the right things17. A work return to the Library term18. Believing that provision is always there19. Swimming boys who smile in the water20. Meg Ryan classics- and Daniel Craig ones too!

Rhubarb and Custard

Many significant things have passed below my bridge this weekend, of which one was a delivery of rhubarb! Thanks to Rod and Dee for same; my rhubarb this summer has been thin and sickly, and thus muchly lovely it was to be given a bag of thick and juicy stems.

None of the above photos are, obviously, of my rhubarb. I did arrange a suitably bloggy photo as I started to chop this afternoon, but once again I have killed the camera battery by having it plugged into the computer too long, resulting in Significant Thing Number 2.

I do not need Facebook or my (still a bit lamented) Cherryblossom FarmVille Farm in order to while away hours at the keyboard. A simple Google image search will provide hours of fascinating trove of blogs, recipes and childhood cartoons- rhubarb and custard to you too!

Hence my deactivated FB status may yet lead to the hoped for productive use of time, but this won't necessarily mean less time right here! I can guarantee that it won't be leading to a batch of handmade macaroons, although maybe the muffins could appear alongside the standard crumble and little jar of Jamie Oliver directed compote (delicious with cheese- much of which has also gorgeously been left behind by Rod and Dee)... Who's for lunch tomorrow?

Recovery

I can't quite work out how to rotate this picture! (This will come as no surprise to those of you who know me well.) It does, somewhat askewedly, record the pancake breakfast that Prince Charming got up to make for us all this morning, and you can barely make out said pancakes on the left, which should be the top. There are no pancakes to be found on suns' plates for obvious reasons! The wolfing only stopped when Jojo declared that he was sick with pancakes... Only to state that he would however be returning to the three quarters of his third pancake after a little break. It's late now, and he is long abed, so I may just hasard to discard the remains...

This was a deliberately lazy start to our Saturday. Mattman especially is visibly exhausted after three weeks of adjusting to a new, much stepped up work routine in the classroom, as well as to a whole new playground dynamic where playing Clone Wars doesn't compete with football. He has two "I've been brave today" stickers on his star chart and they were much warranted. Jojo seems thankfully less grumpy in the afternoons, and hasn't perpetrated any scrambled acts since last weekend- to my knowledge!

We did mean lazy to be the theme of the day, but managed nonetheless to: meet my parents for lunch in town, buy new walking boots for the suns, in the hope that this weather will hold for some mountains next week, fit in a playpark before swimming lessons, call with fabulous friends for outside coffee, arrange piano lessons with their third musical sun, and finally cook dinner for friends and their fourth child. On a news break from Daniel Craig and movie history's greatest shower scene, I am washing twelve socks, six sweatshirts and four pairs of shorts.

Lazy?

Green for Go

Organic green beans are steaming, the lime is ready to squeeze- over the beans initially but more importantly round the rim of a squat glass filling with the depleted contents of my green bottle! It's the weekend!

Happy Families

Well, actually, girls, my house is sparkling! But thanks for asking- it was inspired by you that I filled my squirter with vinegar and water, scrumpled up Tuesday's papers (pausing briefly over the picture of Patrick Swayze), and cleaned windows throughout the land. This having cleaned all the floors of the land, washed dishes, fed two small boys, collected a bigger boy, and listened to four boys play slightly unsupervised in the garden!




And did I mention that I also made it to the Bean- recently discovered but increasingly beloved coffee shop in a garden village- for an hour's green tea break with its regulars. Oh and homework is done too; ode to joy!

A day of happy, after two and a half weeks of unhappy, slowly readjusting to routine, families.

I'm just off now to cook from scratch... Who knows what tomorrow holds?

1. The Defender of the Weak
2. My mother's little envelopes
3. Good enough teachers
4. A job!
5. Colin and Anne Welsh and their piano
6. New friends
7. Old friends
8. The jagged humour index of five year plans
9. Suns with all their scramble
10. Prince Charming

Scrambled

It's been a scrambled day today in the Land of the Strawberries. In France scrambled egg is served as a sophisticated starter, with much aplomb, and is certainly never cold by the time it gets to the table!

Here for Sunday tea we serve up the remnants of a cracked and whisked up day. But at least, at Jojo's insistence, the nearly seasonal plate hides the ghosts for a short time...

Motherhood I know in my head to be a long-term process, as I know that to make an omelette... But I've only got one basket for these eggs, and sometimes it gets heavy!

Catching up: Retail Therapy or Both Boys Go To School

Imaginate or fictionalise?

With credits to Crafting Catherine for the splurge incentive and C for the philosophical conundrum...

Stars

Thank you, Sarah, but the star is all yours!

It proves that very little encouragement goes nonetheless an extremely long way. A pat on the back for all those high-achieving academic teenage girls who don't believe in their power.

Seek and find

You can take Hide and Seek with you to any location,



find some sun as well, if you're lucky,

and even some partially hidden meaning in Ulster-Scots!

But you'll easily spot the biggest aeroplane* in the world as it flies twice over your head! Four huge engines roar a Fanfare for Autumn.

*Aeronautical engineer/PC points out that it is actually the world's biggest commercial aeroplane. We stand corrected, but no less impressed!

First Conker Hunt of 2009

Off we went. Two responsible (?) adults and six assorted children. And two bikes. Conker sites separated by a very busy road. I'll say no more; the mother of one child reads this blog! Same child declared "This Conker Hunt is the best ever!" I learnt that early conkers are silky white pearls- when you stamp on the shells to squeeze them open...