Archive
Winter apples
These apples are for cooking with in winter I think that they may be Calville Blanc d’Hiver.
Today I reheated the Oxtail stew I started yesterday, it was lush, lovely aunt ate until she was full. We have heard nothing from Social Services about setting up a meeting which is annoying.
163
Storing apples for winter- a painting a day
Click here to bid size 7 in x 9 in 17cm x 22cm, charcoal and wash on Fabriano paper
On Friday I started to investigate the problem of what happens to the GCSE curriculum as it seems possible to me that local schools are only teaching a part of the syllabus; they may not be alone in this.
I started with OFSTED as they have given the school, where only part of the GCSE syllabus was taught to my son, a good report. They have not heard of the problem and tell me that it is not really within their remit. They suggested the Department of Education. The D. of E. said that they were not aware of a problem and it was not the sort of thing they dealt with. They suggested two more organisations, OFQUAL and QCDA, the people I spoke to here had casually heard of teaching to the exam but they saw it as something the media went on about. They finally said that it could only be dealt with in writing, so now I must wait up to two weeks for a reply.
Meanwhile I am contacting an academic who has said something about this in the press and I will try and find a journalist who can shed some light on the matter. No1 son thinks I am nuts; if a GCSE can be got by doing half the work he believes that can only be a good thing…..in the short term son, in the short term.
I was waiting for the paint to dry on my painting of the day and shaking out some clean washing when something started buzzing in it…it was the biggest hornet I have seen this year it must be a queen. I got it into a wine glass in the end and took it out to take it’s chance in the cold wintery night out there.See picture below:-
Recently painting of the ceiling has been more to the forefront of our minds than watercolour but we ran out of brilliant white and what with the twittering and the lumpen teenagers on half term I didn’t remember to get another pot. Anyway DIY Dad has retired to bed early with a cold after a miserable day negotiating time sheets with colleagues who want to bill 31+ days a month……
I have finished putting apples away now and just have the remainder left to get juiced on Thursday. The picture is charcoal and wash of fruit nearly ready to store, I just wrap each good fruit in newspaper and put it in the shed which is cool( but not very cool yet on sunny days like today). The garden is full of jobs that need doing lots of things need rescuing from the cold before it does for them.
#147 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
The body as thick, no thicker than my drawing pencil…shudder.
Red grapes on a plate -painting a day
size 6 in x 7 in 15cm x 17cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Today and yesterday were wet on and off, wind and rain, horrid inside and out. It would have been fine inside as the house is warm without being heated due to the insulation being so very good. However we were engaged in a mammoth circulation of our possessions to clear space for a plasterer to mend the hole where Matt, the builder’s labourer, fell through the ceiling. Having established that he didn’t need an ambulance I considered finishing the job and kicking him through to down stairs but relented. After all there’s nothing about a load of fibreglass, muck, plaster and sawdust on your bed to make one upset, is there? The problem with bad builders is they are bad in so many different ways. By the time Matt went through the ceiling I was ready to believe he had done it deliberately. I was aware by this stage that the owner of the company was not asking us for money in a sensible systematic way and then panicking that he didn’t have money to cover wages and asking for it at short notice and then if it wasn’t obtainable in time blaming us for the short wages that I am sure the men suffered from time to time.
We also need the new cupboards plastering so nothing can be stored there, the hall and landing need painting shortly so nothing can stay there, our new bedroom needs the floor sanding so…sorry where is all this going …in the studio?…and you think I will be able to use a press in there and work round it all?…ah yes I could throw it all away but….I don’t really want to. There is a view upheld by tutors at college that an artist collects and that this somehow vindicates their body of work. They were encouraging collection in other words, I cannot imagine being in a position where I needed encouraging hoarding, sorry collecting things, it is a great failing of mine, but I am not sure that it makes one artistic.
At one point I came to the baskets where my best jumpers were stored and the woolly walking socks for Christmas stockings. These had been fine at Christmas but since then some devastating American form of clothes moth had got in and gone through a shawl that was so fine I had not known it was wool and all the jumpers were full of gaping holes. I thought the socks looked rescueable and microwaved them to kill any living creature…how was I to know they weren’t 100% ? After less than two minutes small patches were turning into melted black ooze and smelling utterly dreadful. I am not popular with anyone. After extensive airing and cleaning the smell is still lingering in draws and cupboards.
The community orchard apples have been to West Dean (with someone else) and back and some of the identifications agree with ones we got by using an online key…Carlyle Codlin and Laxtons Reward. One each to DIY Dad and I. We are in disagreement with the experts on a number of other apples but I think I have one of the pears; Packhams Triumph is an Australian pear but was planted in the UK. It makes a decent crumble and I suspect it would juice rather well and eat well later on.
The grapes came from the market and once the boys had recovered from the shock of” PIPS!?” they disappeared very fast.
