This morning we went off to the car-boot sale to see if we could find plants we are looking for – some Verbena Bonariensis and some Lupins. We found both. I am always on the hunt for fine bone china beakers and today I found a very pretty one for 50p! There is a little ivy leaf inside too.
New beaker
I have spent all afternoon potting on some plug plants of Cosmos, all white ones as we love the look of white flowers in evening summer sunlight.
Potted on seedlings
Today’s poem in my book, Poem of the Day, is one I learned by heart as a child and which has a special resonance for me.
Home Thoughts, from Abroad by Robert Browning
O, To be in England
Now that April ‘s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom’d pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—
That ‘s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!