In celebration of tomatoes; this is a salad nicoise with our delicious home grown tomatoes.
I missed last week’s blog in the run up to my cataract op which was ok if unpleasant. I was in and out in 45 minutes. I think they have done away with all niceties; I’m sure under normal circumstances you would be invited to rest awhile.
I felt undefinably weird afterwards but I suppose it is a bit of an invasion into your body and the eye is not to be underestimated. Now I can see clearly with that eye and colours are much brighter. Now I just have to wait until the end of the month to get my other one done.
Weirdly I’ve been able to paint ok although I did think the colours looked a bit bright after the op.
The garden has been so blown about and August is always when things are over or past their best. Then comes the great cut back which I’m hopeless at as I always want to drag things out to the last remaining tired flower. My cavolo Nero has failed already I think because in too shady an area.
We still have plenty of beans and courgettes are on their way. The tomatoes though are totally delicious, like tomatoes are supposed to be. We had another great tomato and bean salad with the borlotti beans from the garden:
The lettuce has given us salad all summer but now is giving up. Summer is definitely done with; we even had the wood burner on last night. Yesterday at our Cley exhibition we had hardy people traipsing through with wet boots and hoods as the rain didn’t let up all day. Winter woolies in August !
This will be our last weekend in Cley until sometime in September/ October. There is another Norwich autumn exhibition that I’ve started thinking about doing some paintings for. Maybe the last of the dahlias and this lovely gold sunflower
:
My thoughts are even turning to Christmas. We are going to Scotland to Saddell Bay for a friends 60th which falls on the 25th so that will feel like an adventure as I haven’t been away for over 2 years. It is lovely up there, very remote and ideal for holding up eating fantastic food and sitting by the fire. Although I will almost certainly be forced to go out for a walk along the beach.
We have some friends to stay in our house to cat sit. I don’t think Ralph would manage such a long journey, so I hope he takes to the cat sitters.
I quite like the autumn with it’s particular smell of cold earth and air. I hope we have as good tree colours as last year, although that will come later.
It’s coming up to the 1 year anniversary of my transplant; It doesn’t feel like a year ago, it still feels like, well not yesterday as that was truly grim but certainly more recent. The 5 th September is down as my post op day as it straddled 4th and 5th so that will be my anniversary day. We’ll have a celebration of some sort.
I’m off to Cley for the last day there. Seems strange that schools are going back next week, although unclear how that will work out. The exhortation to get people back in their offices doesn’t seem that successful either. Nobody seems to be questioning why we aren’t being locked down again with the R rate as high as when we were before. It is obviously about the economy but nothing is being said. Hopeless.
Here are some cheerful paintings by Sylvia Paul:
