One of the things I’ve missed since the appearance of Covid 19 has been our weekly visit to Newton Dee for food shopping and visits to their café for a slice of some of the tastiest organic cakes and scones in the northeast. Newton Dee is an attractive community (part of the Camphill group) that supports adults with special needs where staff from across the world, permanent and temporary volunteer, live with residents and operate craft workshops for skills such as wooden toy making. There’s a farm at Newton Dee and an excellent bakery producing a variety of excellent bread. Their polenta cake is a particular favourite of mine. Given the vulnerability of its residents Newton Dee decided to shut off public access to its store, café and bakery which meant so much of the lovely produce we took for granted before March we now have to obtain online sans Newton Dee’s bakery products, eggs, fruit and veg. What’s missing is contact with the residents we’ve come to know over decades and wish them all well during this exceptionally difficult time.
It’s easy to understand the caution shown to their residents by Newton Dee perhaps best illustrated by Aberdeen’s return to lockdown following a number of the city’s bars failing to adhere to government regulations regarding social distancing. There are always selfish or thoughtless people with no consideration for anyone but themselves – folk desperate to get back into bars and footballers fall into one or other or both of those categories. As someone said to me, footballers aren’t famous for their intelligence. Now a whole city has to pay for the selfishness of pub-goers. With numbers of cases of Covid on the rise it is a difficult time for Aberdonians and those of us in the shire whose lives are inextricably linked with the city; through family, work, leisure etc, now greatly disrupted again. And all for a pint or several.
Bought some peanut biscuits through our regular online order from a large supermarket. They were horrible. All gloss and no taste so I found a recipe and made some. No flour only straight peanut butter. As I was using smooth I roasted peanuts, broke them up a bit and added them along with an egg and a tiny bit salt. That was it. They weren’t as crisp as they might have been. I could have popped them back into the oven but they were being eaten too quickly and they tasted much nicer than those glossy and tasteless horrors. In the interests of fairness I have tasted excellent peanut biscuits from a different supermarket but they don’t appear to sell them here anymore.
One of the highlights of the daily walk has been tasting some of the yellow rasps growing along the roadsides and farm tracks. They’re small and have a different flavour from their red cousins. We call them honey rasps.
Last Thursday we decided to ring the changes with a trip to the Suie. The Suie is high ground (416 metres/ 1365 ft) between Alford and Clatt with spectacular views. We walked a short way through the pine wood and out onto the heather muir where the Gordon Way starts (or finishes depending on the direction taken.) It was a very warm day and the stiff breeze wafted unusually warm air which intensified the smell of pine.
Through a break in the trees we glimpsed the distinctive shape of Tap o’ Noth (yes, Noth not North.) Tap o’ Noth is a flat-top mountain near Rhynie – an ancient vitrified hill fort dating back to Pictish times. Further on the view opens out to take in the rural landscape around Huntly. On the muir ling and bell heathers were blooming in great profusion as well as a bumper harvest of cranberries and blueberries; ripe and glossy under the sun. And through the wood lots of fungi, always a magical sight for their sheer variety and strangely magical connotations. Marked march (boundary) stones which delineate the parishes of Leslie, Tullynessle and Forbes are scattered about the area.
Having had a couple of weeks hiatus with the weekly virtual family quiz we were back in harness on Friday. A thunder storm was forecast and at eight o’ clock just as we were connecting up daylight turned into night outside our window and we feared the worst but aside from a single brief very heavy shower of rain it was quickly back to blue skies so we got through the quiz with nothing more dramatic happening than a query over the answer to the question – what are ladies’ fingers? Everyone knows it’s okra. Well, three of us knew. The answer expected was bananas. Bananas! I don’t think so! Apparently, there is a cultivar of banana called The Lady Finger which is nothing like ladies’ fingers. Got to keep on your toes with quizzes.
Our larger-than-life owl is still doing her/his thing keeping death at bay on the balcony among our wee kamikaze birdies who are contenting themselves with drinking plenty during this hot spell from the various water stations we have around the garden and eating a small fortune of seed and nuts. What sounds like a young buzzard has been making a right racket recently. The cry of the buzzard is my ultimate favourite bird call which I associate with being outdoors in fine, bright weather observing this majestic bird wheel overhead. The young buzzard’s more urgent, high-pitched scream is less pleasant. Saw a buzzard being mobbed by crows yesterday – the crows will be protecting young – so it might have been an alarm call. Or it might just have been a contralto buzzard. Our house martins are multiplying. Lots of them out flying in the evenings with considerable activity also during the day. It’s been a good summer for house martins in our part of Aberdeenshire. Lovely little birds.
Missing out on home-grown tomatoes? The next best thing I’ve discovered is to store shop bought ones on a south-facing windowsill. It makes them warm and sweet. Gherkins get warm and not particularly sweet all on their own in the greenhouse. We’ve had quite a lot so far and promised some to our son in Aberdeen. That was the day before Aberdeen was locked down. Did contemplate going to the shire/city boundary near Westhill and throwing a few to him.
Courgettes have been alright but there’s something in the garden that likes them. Bite marks look too big for snails and slugs. I’m wondering mice. Do mice like courgettes? The runner beans that got off to such a good start have succumbed to squadrons of large snails that plague us. Eaten most of the flower they have. Every morning after I’ve cleaned down the front door I check a hosta growing in a tub nearby at the front. Except for two consecutive days recently I’ve found one or several snails in the tub. I pick them out and throw most of them over the road, to a bank above a burn I might add, not a neighbour’s garden. Funny thing is the hostas we have in other parts of the garden are seldom attacked and I wonder if this particular one is attracting snails building up their shells on the lime mortar around the house. I find loads of them clinging to our house walls and dispose of them in that half-hearted way that avoids death. Do the same ones return? I don’t know. Often thought of marking their shells with tippex to see if they are returnees or different snails. Shock horror! I’ve just discovered one slithering up the wall in our upstairs sittingroom. How it got here is one helluva mystery. However that happened the little blighter has ruined what was a perfectly painted wall. What did I do with it? Should have chucked it off the balcony but took it downstairs and freed it in the back garden.
Finished series 2 of Ozark. For those of you not familiar with it the story-line goes something like this – F**k you. F**k you. F**k you. He’s dead! You killed him. F**k you. F**k you. You bitch. F**k you. I’m their lawyer. F**k you.
Reading an e-book, a novel called The Dentist. Apparently it’s part of a series of police procedural stories. I’m not really into reading full books on my tablet and I don’t find it as relaxing as a proper paper book but times must. The novel reminds me of the style of detective novels created by Maj Sjöwall’s and Per Wahlöö’s in their Martin Beck books. And that’s a compliment.
Stay safe
lenathehyena
Lenathehyena's Blog from Lorna Corall Dey 