I also insisted that we picked the cooking apple tree today as the wind was starting to knock the apples off in bulk. No1 and No2 son refused to put on their shoes for a long time until harsh words and threats got them outside. Before we had finished it began to rain and still we picked. In the end No2 was enjoying the rain and being up a tree until me on the ladder and him in the branches were getting along famously. We have nearly cleared the tree and have a giant stack of apples which now need sorting and wrapping for storage in the shed. I think I will get about five trays of top quality apples and plenty for now and then some for juicing.
The best part of today was visiting a lovely open studio in a village with old friends. There were paintings, sculptures/cabinets and quilts which were really restoring, the artist Heather told me she had planned for a year to make it all work well. Her studio looks over their garden to the Downs.
Alison
#138 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Three very red apples – a painting a day
size 6 in x 12 in 15cm x 30cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
These are the last of the early apples they have turned yellow and shiny red. I think they are past their best in terms of eating but the next tree is ready so that doesn’t matter. They are very pretty for a painting however. It’s a pretty rough and ready painting but I like the colours.
There was a mini apple day today at the back of the Mayflower pub, this all went very well as a mixture of people came to look and try the apples and juice. The organisers were not allowed to use fruit from the community orchard site as the council have not yet tested it ….for landfill contamination. As the apples are growing on what was a farm (according to some) and next to a nature reserve this seems quite farfetched.
I started this sketch in between helping set up a juice maker and the official opening time. Trying to juice apples with a press but no apple crusher was hard going, I did improve our yield by half freezing and then defrosting some ripe fruit and cutting it up.
There are still ceps to be found but the cold nights are going to discourage them. I am bored with the same old wood and want to go and check some different places. That’s not to say that I don’t get a thrill when I see a neat and prim baby cep sitting in the moss where there was nothing yesterday. When they are young they are very upright and straight-laced, as they age they get more wild and blowsy…no parallels there then. I have been watching a round ball slowly emerge from the woodland floor by a path, I had decided that it was not likely to be a cep, now it has sprung up and it stinks. See the photo below, the stinkhorn- it does what it says on the can.
#129 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Red apples on the ground – a painting a day
size 10 in x 6 in , 25cmx15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper.
Today was beautiful the grass was sparkling in the sunshine this morning, the heavy dew which makes for ideal fungus hunting weather….yesterday we found about two pounds of bay boletes, today we went back and found three and a half pounds of edible fungi including three ceps, amethyst deceiver, and birch boletes. I will put some pictures in. The dessicator is now full and the Christmas soup is assured….it needs woodpigeon, ceps , cream and brandy in addition to the normal soup making things like stock and onion.
Yesterdays painting still needs to be finished, it is very wishy washy at the moment. I put off cutting the grass to get today’s painting of the early apple tree, it has got to where I can no longer rely on picking the apples that do not show from the view point so it HAD TO BE DONE. I wanted the windfalls to be in the picture too so had to pick them up in a great hurry at six this evening, in order to get the mowing done. It’s hard to believe that we have eaten pounds from the tree already, there are plenty there. The problem is now getting to be that if there is a windfallen Ellisons Orange apple I will eat that in preference.
Yesterday was our duty day at the sailing club, sadly we have been very little this year and it’s a waste of the membership really. Earlier in the summer there was a lot of work on the house to get through-there still is!
The woods where the boletes came from are a lovely mixture there are pine trees, coppiced hazels and sweetchestnuts, heathy bits and a little steep valley (a ghyll they call it in Sussex, but it’s supposed to be a Scottish word). The boys found a rope with a stick hanging from a tree , it swang over a watery hollow full of dead wood and mud. Naturally one of them fell in it.
Alison
#121 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Todays ceps
Yesterdays Bay Boletes
Sunflower and Banana plant in the new flower bed,by tomorrow the Hedychium should be out.
Victoria plums – a painting a day
this painting is framed and for sale in the burgess hill open house event see blog June 4th
size 6 in x 6 in 15cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Just so you are not worried by the numbering; I made a mistake on the numbering of paintings while I was away , therefore the picture of the monastery in Croatia has been renumbered as# 117, it was previously #108.
Rain, it just isn’t stopping, it is slowing for a while and then starting up again. There seems to be a chance that there will be some almost dry weather over the weekend…please let that happen as I want to have some time to enjoy the garden again. At the moment I am going out and getting wet and muddy even to pick a handful of tomatoes. I picked six today and we ate the four from yesterday…we are self sufficient in tomatoes!
There are some late flowering treats, the cyclamen are getting started, the relocated ginger lily or Hedychium is in bud, the Canna lily is shredded by the wind and rain, and some late sown morning glory are growing like they mean it and the first beautiful purple trumpet opened today. It is scrambling up with a very vigorous Cobaea Scadens which hasn’t flowered at all yet. Having looked it up to see how to spell it, I see that it is in fact perennial but only half hardy….will it like being cut down and put on a window sill overwinter?
