Is that all for the month of May?

The last day of the month and I had to make the elderflower champagne. I've been putting it off rather, claiming that this dirty old house with its dodgy plumbing and incontinent cat would make sterile conditions impossible and also because for some reason this year the elder tree's blossoms seem a little less than, well how to say, er, generous.

There are plenty of blooms but they seem to be sere, fragile, almost old maidish and lacking any of the usual bountiful frothiness and perfume I would normally expect. Maybe it's been the weather or maybe its just that I'm projecting my own state of mind onto them, either way the need to make fizz has never been less enticing.

In the expectation that this mood will have changed in the three weeks between now and sampling the brew I started a batch today, only to discover that there was barely enough sugar in the house even if I sacrificed my particular stock of sugar cubes which are kept solely for my coffee. After some confused deliberation I decided to make up the difference with jam sugar, enriched with pectin. This may be a fatal error, we'll see.

This same mood of despondency has informed the rest of the day. A fight with the computer this morning had me reinstalling my network card yet again, I tried some original recipes for the Stripey Cat and they were barely edible and certainly not worthy of publication. In desperation I went out to hack brambles with my billhook, since any bramble killed is a blow for positive success but almost immediately I was besieged by meat eating flies anxious to share the blood that the brambles were extracting from my arms. I gave up with despair, came in and spent a hour shopping on Amazon for french swear words and escapist novels. Bad girl.

Maybe I'll try a painting next but it might lead me to drink.


The lettuce has recovered well after the hailstorm.