My kids have moved home due to job loss/constraints and we speak to most of my friends via phone, messaging or if they are locals, in person, but at a social distance.
The air is cleaner and the traffic calmer.
Life has slowed down.
I like that.
People are educating their kids at home, spending quality time with then that will become treasured memories in later life.
Time with your children can never be traded back later.
It is a once-only ticket to a perpetual show that changes EVERY DAY and never has an encore.
The Mountains known as Glass House on the horizon near my home
I feel pretty lucky to be living where I do – a great mix of city and coastal life, without the frenetic pace. But there are two things I do miss, Sandy.
After being late with the P.M. feeding of my starter last night, I was a little concerned that it may not be fermented enough by the time the morning feed was due, but comments from supportive fellow bloggers and my Sourdough mentors, Peggy,Sandy and Chris, relaxed me about the process.
A Forgiving Dough
Mary from Mary’s Nest Sourdough website, states that you can change/swap or alter your sourdough starter as you go along, from white to rye, or wholewheat. What flexibility! [Happy Dance]
I started this process using a mix with half whole wheat flour and half white flour, as this is the mix most of my family and me, prefer. This excludes the fastidious Moth, of course. He is a committed, refined-bleached- white flour man, who likes his bread ultra-fresh and soft as a baby’s bottom. That is a bad comparative metaphor for bread, but you get my drift.
So Day 4 Dawns, and I feed this mother of all sourdough mixes.
Some exponents, including Sandy, prefer using equal parts flour and water, by weight in their starter mix, and I might still do that. I guess I can change it up as I go along, with this ultra-flexible sourdough mix.
After all, as Chris pointed out in a previous comment, people have been making bread this way for millennia, and most likely didn’t have clocks, timers or accurate scales to measure ingredients.
As a young child, at times in my teens, and now in semi retirement, I find great joy in sketching. Sketching doesn’t have to be perfect.
Sketching is almost a semi conscious activity. I let the pencil, or pen, do the work and don’t think too much about what I am doing.
In that way I find it is relaxing and therapeutic.
Sometimes it works ans sometimes it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter.
I’ve been making some sketches with a view to decorating a few basic Calico shopping bags.
Re-useable bags are going to be around from now on and they’re a great way to reduce our use of plastics.
I added a little colour to one of them as a gift to a neighbour. Asking her what her favorite colour was and then adding a little dry brushed/watercoloured style gouache, here and there.
A Home by the Sea 
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