Good Friday

I haven't just had a good Friday today but a really rather excellent one. Si' was on holiday, so we didn't have to get up quite so early, and after breakfast we went to show some prospective new starters around the allotments. Si' is the allotment secretary and he has been very successful at letting some of the overgrown vacant plots in the last couple of years. Can you believe that in other areas there are waiting lists for allotment plots? Anyway, the couple seemed very keen and wanted to get started right away. Then we took the boys for a windy walk in the sunshine, up through the cemetary and saw our first green woodpecker of the year, with his startling blood-red cap. On returning, I donned my apron for my annual Good Friday ritual of making my own hot cross buns. I've done it every year since we got married, except for last year when the reminder that I'd always taken one across to my dad, as they came out of the oven, was too raw to bare. We really find the shop-bought variety too sickly to stomach and I enjoy marking the season by making them myself.I had some organic stoneground strong white flour to use up that I bought from Mount Pleasant windmill in the autumn. I got it originally to make bread with but my hands crack terribly during cold weather and I'd not managed to co-ordinate bread-making with a warm spell. Once I'd made the dough, and it was smelling good and yeasty, I put it to rise in the sunny front window before nipping into town. As I returned the sun had gone and it was trying to rain. The dough had not risen as much as I'd have liked and the strong wind kept causing our central heating boiler to cut out, which didn't really help. So I knocked the dough back, divided it up onto greased tins and set them on the hob of our gas cooker, with the oven turned on to create some warmth. Within the hour they had risen beautifully and the oven was nicely pre-heated to cook them in.

After ten minutes I take them out of the oven, briefly, to glaze them with a little sugar dissolved in milk. Just after they'd finshed cooking, and I was easing them off the tins, the sun came out and I whizzed them onto a plate to take this picture. We ate them for tea with lots of butter and they were delicious!

Just as I was about to download the pictures onto the computer, I noticed that the daffodils I'd brought back as buds from the allotment on Wednesday had opened, presumably in the morning's sun. They are a mixture of yellow ones I'd planted in the autumn, for picking, and some that are orange and pale yellow that I'd inherited with my allotment. They had been sitting in the window but I'd moved the vase next to the computer whilst photographing the hot cross buns. I'd mixed them with some dogwood stems, with pinky-tipped leaves just emerging, and I was quite overwhelmed with what a bright splash of spring colour they made, especially as the sun had disappeared again. I never think of daffodils as having a strong scent but these smell lovely, even sitting two feet away from them as I am now.

So today has been full of lots of little treats which were all about noticing and appreciating and none of which involved a shopping bag. Perhaps when Lucy, her boyfriend, Siffy, and myself make Easter nests tomorrow, I will be able to think of it as 'even better Saturday'. I hope so. Enjoy you're Easter holiday, whatever you have planned!

Comments

[lucy nicholson]

The hot cross buns were VERY nice :D
Thanks mum
xxx