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Category Archives: Kindness

Brian Patten, Optimistic October and A Pie

I was saddened to hear of the death of Brian Patten whose poems I have shared many times on here. We were lucky enough to meet him many years ago and what a lovely man he was. If you put his name in my search, you’ll find lots of his beautiful writing.  The following one is particularly apt right now and is the one I shared when our lovely neighbour Bill Mitchell died seven years ago

So Many Different Lengths Of Time – Poem by Brian Patten

It ‘s the start of the month and time for this month’s Happiness Calendar, Optimistic October.

In fact, the Chicken and Leek pie doesn’t look very beautiful but it tasted delicious!

Chicken and Leek Pot Pie

 

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Purple Beans, Recipe and An Old Utensil

Yesterday, our lovely neighbour brought us some beans from her allotment. They were a beautiful purple colour but, we were warned, maybe a bit stringy. I decided to use my own recipe  for Runner Bean Soup and made a wonderfully tasty lunch. It pleases me greatly that my recipe is so well used. If you google Runner Bean Soup, it comes up on the first page. Interestingly,  my photo of my soup is used on the Jamie Oliver recipe!

Because of the stringiness, I put the soup though a sieve and used my Mum’s old wooden pestle to push it through very easily. The result was a lovely creamy soup though, sadly, not purple. Sorry, we ate it before I could take a photo!

 

 
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Posted by on September 20, 2025 in allotment, Food, friendship, Kindness, Postaday2025

 

Posy, Wall Hanging and Useful Words

I picked a little posy of marigolds and purple sweet peas today.

I love the wall hanging seen a couple of weeks ago in Truro Cathedral that says thank you to their volunteers.

The following very useful information came my way today and I thought you might appreciate it.

With thanks to Steve Bartlett

We’ve had a lovely time today as friends we made on holiday in Tuscany last year came to visit, brought us lunch and lifted our spirits enormously. As on holiday, we talked and talked, laughed and laughed and shared so much that matters.

 

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Bread, Cake and Sweet Peas

We have been given a delicious Carrot and Fennel loaf which we have enjoyed tonight with our caponata supper. The bread soaked up the juices from the Roots aubergine, tomatoes and onions beautifully.  Daughter no 3 brought the loaf as a gift from LiveWire 4’s other Granny in Devon where she is staying for a few days so L can be here to help us.

Aubergine used tonight in the Caponata

Live Wire 4 has been baking with her other Granny this afternoon and has sent us a photo. It looks scrumptious!

Our Sweet peas continue to flower profusely and smell lovely, of course.

 

Kindness Calendar, Coincidences and Sweetcorn

From Action for Happiness: “In a world that feels divided, kindness is a quiet but powerful act of hope. Whether you’re supporting a friend, helping a stranger, or simply listening with care, your actions matter. Every kind choice makes a difference.”

We went today to have the staples removed from my lovely Mr S’s new knee and had really interesting conversations with the two nurses who looked after him. They asked where we lived and when we said where, the older one said she’d been to St Euny Church just near us, to see a wonderful production in the churchyard in 2017.  That was our Until the Day Break! She said she absolutely loved it and that now she views graveyards in a very different light and likes to think of the real stories behind each gravestone.  If the production is new to you Dear Reader, check it out on the red links here.

The second coincidence was that when we were asked where we used to teach and said Doncaster, the younger Nurse said her father had been to Uni there at the old School for the Deaf as he is profoundly deaf. My Mum trained at that school in the 1930s but even more coincidental was the fact that when a youngster, her dad was taught at the special unit for deaf children at Roskear School in Camborne and it was my Mum who set up the unit and who would have taught him!  Ellie, the nurse is going to ask him if he remembers Mrs Wiseman. One of her old pupils commented on my blog when I wrote about my Mum and her work here.

Our Sweetcorn is coming along well, flowers on almost every 5′ high plant and some tassels indicating a cob getting ready.

 

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Jam, A T-Shirt and A Song

The raspberry plants at the allotment are overflowing with fruit and I knew we hadn’t used all the raspberries from last summer/autumn that I had put in the freezer so I made Raspberry Jam, the perfect jam for inside a Victoria sponge cake. We also had a pile of fresh raspberries in a meringue case with some crème fraiche for dessert tonight!

At singing this afternoon, one of the basses was wearing a t-shirt with an excellent slogan.

Our new song is by Chumbawamba, Sing About Love, and I love the words, especially the last verse.

 

 
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Posted by on June 23, 2025 in allotment, Kindness, Postaday2025

 

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Daffodils and Empathy

The daffodils that our. lovely neighbour brought round to mark the day we moved in seventeen years ago have all opened up. She has done this every year from the very first day we rolled up to an empty house awaiting the arrival of the removal lorry the next day. The two tall ones at the back are ones that I brought in from the garden after the winds brought them down. .

Let us all practise empathy. Thanks to Morgan Harper Nichols for these words.

 

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Tree Planting, Mini Muffins and Eggs

Our four ‘children’ bought us a Family Apple Tree for Christmas and today a very lovely friend planted it for us.  There are three varieties of apple grafted onto a semi-dwarf stock. You can find out more by clicking on the red link.

We had no treats in to go with coffee for our friends when the work was done so I quickly made some mini muffins in our air fryer that we got just before Christmas and which I am using for almost everything. I forgot to take a photo before we started on them. Being only a mouthful each, they didn’t last long.

Rhubarb and Blueberry muffins

Our friends brought us some beautiful eggs, a piece of art almost too good to eat – but they taste so good so will be our next few breakfasts.

 

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Father Christmas, Daffodils and Libraries

It was so dark driving to choir this morning at 8.45 that the Christmas lights in a couple of the villages I go through were still lit up and so lovely to see. At one point I was in a long standstill queue and managed to get a quick photo of Father Christmas.

Our daffodils are opening.

I thought you, Dear Readers, might like to hear about Spellow Library.

Redruth Library Service will be leaving a light on in their window in solidarity with Spellow Library in Liverpool.

In the summer of 2024, Liverpool’s Spellow Library and Community Hub was set alight and destroyed during the race riots and a vital neighbourhood asset was temporarily lost. Tomorrow, Thursday 12 December 2024, Spellow Library will re-open to the public.

To commemorate this, libraries across the country will be lighting up their library ‘bringing back the light’. This will spotlight the essential role our libraries play in the cultural fabric of our towns, cities and villages and reinforce the importance of these sanctuaries of knowledge, sanctuaries which don’t discriminate when it comes to offering a sense of belonging.

After the fire, a young woman started a crowd funder to raise £250 to buy some replacement books. She raised £250,000!  So many people were horrified at the thought of burning books and now it’s open again!

 

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Storm Darragh and Cake

Well, that’s been quite a storm and another 24 hours of it are still to come albeit at Met Office yellow warning level rather than the amber it has been last night and all day today. We have been pretty lucky, fairly minor damage though I don’t like to see Welly Dog lying down after being blown over.

We set off to go to the market to deliver the golden coffee cake and to do our shopping but we were blown back up the drive so decided not to risk it. Consequently, I invited our lovely neighbour in for coffee and cake as we wouldn’t / shouldn’t eat a whole cake ourselves!

After we’d had coffee and cake, S suggested that as she was going into town, she could take the rest of the cake in to the market!  She also offered to do our shopping for us.

 

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