end of summer school dinner, great assignments, working towards closed week, onions and shallots, autumnal, first pink fir apples

‎Summer school ended this week.

Lovely dinner at Exeter College high table on Friday night, followed by the presentation of the certificates to the students.

Really enjoyed catching up with colleagues that evening, as well as seeing the students. A terrific group this year. It was a pleasure to read their assignments.

The week after next is closed week at the library, which I'm looking forward to. Busy times preparing for this, though - so often the case that you have to work extra hard to take time off.

Spent a couple of hours on the allotment this afternoon. A strong wind up there but warm too. Lifted the onions and shallots and put them in the shed to dry. Then dug over the ground, creating a decidedly autumnal patch (a similarly autumnal scene above photographed while dog-walking through the harvested fields this morning). Also planted some ‎winter carrots and fed the runners and courgettes.

A treat was digging the first pink fir apples. For lunch, I boiled some for a quarter-of-an-hour before roasting them for twenty-five minutes in rapeseed oil, finely-chopped lightly-fried onions and basil‎ and the tiniest crunch of sea salt. Deliciously nutty (oniony and basily).

(Saw the heron above btw on the Oxford canal last week. He was standing beside a narrowboat that had stained-glass windows of kingfishers. Seemed appropriate somehow.)