Some Clean Up and A Small Jig

Ooo, Flowers, Tourists, and Sun!

Sooo, I've gotten a handful of questions in great repition. I thought I'd answer them here. I know that you were just dying to see that I'm covered in flour and the flowers in Bath.

Yum, Flour.

Q: What happened with your bread.
A: I spent most of last week covered in flour. No really, the photo about doesn't do the flour coverage justice. My first attempt at sourdough starter went from one cup flour, one cup water to sponge in 36 hours. As for the bread, the first loaf burned on the outside and suffered extreme doughyness on the inside. It was inedible. The second loaf came up lovely, if a bit heavy.

Second Attempt at Sourdough Loaf.

I know you're just dying to comment. And then I killed the starter by washing the bowl. That's right: I picked up the starter bowl and tossed it into the dishwater. I don't think there is any way to save starter from detergents. The second attempt at starter is currently becoming a sponge. At least, I hope it is becoming a sponge. If not, I'll have to go buy bread tomorrow. That would defeat the whole point. I suspect that I'm going to be going through a lot of flour in the coming weeks.

Q: Did you really have an outhouse?
A: Yes, two in fact. I was terrible at having an outhouse. Wait, I was terrible at my first outhouse. Saving a bit of dosh by living without running water in a dry cabin in Alaska seemed like a good idea. Besides I really really wanted to prove that I could do it. The week we moved in breakup (the great melt that happens in June in Alaska) occurred, and it became clear that the outhouse hole hadn't been dug properly, I'd moved into a bog, and that my landlord was creepy. I spent most of the ensuing seven months using a honey bucket (five gallon bucket in the house) and 'flushing' that down the outhouse. My second outhouse experience was pretty fabulous (Thanks, Jennifer). Of course the local mama moose really liked the extra foliage that grows around outhouses, and she often wasn't going to let me near it. Luckily it was Alaska and I had already become a dab hand at squatting in the woods. Phew.

Q: I grew up with an outhouse and their were various creepy crawlies I couldn't stand. How did you cope?
A: I would not have coped at all any place that has snakes, spiders bigger than the palm of hand, or wasn't frozen 9 or so months a year. I do often miss my outhouse and its large expanse of wilderness. I hate cleaning the toilet, and I hate having to wait my turn. The English don't like it when you use their gardens as 'the necessary.'

Q: Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to replace your shower head rather than descaling it? 

A: It might be easier except that I don't have a car. It's a twenty-minute bus ride followed by a twenty-minute walk to the nearest place that sells shower heads. I'd have to do this approximately once a month. It's actually less time consuming to descale the shower head and more environmentally friendly. I broke our last shower head when I dropped it from a great height. The cheapest new one was 9 quid. At the time that would have been 18 dollars. Even the heavy duty chemical descaler costs about 1.50 per descale. Vinegar is of course much cheaper than that.  It is a job I hate, and if I could convince people that I live in a dry cabin and need to shower at their houses, I would.


Q: What's the weather like there right now?
A: It's unseasonably warm or cold. It's probably raining and windy or muggy with no precipitation or it's blowing a gale. I suggest putting on a pair of trousers, a short-sleeve t-shirt, a long sleeved t-shirt, and a jacket. Put a skirt in your handbag (or if you prefer carrier bag). Subtract clothing as necessary. Add clothing as necessary. I'm not being sarcastic. I really do this. I works rather well. 

Q: Do you celebrate July 4 there?
A: I do. Some of the English celebrate with me. They bring me gifts, usually flowers. They call it the day they finally got rid of those obnoxious Puritans. Some people find it very offensive that I continue to celebrate. Most people just want an invite to the bbq.

Tomorrow is mixer tap day. Warm water out of a tap. Who knew? I'm still debating whether or not to approach that whole religion thing. I'm trying to be brave.

Thanks so much to The Jason Show and Finger Rolls and Folding Chairs for kindly linking to me. These are both blogs I enjoy, and I hope you'll go visit them. Someone else has linked me, or shared me, or shouted about me, but I haven't been able to figure out who. Let me know if it was you, please, and I'll link you up.

PS: I'm not sure comments are working for everyone. Will you please e-mail me if you're having problems, americaninbath@gmail.com? 

Fabulous Things About England #32: Walking in the rain

Out the London Road

We are wet here in the West Country. After last weekend's unusually long deluges and wind, the constant patter of a slow soaking rain is almost reassuring.

The path stops at the river.

What better way to spend the early evening than meandering around the edges of the the countryside?

At least I think it's elderflower

And stopping to smell the elderflower.

The leaves look like elderflower

The farmers and the plants are still desperate for rain.

The Toll Bridge at Bathampton

 Sometimes I walk out this way

The countryside boarders the river and the road.

To be reminded how far the river travels.

How to capture rain drops?

or to see if there are any ducks among the reeds,

The Bathhampton Inn

 And to watch the river falling.

There is no toll for walkers

 Before turning toward the hill

Who lives here?

And heading home.

