It has been heartening today while working in the garden, to hear the constant buzz of bees. They love the Crinodendron and the perennial Cornflowers.
Our golden roses are opening beautifully.
I can’t remember who sent me this poem, but if it was you, thank you. I love it. 
While the sopranos were learning their part, I stepped out onto the balcony to catch a picture of a very lovely sailing boat.
Our Nelly Moser this year gets better and better.
Nelly Moser Clematis with Libertia Grandiflora
The purple Irises and perennial Cornflowers are looking wonderful in the cottage garden border along with the pink and purple Granny’s Bonnets.
Centaura Montana with Aquilegia
We have several Clematis around the garden and they are coming into flower.
Our family apple tree, the one with three different apples grafted onto one stem has blossom on one branch, the Lord Lambourne apples.
Lord Lambourne
A good friend lent us a book last Thursday saying it was a ‘must read.’ My goodness, he was right! I started reading on Friday evening and have done little else since. It is the most compelling read that both made me laugh and hold my breath in fear for the characters. As one of the comments on the back says, everyone should read this novel.
Our lovely LiveWire has done the blog for a couple of days so I didn’t mark 14th April as I would have done. Our Dear neighbour Bill Mitchell died eight years ago and I always take a posy to mark the day to Sue-next-door. LiveWire 4 made the pretty bow to tie the posy up.
Sue took some beautiful flowers to his memorial stone in St Euny Churchyard.
We recently listened to a repeat of a brilliant programme, The Reunion, on BBC Radio 4 all about the people who made the production, The Passion, in Port Talbot fourteen years ago. Bill and Sue, Wildworks, worked with Michael Sheen to bring this piece to life. The programme will be repeated on Good Friday morning and can also be heard by clicking on the red link. It’s really well worth listening to. Bill and Michael Sheen won a Best Director award for their remarkable work.
If you missed my blog eight years ago about Bill, click here.
“Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.”Maya Angelou
There being no choir today as it is half term, a good friend from the tenors came round for coffee and we spent a happy couple of hours ‘putting the world to rights’ – if only we could! P brought me some beautiful Camellia blooms from her garden.
The following quotation is one to be treasured and acted upon.
Our choir leader, Claire Ingleheart, has spent the afternoon at Buckingham Palace! Since both her choirs started raising money for Shelter Box in 2015, even despite the ‘covid years’, between the two choirs, we have raised £7,800 and as recognition of this, Claire was invited as one of the ShelterBox contingent to a reception being held by the King and Queen at the Palace for four Humanitarian charities. What an honour! We are looking forward to hearing all about it next week.
Every year on this day, I take a tiny posy of whatever is flowering in our garden as a little gift to remember our lovely neighbour, Bill-next-door whose birthday is today. This year there was a tiny violet, a primrose, alstroemeria and a sprig of rosemary for remembrance.
Thanks for the photo, Sue
At our sorting office where we we posting a 16th birthday card for Live Wire 2, there was this delightful post box topper.
Just tried a new recipe for tomorrow’s cake for the volunteers – Banana, Chocolate and Almond Loaf. The mixture on the beaters tasted delicious so I hope the cake does too!
We picked the last of our raspberries, 180g, which pleased us greatly and they are now in the oven to become Apple and Raspberry Crisp using Nigel Slater’s recipe.
As I walked around the plots, I was delighted to see so many flowers at the end of October.
As the clocks go back tonight I thought it might be interesting to see what is still in flower in the garden and here are the ones I found, some a little out of focus as it has been rather windy today.
……. brought in after the heavy rain. Now they are recovering and are gorgeous.
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