An awful, inexcusable, interminable amount of time has passed since my last post, back at the start of April. I say inexcusable, but we'll see as I'm about to offer a number of what I consider fairly reasonable excuses. Here they are:
1) I married Anna
Yes on April 7th there was a little wedding at Pilsdon Community in west Dorset. This was where we met as residential volunteers in the winter of 2015, and where we both feel a spiritual and emotional connection. The community were all invited and our families came and squeezed into the little church. After the ceremony, the sun came out on cue for the photos, then we had a home-made buffet in the manor house and walked it off with a mass jaunt up Pilsdon Pen. We were very blessed with all the generosity and love of the Pilsdon folk, letting us disrupt their rhythm in this way!
2) We bought a house
A slightly premature announcement as we actually complete in four days time. But all being well we'll soon be moving into a 19th century end-of-terrace cottage in a little hamlet called Forge, just one mile outside Machynlleth. It's a peaceful spot and backs onto a river in a gorge below. It's the first time either of us have bought a house so we've quickly had to get up to speed and engage with mortgage lenders, surveyors, estate agents, solicitors, and wood-stove experts. Lovely.
3) The drought
Normally by the summer you can start take a bit of a breather in the veg garden, as most things are in the soil and it's just a case of weeding and harvesting. Instead the almost complete lack of rain these last two months have meant a drudgery of watering - lugging watering cans to and fro in a ceaseless quest to prevent the poor plants from dying of thirst. In addition, the sunny weather has brought out legions of cabbage white butterflies who all laid eggs on my kale plants (of which I have nearly 100) so picking caterpillars off every leaf has also been an entertaining and never-ending task.
On the bright side the slugs have been almost entirely absent!
4) Work
Instead of a 5-day-a-week type of job where all your activities are to one end, I seem to have accumulated about 8 jobs, some paid, some voluntary, on top of the market gardening, all of which I have to juggle and squeeze into a week. On the plus side, I have an extremely varied work-life. There is barely a day when I just do one thing - e.g. on Thursday we went to work in the market garden, then I played organ at a funeral at 2pm, then returned to the market garden, and back to Mach in the evening to assist at a dairy-based workshop that I'd organised, making butter, yogurt and ricotta. And normally I would have taught piano that day, only they are away this week.
So the concept of leisure or "chill-out time" has become rather theoretical, or nostalgic.
5) Socialising
OK so it's not wall-to-wall work, we also find time to see friends. Mach is a small town and living in it means you bump into people, you get invited to things, it's not such an effort to arrange to have people come for dinner. All this is great. However it eats into valuable blog-writing time.
6) Learning Welsh
Every Tuesday morning during term-times has been taken up with the noble art of mastering Cymraeg. Dw i'n trio dysgu siarad Cymraeg ond mae'n anodd.
Am I excused?
