Lentil Soup

One of Cissy's birthday dinners. George and Cissy in the foreground, then Will, Dan, Griselda, and me behind Cissy.


The pleasure of making a traditional, simple lentil soup: onion, pancetta, carrot, celery, stock and bay leaves, red lentils, pepper and ground coriander. I will add ground cardamom and fresh basil if it lacks edge.

I might be able to complete the tiling tomorrow. I would love that. I keep wanting to add fancy bits - shells or edging, little bits of seaglass, and I am resisting MANFULLY in dread of cute. As if skylight, horizontal boarding, driftwood isn't cute enough. Love it.

We have been feeling all Equinoctial, poleaxed and ready for autumn. I cut back the half-dead fuchsia to the hummingbird's dismay, he thriftily visited the few flowers while he could. And the may, two stands of fennel and stray bits and pieces. The remaining fuchsia has a better chance, and I will fill the exposed burrows and get good earth to plant again - that part of the slope is coarse subsoil and clinker. Oh, I have grand plans.

I can't call beautiful rich tilth 'dirt' the way they do here, though logically I should object to 'soil' too I suppose. "When I am laid, am laid in earth..." has the proper poetic appreciation. Is this what Neuro-Linguistic Programming bangs on about? Or Eileen mysterious 'words of power', which I still haven't coaxed out of her? She was laughing rather a lot when she mentioned them.