Today’s painting is of the last three Victoria plums which came from A & R’s garden at the weekend. They do actually look Victorian in their colouring all those heady purple and red dyes that they discovered and loved to use). I decided to put them on a little Staffordshire saucer.
#118 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Trio of early apples – a painting a day
this painting is framed and for sale in the burgess hill open house event see blog June 4th
Day One Hundred and ten – a painting a day
size 6 in x 11 in 15cm x 28cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Oh fantastic, we all get back from holiday and THEN we all go down like in sequence with something akin to the winter vomiting- starting before the holiday wash is complete but after DIY Dad has partially demolished the downstairs loo. He has removed the door giving an uninterrupted view of the hall and front door.
I think I have the less serious version I feel dreadful but not as if I am going to die (unlike the people I have been mopping up for).
There have been some very kind comments on my holiday pictures, for which thank you. I can whole heartedly recommend the beautiful landscape between Dubrovnik and Split, that is the order to do it in as the ferries can be booked in advance going north but NOT going south, unless you are as persuasive as I am….
The garden looked like an autumn scene this morning, the dew was so thick a shining drop hung on every blade of grass, red apples lay on the ground and branches hung low with fruit. How can this have happened?
#110 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Limes -a painting a day
size 7.5 in x 6 in 19cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
There is only one real use for limes…they go very well with gin and tonic. In fact it’s good to leave out the tonic and just squeeze the lime juice into the gin and sip it contemplatively – narrowed eyes compulsory. I think it has come to the time when gin is required.
Well OK I use limes in Thai food too but that’s recent, I found out how good they were in gin during 1976, in a bar overlooking Hamilton harbour, Bermuda.
I have had another frustrating day trying to progress a diagnosis for my son, preferably before his exams start. It’s possible to spend so much time slopping around between the people who can say you can have a test and the other people who can fill in the forms to say you can have a test and then the next lot of people who can do the test but cannot make the decision to have it done. As he would say “RANDOM”.
Yesterday I saw the first fledged and out of the nest baby blackbirds, on a path near the river Ouse.
Tonight needing a bit of cheering up I raided the freezer for goodies. I found stewing venison and kidney, which together with some red pepper, celery, shallots, bacon pieces, left over red wine and some herbs made a casserole to be proud of. I also braised a red cabbage that has been skulling around the fridge draw for too long with the last of the stored cooking apples and some red onion that was hiding under the spuds on its own, in a net bag, the last of its race. We had it with some jersey royals and some broccoli for the fussy ones who won’t eat red cabbage. It felt a lot like making something good from nothing. The venison had been a present from my mother in law. For completeness sake I added a clove and three juniper berries, oh yes and a slug of Worcester Sauce.
While it cooked I painted the limes. I added the other bits the coriander and garlic clove for compositional effect. They are sharper and linear to the bulk of the limes.
Alison
#48 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Three pears in search of a pairing -a painting a day
NFS size 4.5inx 6in 11cmx15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Ah, that sense of dejavu was not for 1979 it was for 1974, there is everything to play for and it hinges entirely on how you define national interest. One thing is certain they will all act in the national interest and they will all be after a different outcome to each other.
The pears are really very funny they are so rude in their shape that they reduced two teenage boys to apoplexy.
Perhaps the elderly salt and pepper set are the Queen and Prince Phillip; oh I can just imagine them sat over breakfast this morning, reading the papers and Phillip saying, “Rum do old girl, rum do. The worst of it is you’ll have to talk to them all”, “ I know that Phillip, dear, pass the cornflakes”.
I have bought a new bottle of masking fluid as I keep turning away from pictures of white flowers and it does make them easier. Tomorrow I think I will do the Solomon’s seal; I just found out that it has a scent.
Alison
#42 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Unelected pears – a painting a day
SOLD Size 6inx4.5in 15cmx11cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Bright ,bright ,sunshiny day…..unnerving to think that such a beautiful happy child of a day is when things could really change for the worse, voting in the true blue shires only works for one set of people.
I think I will tackle the golden russet pears , something nice and solid after that froufrou lilac blossom. I have never had these pears before they really are the Jennifer Lopez of the pear world, look at those curves! Pears are somehow sexier than apples…in Brighton Pavilion there are some very smutty cartoons from the Regency period where the pear tree is full of scrotum shaped pears which some women are after, they did not mince their metaphors in those days.
Tomorrow will be one of the newest new days one way or the other, can’t say I’m looking forward to it.
On a more cheerful note one of my Tiarella plants, which were thumbnail sized when I pricked them out at the end of winter, is flowering or rather in bud.
Alison
#41 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Lemon a day 