End of August

The days are getting shorter and fall is fast approaching. I definitely felt a chill in the air yesterday and today. At least it was sunny for most of the day, though.

I took this picture of my husband earlier in the week, not because he doesn't iron often, because he irons more often than I do, but because of what he was watching while ironing. Now, he usually watches sports or MotoGP while ironing, but this time, he chose to watch The Gilmore Girls! What a sight!

Yesterday we drove about 35 minutes northwest of our house to a village called Gorsley for the Gorsley Festival. We had been invited to attend by a friend of ours at our church who is also involved with outreach to the Polish community in Herefordshire, as he is from Polish decent and can speak Polish fluently. The Gorsley festival is held at a church, but is extended into numerous large tents in the church yard. First we went through a labyrinth that our friend was volunteering for, then ate lunch, then waited in line for the main attraction... the flower show. Each of the arrangements represented a verse in the Bible. I mainly took these pictures to show my grandma, though. The place was packed with slow-moving grannies, so we curtailed our time in the "flower show" and left.
Afterward we drove to Newent, a little town that I've been wanting to visit for weeks now, which was on the way home. I had only heard great things about the town and in particular the Christian bookshop there. After a browse through the bookshop, which was a bit too crowded for my comfort, we just took a walk down the street to see what we could see. There were lots of "Old-e World-e" style buildings. Jeff managed to find a sweets shop, so we paid a visit and bought some nice sweeties. My favourite: honey comb, also known as Hokey Pokey. I need to experiment making my own sometime. There's even a recipe for it in my Nigella Express cookbook.

Today in the late afternoon I decided we should take a walk to take advantage of the dazzling sunshine - it had only poured shortly before this. I remembered a few weeks ago having seen a plum tree on the path by the Manor House near our house, so with a plastic carrier bag in hand, we set off in search of edible treasures. With a bit of reach and carefully pulling down branches, we were able to get about a half of carrier bag full of plums. But that wasn't all! We also found blackberries, though most aren't quite ready for picking, pears and apples.
I'm thinking of making an apple-blackberry-plum cobbler or crumble tomorrow evening for dessert. This week has lots in store. David Hepler is coming to stay with us tomorrow and Tuesday evenings and then Wednesday we're off to Scotland for Lindsey and Diane's wedding, which is Friday. We're staying overnight at David and Sharon Palmer's house near Preston on Wednesday night.