Sloe Gin

Today was sunny and warm after a weekend of stormy weather.

Josephine and Deborah came to tea travelling up here from south of Hexham.
It was lovely to see them. After tea they went for a long walk up to the Childhood View site. Then they returned for a salmon open-faced sandwich Swedish style and drop scones with more tea.

Deborah mentioned that they had seen many sloe bushes along the lanes, another name is blackthorn, and that one can make sloe gin from the berries after the first frost. Well we have had our first frost a week or so ago so I shall go out and pick some berries next sunny day and make sloe gin to give away as gifts for Xmas. Great idea. I like to make things to give away. One year it was raspberry vinegar, another green tomato chutney, garlic infused olive oil etc.

It was so nice to have company and we enjoyed chatting about this and that, and I gave them a couple of poetry anthologies. Soul Food for Deborah and Earth Shattering for Josephine.

We decided to make it a more regular occurrence meeting up together the girls from the fells.