Inhabiting New Spaces

One of our discoveries: the view from the terrace is reflected in the glass top of the kitchen table.

As the building work at Dixon Hill nears an end, new spaces are opening up.  Walls have come down, rooms shifted, nothing is quite the same.  We’re easing our way into these places, learning to inhabit them.  Beginning to paint fresh memories on blank canvas.  Starting to fill empty chambers with love and laughter and everything else that makes up life.

We’re not the only ones feeling our way into the altered landscape.  When I fold back the big glass door, butterflies flit in and out of the kitchen.  A small weasel flashes back and forth along the terrace, disappearing into the wall faster than I can blink.  My faithful robin now peers through a different window when he’s ready for his breakfast.  If I sit on the flat roof, a cloud of swallows whirls close round me, dipping and soaring and catching me up in its heady dart-and-dive dance.

We’re finding our way together.  Creatures and people.  Adapting.  Exploring.  Embracing.  Riding a see-saw of the familiar and unfamiliar.  Creating a new home among the bones of the old one.

Loquacious

Words are pretty wonderful.  Actually, they’re flippin’ fabulous.  So when Jenna McGuiggan of The Word Cellar invited me to write a wordy kind of guest post for her Loquacious series, I jumped at the chance.  Jumped so high that when I landed, I found I’d written not one but two wordy posts.  And Jenna’s been gracious enough to publish them both today.

One short essay is about my favourite word of all (you‘ll have to click over to find out what it is!); and the other is about the magic of names - a subject on which I could easily write a book. 

If you’re a word lover, you’ll enjoy exploring the Cellar.  Jenna is a writer, editor and creativity coach and she’s stacked the shelves with all kinds of word wisdom. 

I’m so grateful to her for allowing me a platform there today.  I really enjoyed writing these pieces and I hope you’ll enjoy them, too.

P.S. You may remember the beautiful post Jenna wrote for the Changing Places series a few months ago.  If you missed it, you’ll find it here.

Bumpkin Goes To Town

                                               Found some foliage in the end!

Yesterday, the Bumpkin (yours truly) found herself in the metropolis. Cities and I do not get along.  I always feel unutterably out of place in them.  Misshapen.  Unfashionable.  Wrong.  I prefer it when the ratio of sheep to people is roughly 100:1.  Actually, any sheep at all would have helped.

I was supposed to be buying clothes.  Which I usually buy from one or two local shops.  Zoom in and out.  Poof!  Or I buy via the internet.  But this time….well, we won’t go into that.  But there I was.  In the big city.  On a Saturday afternoon.  Where I walked past shop after shop because one glance through the door was more than enough.  Way too many people.  And not a single sheep in sight.  Do folk actually enjoy this?  I mean, are they truly there of their own volition?

I was eventually persuaded into one or two stores but walked straight through and out the other side.  In one shop, I did browse a bit and even tried on a jumper and skirt.  But the jumper made me look pregnant.  Which would be fine if I was.  But I’m not.

We stopped at Pret for a pit stop and ate outside in a dingy alley.  Grimy, noisy, busy.  And not nearly enough foliage for my liking  Are you getting my aversion to cities?

My feet led me involuntarily in the direction of the station.  I braved one more store and tried on a dress.  The effect was pretty much the same as the jumper.  I gave in.

Footsore and weary to the point of feeling ill after a measly two hours, I boarded the train empty-handed.  And vowing never again.  I’m clearly meant to have wellies on my feet and that’s all there is to it.  A country bumpkin I remain.

Apple, Fennel and Rocket Salad with Vanilla and Orange Dressing

This is the salad I’ve eaten more than any other this summer.

It’s my take on one I ate at The Boathouse on Loch Lomond.  The basic ingredients were easy to replicate; the dressing was more of a mystery.  My version is super simple and, whilst probably nothing like the original, to my taste buds it’s just as good.

Don’t be put off if the orange oil and vanilla flavoured stevia are not in your store cupboard.  They’re both readily available online and fabulously useful.  And, since you only need a drop or two, they last for ages.  Both are in daily use in my kitchen.  The orange oil goes into smoothies and chocolates; the Vanilla Crème into shakes, desserts and herbal teas.

The following quantities will serve one as a main course, two as a side dish.  In the picture above, I’ve topped the salad with sunflower sprouts and sauerkraut.  And a flower.  ‘Cause everything tastes better topped with a flower.

Salad

1 plate of rocket leaves (watercress works really well, too)
Half a fennel bulb, chopped
1 apple, sliced or chopped

Dressing

2 tbsp extra virgin cold pressed rapeseed oil
Good splash of apple cider vinegar
Pinch of high quality salt
1 drop of essential oil of orange
2 drops of Vanilla Crème

Arrange the fresh stuff on a plate.  Whizz up the dressing ingredients in a blender or shake well in a lidded glass jar.  Pour over the salad.  Et voilà!

NB  When buying essential oils to add to recipes, make sure they’re specified as food grade and use very sparingly.  In the UK, I buy mine from NHR Organic Oils.  In the US, I buy from Aura Cacia.

Vanilla Crème is great for adding to anything you want to both sweeten and flavour with vanilla.  Stevia has zero calories and ranks zero on the glycemic index.  Again, use very sparingly - we’re talking drops, not teaspoons.  In the UK, I buy Vanilla Crème from Red 23.  In the US, it’s available via Amazon.

Meditation and Movement

A friend confided in me, the other day, that she’s feeling angry and frustrated at the moment.  And she’s trying to decide what would most help her work through those emotions.  Should she go to the local Buddhist centre and learn some super advanced meditation techniques?  Or should she turn up at the local gym and register for kick boxing lessons?

I giggled.  The juxtaposition seemed hilarious.  How absurd that her path to one goal should be a choice between two such apparently contradictory actions.

But this morning, after I’d sat on the roof terrace as the sun rose over the valley, legs in lotus position, centred and still…..then climbed onto my rebounder and danced about in happy fashion for 20 minutes….I realised that her choice was not, after all, so bizarre.  Meditation and movement.  There’s a balance in each.  And somewhere between the two, we find equilibrium.

I shall tell her to sign up for both.