A Walk in The Woods

Last week, I met up with an old friend and her two boys. We went on a walk to find a wood. We were looking for a particular wood, but we only knew it existed because my friend had accidentally found it while lost a few summers ago. This time we had to find it while not-lost. So we went in search of the wood that we knew existed somewhere near enough to walk but far enough away to have once lost our way. It was a rather perfect day for a journey with two small people, two big people, a packed lunch, and a pushchair (stroller). Pushchairs, by the by, can be lifted over kissing gates.

Like this one, many built-up areas in this part of the UK, have protected green space for wildlife, socializing, and long walks. We did manage to find the wood by looking up high for a copse of trees and walking toward them. We sat on this log and had our sandwiches. This cat followed us in and rather begged to be photographed. The floor (ground) of the wood is covered in bluebell plants. They should spring out sometime this month.

We saw the many places the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust had begun to make habitat for birds and hedgehogs and children inclined to playing house. The wood is rather small, if you consider that I used to live in Alaska, but like all planned wilderness in England, it has been perfectly formed to make long walks possible. The trees have been coppiced. It's a rather brilliant way of cutting back trees almost to the ground to create quick and thick regrowth and assures more wood for future use. One of the things people will tell you here is that island nations learned early the necessity of renewing resources--even if they are now having to remember that heritage. Coppicing and copses have a long history in the UK, and the British are particularly fond of their woods.The human need for a bit of nature seems a foregone conclusion to them.

I suppose that is rather obvious as so many of us grew up with the stories of Pooh and Tiger who lived in a wood. I have it on good authority that this is Piglet's house. Piglet, of course, couldn't climb the tree. His door had to be down and close to the ground. We did knock, but he wasn't in. I suspect we should have rung first, rather than just calling in. Surely then he would have been expecting us.

I can imagine spending a rather perfect childhood here. Doesn't it seem that this path leads to a long journey to just about anywhere? There is no poison oak or ivy here, and if you stand quietly enough, you can imagine noise from the motor way is simply a nearby ocean.

Even perfect days have to end. I've tried objecting and running alongside a small boy on a bicycle and sitting quietly reading books, but those things only extend the joy before dusk settles in. These are early spring flowers. I've been seeing them on people's lapels recently. What are they? What do they symbolize?

Bleh

Last Spring

We are still gray sky and blah. Here in Bath, we had short periods of sunshine yesterday. None of them lasted long enough for me to get my trainers (tennis shoes) on and go soak up some vitamin D. I am not really certain why this winter seems to have lasted so long. I've lived through longer, colder, and darker ones--often all in the same year. I hated those too.

I am reminded that by the calendar spring isn't quite here. The vernal equinox isn't due for another seventeen days, and our average temperatures are not that much lower than in a typical year.  And all of the signs of spring are showing their glorious faces. The snowdrops and across the road the forsythia are in full bloom. From the bus in Box, I saw my first lambs of spring. Those last were by all accounts a bit early. Usually the Corsham lambs are the first to catch my eye, but soon the countryside behind my house will be feeding hundreds of them.
 
When I'm done with winter, but winter is hanging on to me, I am given to fits of impulse. In college, I'd fill my car with petrol (gas) and drive until my tank was half empty. I don't miss being a driver, but I do miss driving seventy on my way to wherever I end up.  Sometimes when the gauge hit half-empty, I'd decide to just keep going anyway. It's how I saw a lot of Tenessee, most of Ohio, and more than a bit of Kentucky. It's how I memorized all of the songs on John Mellencamp's American Fool. Petrol was cheap in those days.

When I first started writing here, I didn't tell anyone I knew about the blog. I saw it as a place where I could be whatever version of me I wanted to be. I saw it as a place where I could complain about my family and be uncouth in my wording. Then I started writing things that I wanted seen by the people who have known me for most life, and some of those people started dying. It was then too that something extraordinarily nice began to happen, people I didn't know started reading. I supposed that it was a combination of those two things--the loss of old friends and the meeting of new ones--that made me think that I'd like the comments here to be more of a conversation. But the new Disqus system was most definitely a product of a spring fever induced impulse. I don't know how I feel about it yet. It's entirely possible that I'll change my mind about it this evening. In theory, it should tell you when someone replies to your comments. We'll see.

In the meantime, a friend has kindly offered me a ticket to a reading tonight. I'm off to try to get out of the bleh.

The Weather Two Weeks From Here

Generally speaking, Bath gets New York City's weather two weeks later. Often their snow manifests itself as freezing cold rain, and their rain manifests itself as a deluge. Soaring temperatures in New York mean balmy afternoons and generalized whinging about 27 (80F) degree days. I suspect that we are just a few weeks away from freezing temperatures, and perhaps the beginning of spring is further out than I want to believe.

In the meantime, in the detritus of autumn the first blooms are beginning to show.

3. Temperature

The English use the Celsius scale.

F C
0.....-17
10.. -12
20.. -6
32....0
40....4
50....10
60....15
70....21
80....26
90....32
100..37
250..121
300..148
350..176
375..190
400..204
425..218
450..232
475..246
500..260
525..273