Every year August passes in a blur, remembered as a series of moments snapped and seared in the memory. Images of children running around the garden or the family sitting around the table in the sunshine, the smell of harvest dust or the scratch of wheat stubble on bare legs. Each one a snippet of happiness.
Snippets of happines this August, so far …
Marvelling at nature. The garden is a mass of seed heads and their intricacy amazes me. This hollyhock seed head reminds me of the carousel that fed the slides into an old fashioned slide projector. Inevitably there would be at least one slide placed upside down and at some time during the slideshow the carousel would jam and there would be muttered cursing in the darkness.
Raspberry Loaf Cake is the cake we eat all summer using the early ripening rapsberries through to the autumn fruiting raspberries. With the sunny days we’ve had recently, I swear the raspberries ripen behind me as I pick them. This cake is easy to make and is robust enough to pack into lunch boxes or slice up for tea in the garden.
Posting letters into this old letter box set in the wall of a nearby Post Office, I wonder what stories have been held by the envelopes slipped in here over the decades. I hope this letter box doesn’t get replaced or removed.
Watching a lawn artist at work as he mowed a giant picture into the grass in one of our fields. Watch this video to see him in action in the field.
A snippet of happiness when I’m the only person in the kitchen and get the chance to lick the whisk after whipping up a batch of raspberry ripple ice cream.
Who can resist licking the spoon or whisk?
LIFE IN MUD SPATTERED BOOTS 
Anne, Your post makes me think your summer is nearly over. That means our winter is coming to an end too. Makes me a little sad.
I can’t imagine having so many raspberries that you would put them in a cake. They are far too precious for that. 🙂 I love licking beaters too.
BTW How come I can’t ‘like’ your posts anymore?
You can’t imagine having so many raspberries and I can’t imagine having so many passion fruit and lemons that I’d give them away by the bucketful! Isn’t it one of the beauties of blogs that we see how different everyday life is around the world? We might all have McDonalds and Microsoft, but thankfully we still have a lot of differences.
Absolutely Anne, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Happiness is so welcome anytime, but happiness snippets in Summer are divine!
Summer sunshine certainly induces happiness here.
Loving August, too. I am always last in the queue for licking the whisk but if I have a chance, I take it!
I’m the only one in the queue at the moment, in the gap between children and grandchildren, so making the most of it.
Raspberry ripple ice cream reminds me of my childhood. That lawn art is amazing, how does he mark it out and then do the different colours?
The design is marked out with great lengths of baler twine and spray chalk, then cut with a mower, strimmer or shears or completely scraped away in places. The whole thing took a week to do, working long hours. He’s very clever.
Something for next year’s Open Garden Brian?
In our previous garden I use to mow a grass maze for the visiting children. I don’t have enough lawn left in this garden!
Raspberry ripple ice cream! Yum! I have memories of blackberry, strawberry and peach ice cream. I may have to whip some up. I love the lawn artist and the penguin. It’s fun that it was in your field.
Peach ice cream sounds divine. It was great fun having the lawn artist; I didn’t realise how complicated it was to mow a design into the grass.
Lovely Anne…I could use a piece of that raspberry loaf right now. That letterbox is an object of beauty and history isn’t it? From a time when things were made to last. Yes please to raspberry ripple ice-cream too.
I agree, the letterbox is an object of beauty. I wonder what future generations will make of modern day letterboxes or even if we’ll still have them.
August is turning out to be a rather lovely month this year. Thank you for the raspberry inspiration. I have a huge patch of Autumn raspberries at the allotment and will make your recipes today for freezing. I put raspberries in a batch of chocolate brownies the other day – delicious. Loved the land art, although I was thinking of something more abstract! (I use crusts of bread to clean the blade when making pesto – we call it perker’s chops aka cook’s perks!)
Perker’s chops! I love that. Raspberries in chocolate brownies sounds rather delicious. Until you mentioned them, I’d forgotten that one year we ate white chocolate blondies studded with raspberries throughout the raspberry season.
Awesome have a blessed day thank you for sharing Anne
Lovely post Anne! The whisk made me think of my Mum .. I hope they don’t remove that post box. And that artist! How on earth did he go that! 😃 my August is zooming into September, strangely I don’t mind. 😉
The artist is so clever, especially as from the ground it’s very difficult to make out the shape. It’s only when they send up a drone with a camera that you can appreciate it.
I read this fuggless the morning after we chatted, while sipping my hot chocolate shot and watching the sun rise. It completed a perfect start to the day for me! Have to try the raspberry cake – I have a freezer full of frozen berries. Not the same, I know, but I’ll give it a go nonetheless. I like that the butter is melted first – no need to break out the stand mixer! 🙂 xxx
Starting the day with hot chocolate as you watch the sun rise sounds very sophistitcated.
I use frozen berries through the winter – blueberries and blackberries work well and blackcurrants.
licking the sppon is an essential part of baking 🙂 how do you know the finished product will be any good, otherwise?
mum told me she made your raspberry cake and it was delicious 🙂
Glad the raspberry cake was a success. The trouble with licking a spoon after making ice cream is that it’s difficult not to reach for another spoon to dip in for more
What a treat to have so many ripening raspberries! I can only hope one day we might experience this treasure.
Being in Australia right now, we are faced with bucket loads of lemons – more preserving and more lemon tarts to be made…