Welcome to the Monthly Dispatch, in which I look back over the past month and share a few highlights with you all. The Monthly Dispatch is for free and paid subscribers alike and will add new depth to the journey we are taking together. I had planned to post this earlier, but my week ran away from me. Keep reading to find out why and for a look back over May…
Contents
Photo from the Archives
Last Month in the Van Build
My Art
Other Thoughts and Stories
Monthly Recipe
Photo from the Archives
I thought I would share a newer photo this week, taken since moving to St Ives. I love living here, and I love building my home from here. It somehow feels right.
This photo is of some of the incredible beach architecture found on the many St Ives beaches. Beach architecture of this sort always feels like a very British thing to me. The line of doors and windows, so regimented and identical seem so out of place among the natural shapes and messes of a beach. I enjoyed trying to capture them.
Last Month in the Van Build
I have abandoned all my self-imposed deadlines. Life doesn’t happen to schedule. It certainly doesn’t happen to schedule when you are on the steep learning curve involved in building your first home. So, I have come to the relaxing conclusion that the van will be ready when it is ready. It’s made what I’ve done this month that much more fun and admiring my new window and ceiling that much more satisfying.
Last year I sent out invitations (you’ve all seen the invite as it is the image used for A Nomadic Rose) to my beloved friends and family inviting them to celebrate the van with me on Friday 3rd of June. As a species human beings celebrate our milestones with gatherings and ceremonies of some sort or another. It’s been that way for time out of mind. Coming of age, graduating, weddings, the birth of children, new homes, career achievements, funerals. Throughout history and across the globe people have come together to mark the moments that matter to us.
Many of the milestones considered the most important by society are one I don’t want – children, a wedding, a traditional home. I have made another choice, one that I am proud of and want to mark with the same level of care and importance.
Hence, the van party: partly a housewarming and partly a celebration of a different life choice. I have spent the week preparing, building in the van, cooking, cleaning, gardening, shopping and more. It’s been fun and full on.
Tomorrow many of my loved ones are coming to my Mums house in St Ives, there will be fire and food and the chance to contribute to the van build. There will be music and laughter and ceremony. I plan to build the love of my family into the very foundation of my home.
I can’t wait.
My Art
Just last week I spent four days in St Mawes. It is a gorgeous little village opposite Falmouth. It was recommended to me as a location of a spectacular seagrass meadow. St Mawes has a small, partially stony, beach. At low tide you can walk out to the seagrass.
When I made the plan, the priority was to find a time when low tide was in the middle of the day. I’ve been hoping for sunshine ever since.
Thankfully I got it.
On Friday morning I woke to glorious sunshine in a bright blue sky.
And again on Saturday.
And again on Sunday.
And so, I went to Summers Beach and waded out camera to place the GoPro, mounted to its little concrete block, on the seabed floor before walking away leaving it recording.
I did it again and again, moving the camera from one randomly chosen spot to another.
I swam over it, GoPro in hand.
I swam over it, old underwater analogue camera in hand.
I got very, very cold.
And I was bewitched.
I have not seen such an exquisitely beautiful underwater scene since snorkelling in the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Bay in Australia. The sun through the water bounced and reflected off the seagrass, throwing patterns over the meadow. Seaweeds grew among the grass. Anemones fixed themselves to the seagrass leaves.
It was utterly, distractingly, gloriously beautiful.
Every afternoon, while warming back up, I sat watching the footage I had captured. Gasping at every tiny fish that darted across my screen, and every crab that appeared from among the seagrasses.
This is it. This is the footage I have been trying to get. This is seagrass at its finest.
I am truly in love with the beauty and splendour of this incredible plant. And I finally have what I need to create a piece of art that will share that love with others.
Other Thoughts and Stories
My Mum makes truly spectacular gardens. She’s done it since I was little.
When the gardens are in their full glory Mum plays a game. It goes like this: Look what happened in the garden today… and then she shows off all the incredible plants that have grown or bloomed or fruited in a day.
I’ve never been very good at gardens. I love sitting in them, but I forget to water them. I love admiring them but got no joy from planting them. That is until recently. The house in St Ives has a back and front garden, both surprisingly large for such a built-up town and both overrun with three cornered leek and wild grasses. Gorgeous but strangling anything else trying to grow.
To get from there to one of Mums incredible gardens, full of plants pollinators and people alike love, is going to involve a lot of work. In preparation for my party Mum wanted some of that work done, some flowers planted, some colour and life. As it’s my party I pitched in to help dig and plant.
Joy of joys, surprise of surprises, I have loved every second of it. Soil is wonderful and popping a plant into a carefully dug holes is a special thing.
So, after a lifetime of watching, I am going to help create this garden. Hopefully I will learn to water it as well.
Recipe
Gorse Flower Flapjacks
In Wild and Sweet by Rachel Lambert there is a recipe for gorse flower syrup and instructions for drying gorse flowers. Seeing both I instantly thought how amazing they would be in flapjacks. I have made some for the party and thought I would share the recipe with you all.
Ingredients
225g unsalted butter
125g light brown soft sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons of golden syrup
2 tablespoons of gorse flower syrup
400g of oats
35g of dried gorse flowers
Method
Preheat oven to 160 degrees.
Line a 25cm square (or there abouts) tin with grease proof paper. I simply cut mine to the right size and use the flapjack mixture later to hold it in place.
Melt the butter
Add the sugar, golden syrup, gorse syrup and zest to the butter. Bring until just boiling
Mix the oats and dried flowers in a bowl
Pour the butter and syrup mixture into the bowl
Mix until fully combined. This is easier with your hands.
Press firmly into the tin, making sure you get it right into the corners and densely packed
Bake for 25 minutes or until golden.