Five Things Friday - 23/10/15

I am joining in with Amy for Five on Friday toady.

It's been a lovely week, which has gone in a flash. Beautiful autumn days and colours and a real feeling of seasonal change. Five things that made my week were:

1. The Last of the Summer Colour

I love the way that clever gardeners can extend the season like this. Late summer flowering perennials were still hanging on in this raised bed I spotted in Avebury last weekend. Dahlias, Verbena and Cosmos, still flowering their hearts out. It reminded me to plan for the whole season next year, if I plant any flowering plants at all. If you are smart about it you can have colour from May to October. So cheerful!

2. Turning On the Range

It's bliss! In our little rented cottage our central heating is powered by a lovely old Stanley Range, known affectionately as 'Mrs Stanley'. Well, she is a temperamental old bird, and no sooner had we turned her on to heat the house for a couple of hours (she also heats hot water as well as being used for cooking), she spluttered and gave up the ghost.

The joy of renting of course, is that we just call the landlord! She was fixed up again the next day and I have been revelling in the heat. But it isn't just that - it is the ritual that I love - pulling the right levers and switches, the roar of the burner starting and the soothing, low rumble. There is something much more romantic about a range than using an electric mini-oven/hob and the electric water heater, which we switched to in the summer.

Using the range means you have to have the heating on at the same time that you cook - and if you only want to do oven chips, it really isn't worth the expense of heating up the whole system, to get the oven hot enough to use. But in the winter when she is working anyway, it is great.

Another great thing is that shirts dry in a couple of hours from the residual heat!

3. Autumn Sunshine

You appreciate it so much more when you know it will soon be gone for the winter - this week has seen the most glorious, bright gold Autumn sunshine in Wiltshire.

 

Walking the dog - just LOOK at that sky!

 I even found five minutes to hang out some washing during a lunch break one day.

4. The Riot of Colour

Not a surprise - bloggers across the Northern Hemisphere over have done this much better than I can - but the autumn colours are so, so unbelievably beautiful this year. These photos were snapped in the village I live in. Acid green and that deep purple - a-mazing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. My Apple and Mint Jelly (and the return of roast dinners!)

 



 

 
Last year, a friend gave me a load of unwanted Bramley apples - she has done the same today! But I had almost forgotten, what with a house move in between, that last year I used them to make chutney, and this Apple and Mint jelly for lamb.

 

and with the return of the roast dinner - another autumnal pleasure, it felt really good to be using preserves I had ferreted away last year.

 

Sadly I don't think I have time (what with my degree and working full time) or enough spare jam-jars to make a lot of preserves this year. Who knows where we will be next year - hopefully better on both counts as preserving feels like such a natural human response to the shortening days, saving the bounty like squirrels burying their nuts!

 

Every week is a good week, when you can extract so much pleasure from the simple things :-)