Day 30: Jam Making

Apricot Jam

Irresistible!

Making this particular jam has become a tradition.

I only use half the amount of sugar as the weight of the fruit.

I also use a small amount (about 100 grams) of raw cane sugar, called Sucanat.

It gives a delicious flavour and colour to the finished jam.

This year I added the scraped out contents of one vanilla pod.

It adds a little something special.

The apricots this year are exceptionally sweet and juicy.

They are great to eat raw all on their own.

The coffee is gurgling

The nut bread has been sliced

and the freshly made apricot jam is waiting!

Breakfast on my balcony

is the most wonderful place to be!

A small bowl of floating Phlox flowers for my breakfast table.

My Balcony in June 2017

These are the last of my pansies which I picked mid-June

so that I could plant the dahlias!

Every season has its flowers

and after pansies come all sorts of beauties

like these orange and yellow dahlias with a fine red line around each petal.

Refreshing pink

and luminous red

and a mixture of warm colours.

Two window boxes of dahlias are planted in front of the garden table

where I eat every day.

A hydrangea heart.

This plant hadn't flowered for three whole years

and I was about to give up on it

and told it so!

It must have heard me because it suddenly started growing

beautiful light pink flower clusters!

This is my oldest hydrangea.

Last year, I bought a new hydrangea to compensate for the 

older plant which had remained dormant for so long.

I'm thrilled with the deep raspberry pink of these new flowers

which can be seen even better here.

but the hydrangea star of the show this year has been this beauty

in tones of  pink lilac, developing into deeper tones of blue.

This one was a beautiful birthday and Mother's Day gift

from my son this year!

The final colour.

Though as I speak, the flowers are changing yet again

to more muted pastel shades with touches of pale green.

Beautiful at every stage!

The Physalis, or Chinese Lantern

is doing so well.

I love to watch the tiny white flower transform into tiny bud

which then develops in to a little green lantern.

They will look so pretty when they all turn orange.

The different stages can be seen here in the collage.

Pink anthemis flower the whole summer through

these are a welcome splash of colour next to my kitchen door.

My small olive tree is laden with tiny flowers which will become olives!

New this year is an oleander plant with beautiful coral blooms.

Two kinds of bell-flowers or Campanula.

The ones above which have grown back from last year

and these smaller ones in a big tub which come back every year.

All these wonderful colours make life living in the town more bearable.

My flowers are my joy and I love to sit outside

for all my meals and read surrounded by all these manifestations of nature.

Sometimes,

I like to pick just a few flowers to enjoy inside.

If you have a balcony or a terrace, or if you're fortunate enough to have a garden,

I hope you are enjoying all the wonders of nature.

Just like me!

Late Summer: a short story

She lifted her face to the sky

and felt the sweetness of an early September breeze upon her face.

At last!

The summer had been relentlessly hot and humid

it had not been easy living in the town.

Luckily, she had her balcony

and she filled it with flowers and herbs to harvest for the winter months.

There were orange and pink geraniums

Purple and yellow little beauties that had flowered the whole of the summer

and red blooms which draped themselves gracefully over the garden table

Begonias

Yellow marigolds in pots

and many more.

Her plants made her happy and she put them everywhere

creating the feeling of a real garden.

Sitting outside in the very early mornings was the best moment of the day

waiting for the sun to come over the hill

and create dancing shadows and

seeing the blue sky reflected on the smooth surface of the table.

Sometimes,

when the timing was right,

she caught the reflection of a sunset in the windows of the building opposite.

She felt happy

and she remembered:

'Happiness is a state of being.

It's feeling one with life as it is now.'

She felt herself smile

and the smile seemed to radiate all through her body

and out into the world

creating connection.

This is what summer is all about!

Could this be Summer?

These colours

touch my heart

Lime green and powder blue

A perfect leaf

and delicate shades of pink and mauve

The dappled sunlight

invites me to sit and read awhile

Next to this year's beautiful blue hydrangea.

Peppermint tea and a cloth outside on my balcony...

Could this be summer?

The Taste of Summer

Have you ever taken a sensory walk, noticing what you really see, smell, hear and can touch?

My eyes were drawn towards this emerald green dragonfly

which I luckily managed to capture with my compact point and shoot camera

when out in the country doing pole walking!

The lush green pastures and the deep green pine trees

If you close your eyes, you can actually smell

the beauty of this summer's day.

A woodpile full of curving shapes with many textures of moss and wood

and a perfume of resin.

Closer to home on a neighbourhood walk, soft dandelion clocks prepare

to send their seeds in the air at the next gust of wind.

In my balcony garden a bee lies across my zinnia flowers

to gather pollen.

Can you hear him buzz as he goes from one flower to another?

What I'm reading now: the biography of Alice Herz-Sommer.

A Century of Wisdom, is a testament to the bonds of friendship,

the power of music and the importance of leading a life of material simplicity,

intellectual curiosity, and never-ending optimism.

See the link below:

A Century of Wisdom

A breakfast smoothie.

Now this is a real taste of summer!

I decided to buy a blender in July

and have been making health promoting smoothies ever since.

If you're a smoothie fan, maybe you'd like to try the one above:

Fruit smoothie:

2 apricots, a few strawberries, some blueberries

1/2 cup of pineapple juice

1 soy yoghurt

4 fresh mint leaves.

Blend on a 'pulse' setting and drink without delay!

Makes 2 glasses.

Try it and let me know what you think!

What are you reading this summer?

Inspired by a newsletter from Kim Manley-Ort

on Photographing Summer.

See a link to her site HERE

Lavender Blue

"Lavender's blue, dilly dilly

Lavender's green,

When I am king, dilly dilly,

You shall be queen.

Who told you so, dilly dilly,

Who told you so?

'Twas my own heart, dilly dilly,

That told me so."

"Lavender Blue", an English folk song and Nursery Rhyme 

dating back to the seventeenth century.