Doomed

After a morning of kitchen jobs and the early arrival of the afternoon supermarket delivery, I had time for a quick walk before J's PA left. I was pleased that I managed to move briskly enough up the hill to continue my walk right through the wood before it was time to turn round. I hadn't walked the full woodland track for sometime, and discovered a number of changes. A lot of hardcore has been spread, filling the many holes which became large, muddy puddles whenever it rained. This will make the track more passable in wet weather, but the stones are sharp, uneven and not comfortable to walk on, though they will improve as they bed down. The sinister red spots glowing in the gloom indicated that the improvements to the track had not been made with walkers in mind, and a little further on I discovered a newly cleared area which is being used to process felled trees ready to be transported out of the wood. I don't think it's a bad thing: the trees to be cut have clearly been selected, it's not a mass cull, and the effects of ash dieback have led to a lot of fallen or clearly sick and weakened trees. That part of the wood had clearly not been managed for a long time, the trees are very crowded, and I think it was for sale a while ago, so I'll watch with interest how things develop and hope the cutting is done sympathetically. It's a lovely area of deciduous woodland, carpeted with bluebells and wood anemones in spring, and can benefit from some expert care.

Later I supported J with a workshop about memoir writing on Zoom, the second of three. It's run by an organisation which offers creative activities, mostly online, to people with any kind of disability, and the provision of excellent BSL interpreters means I can focus on helping J with the thinking and writing. She enjoyed it - some aspects are quite challenging for her, as writing is not something that comes easily to her, but she liked the exercises and now has a number of ideas for memories she'd like to explore and write about, if we can find any time for them between all the other projects she's supposed to be working on (not to mention the ones I'm supposed to be working on!).

Late in the evening, I finally got to the cakes promised (by P!) as compensation for tomorrow's garden visit. J has never been a great fan of looking at gardens, especially when I'm also photographing them, but I suspect her supposed dislike has been exaggerated. We had hoped to make brownies, but at that hour I opted for a quicker alternative, a brownie style recipe from the cupcake book which tastes more cakey than our usual sticky brownies but which cooks in six minutes in the cupcake baker P bought for J at least fifteen years ago. It's a surprisingly useful gadget, despite my initial cynicism - it's very pink! - as it's quick, uses only a modest amount of electricity, and requires minimal cleaning. The cupcake brownies tasted fine, very chocolatey, and I was still in bed before one o'clock.