Slow Sunday, summer in the city & a recipe

Nutty summer soup

Hot city streets playing shadow and light. So many lives, so many stories. I remember back in the 80’s a weekly programme which showed news images from different decades with the soundtrack of that decade playing and subtitles capturing the news images. I remember thinking, no matter what decade it is, the same stories play out. There was always an us and a them.

Dana Leigh Lyons

wrote a great piece about this yesterday.

It’s a late Slow Sunday letter today because I’ve been over at the allotment finishing off the last little bit of cutting down of brambles to get the ground covered before I go away next weekend.

Joy dots

Living soil

Blue skies

Friendship

My kids

Memories weaving

Tree out front

Lemons

Fresh mint

Smelling lavender and rosemary

Birds flying across the sky

Music

Laughter

A cold beer on a sunny day

Cushion the colour of sea

Recipe

Nutty vegetable soup

I make this soup a lot, because it is so simple and comforting. I’d prepped faro grain. I had a batch of homemade stock in the fridge. So, all I needed to do after returning from the allotment was roast peanuts, sauté onion, celery, kale and courgette. Add some freshly grated ginger, then the stock and faro and simmer for about 20 minutes. I seasoned with good salt and freshly ground black pepper, parsley and lime juice.

Evening draws in

The last of today’s sunlight is playing on my wall.

I’m sitting now as the sun goes down, on the floor by my windows looking out at the tree. Sky cloudless, powder blue. Street empty of pattering feet. That silence is as rich and deep as the whole cosmos that soon, will twinkle overhead.

When I close my eyes I see that. And then I am asleep.

But for now, for some more moments; I just watch the fading light.

That tree out front, ever so gently; stirs, and in the distance another tree moves in rhythm as the light in this room, disappears and the light in the sky, fades into the distance.

A breeze trickles in through open windows. I hear a car door close. Then silence again, deep and still. Window box silhouettes, roof tops making dark lines across the sky and one lone seagull flying, as edges of trees along the street, paint more dark lined silhouettes onto the skyline.

I can smell earth. I think of foxes and badgers, owls and bats and wonder, if they will be out tonight in my neighbourhood.

One day, I will build myself a potting shed with tall windows, in a field, and I will go there, with trickling stream and wood nearby. But tonight, I smell the earth from street gardens, once fields and plant nurseries; and soon, will wend, my way to bed.

Watching day change into night, is one of my favourite things.

Wishing you the warmest,

Lucy x