BS: Good stuff

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Janie
Date: 10 Sep 15 - 09:36 PM

Simple pleasures for me make up the good stuff. Late summer Saturday afternoons on the porch right now; watching immature bluebirds in large numbers jockey for space in the birdbath while this year's hatch of blue-tailed skinks dodge among the low rocks below them - glass of cheap Pinot Grigio in hand, rocking to the sound and harmonies of a group such as Mandolin Orange.

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 06:20 AM

Well yesterday we had what could turn out to be the last nice day of the summer :-( After a so-so butterfly summer we had hundreds yesterday. The most numerous were small tortoiseshells and red admirals (which love rotting windfall apples) but we also had loads of meadow browns and one comma and one brimstone. If you like butterflies try to get hold of a plant called Sedum "Brilliant" which is the best butterfly attractor I've ever come across (it looks similar to Sedum "Autumn Joy" but that one, though great for bees, isn't much good at attracting butterflies). There were lots of a hawk-moth which I'm just about to look up! My tipple was a glass of Prosecco, but only later on I hasten to add!

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 06:27 AM

In a little over 24 hours I shall be in a pub that boasts 115 different whiskeys and whiskys on their shelves. Now that's what I call good stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 06:56 AM

Dammit, it wasn't a hawk moth, it was a Silver Y moth. Get a grip, Shaw!

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 07:31 AM

I read an article this morning (can't find the bloody thing now) that said if you dip rope into red wine and hang it up it attracts a certain butterfly.

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Stanron
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 08:10 AM

If it wasn't awful wine and an amazing butterfly I suspect I would stick with the wine.

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 08:10 AM

If you paint a mixture of beer and sugar on a post, you might just attract the huge convolvulus hawk moth. Bloody good excuse for opening a bottle of beer, I'd say.

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Stanron
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 08:53 AM

Beer and sugar on a post? That could be invaluable information. Should I ever actually need an excuse.

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 09:17 AM

Yebbut don't expect to get away with it outside of convolvulus hawk moth season. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Janie
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 06:32 PM

Listening to good stuff. Carl Jones and Beverly Smith Going to the West

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 07:15 PM

Well I've just been listening to Beethoven's piano sonata no 24 in F sharp, Op 78. Tough guy, old Beethoven, but this piece is so beautiful, so lyrical, so tender. If you listen on YouTube I recommend the version by Wilhelm Kempff.

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: GUEST,CupOfTea, no cookies
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 05:32 PM

Lots of musical good stuff recently, but what stands out for me as REALLY good stuff was

Peaches

Red Haven peaches from Catawba Island, Bergman Orchards. The peach engineered for the Great Lakes area - tender and doesn't travel well, so they don't get the mealy refrigerated texture, you get 'em fresh and sigh with pleasure. (and eat 'em over a sink or with a good supply of paper towel under your chin)

I've been buying from this place for four decades, and this year's peaches were larger, jucier, tastier than anything they've grown for almost that long. Last year's fruit crop was all wiped out by the spring freeze, so that this year's was superb just intensified how wonderful it was to have such a great crop. Over a week, I got two pecks of peaches up to 4.5 inches wide, hard to get 'em to balance in the basket... I'd intended to put some up, but over two weeks I managed to eat or share them all.   

And then they were gone - stopped on my way to Chicagoland the next weekend and I had to grin and bear it now being that two week window of concord grape season.

Fresh fruit and veggies... ahhhhhh, VERY good stuff!

Joanne in Cleveland

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 06:49 PM

Ye gods, peaches! It's very hard to get a decent peach this end. If you find really good tasty peaches, eat most of them until indigestion threatens, then purée the flesh of the rest, freeze the juice in ice cube trays and use them, two or three chunks at a time, to make Bellinis with cheap Prosecco (thaw the cubes first!)

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 09:11 AM

Sitttin' in the sun with me cup of tea and cheese 'n' biscuits. Been watching a chiffchaff five yards away (it didn't know I was there) catching bugs, and them silver Y moths feeding on me geranium flowers. We had gales all day yesterday and an inch and a half of rain but the butterflies are unfazed. Got a boy and a girl brimstone flittering around just now. A peregrine just flew right over the house then did a dramatic stoop. Dunno whether it was a success!

We're off to the dentist in a few minutes and Mrs Steve, as ever, is a nervous wreck. Not me. I never give it a thought until I'm in that chair chatting to the lovely Hannah, here from Prague, best dentist I've ever had!

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 09:42 PM

"Every day above ground is a good day." --Harris Yulin as Mel Bernstein, Scarface

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Sep 15 - 08:17 AM

Not if you happen to be the root of a tomato plant.

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Joe_F
Date: 16 Sep 15 - 08:42 PM

Saw a chipmunk today. And someone on the Mudcat was kind to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Sep 15 - 06:55 PM

Went for a walk on the sea cliffs this afternoon. Huge great thunder-clouds as big as Everest all around us, but over us the sun stayed out and we didn't have a drop.

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Ed T
Date: 17 Sep 15 - 08:33 PM

""Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake?"" 
― Wallace Stevens

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Ed T
Date: 17 Sep 15 - 08:38 PM

""Don't wait. Start stuff.""
― Richie Norton

Subject: RE: BS: Good stuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Sep 15 - 03:07 PM

Bude food fair today. Brilliant weather, loads of stalls selling goodies (bought a king-size steak and Stilton pie for Monday, some little pancetta, sausage and chorizo tartlets, two pots of sweet but very hot chilli sauce and a whole shoulder of Devon lamb, all exclusively local stuff), then pigged out on a huge bowl of slow-cooked chilli beef nachos each. We can hardly move! And it's on again tomorrow!