who only by moving can balance

... has done so many things and is Going To Bed and will fill in this placeholder Tomorrow.

Reading. Descartes, Treatise on Man: I am indeed finding getting my head around what functions he ascribes to the "soul" genuinely useful. Nonetheless I am picking this up and putting it down again in bursts, partly I think because I am struggling with the descriptions of diagrams, and the choice between skimming (but what if I MISS SOMETHING) and actual decoding (not sure this is actually possible with the quality of the reproductions). Status: in progress.

The National Trust Cookbook, Clive Gouldercourt + others. EYB Indexing; status: completed the chapter on spring, now onto the chapter on summer. Think I'm unlikely to be keeping this one, but I'm enjoying working my way through it.

Feeding Orchids to the Slugs, Florencia Clifford. Also picked up from Oxfam for EYB indexing, but is in fact mostly memoir. I am a couple of chapters in, theoretically marking pages with recipes as I go but in practice I haven't got to any of them yet, and My Eyebrows Are Raised. But, you know, I would have kept wondering about it if I'd not got it, so I'm okay with this.

Forgotten Fruits (Christopher Stocks) got auto-returned to the library for a second time while I was still, like, a third of the way into it. I am going to try to take the DNF with grace this time, but the Completionist Itch is still there...

Writing. Grumpy e-mails to HMPO. Grumpy e-mails to uk.bookshop.org (on the plus side, the book I bought from them now has a shiny wee DRM-free tag! on the downside, I can download it in neither of the browsers I've tried so far.) Mental drafting of context-setting on movement and sleep, which really need to get out of my head and onto the page.

Playing. Inkulinati! We have Completed All Three Journeys. In the second stage we achieved an absolutely bullshit strategy that made things astonishingly easy; the third stage (with SEAL) was much harder work.

Little bit more I Love Hue.

Cooking. Two things of particular note, of which the first was ridiculous parsnip risotto with thyme pesto from The Modern Vegetarian, extremely good, would very happily eat again but I'm more dubious about the prospect of cooking it again, though I will concede it would probably go faster now I know what I'm doing.

Item the second was THE MEDLAR STICKY TOFFEE PUDDING. I am not entirely convinced I can actually detect the, you know, medlar, but it is very tasty.

Elsewise I have two batches of medlar jelly on the go (first batch did not set properly, BAH, I have not made enough jam recently, so I'm going to need to redecant and reboil that before I move on to the spiced) and some ridiculous quince sorbet that needs forcing through the sieve before churning.

And I have still not touched the apples.

Eating. Saturday lunch at Holtwhites Bakery :)

Exploring. Stupid little walk on Sunday revealed unto us, among other things: a pair of cyclamen in a bit of the verge outside our house we don't normally walk past; a discarded fork; a local bush of Purple Metallic Berries; a secret holly hedge.

Growing. SEEDS arrived. Jalapeños (at least at home) turning red.