These aren’t in fact buttons but they were in Granny’s button collection. I don’t know what they are – any ideas?
Another Christmas jigsaw finished. This was fun.
I should have given you this word yesterday on Valentine’s Day as it is a term of endearment for one’s sweetheart! It means literally, “cute little pig’s eye” and comes from Chaucer.
From my pack of Forgotten English Knowledge cards
We’ve had lots of fun and lots of delicious food from our allotment over the years but the time has come to move on. We have four raised beds for veg in our garden and can get fresh veg from Community Roots so at the end of the month we will hand over the plot to a lovely and very enthusiastic young family.
This morning we dug up a lot of our leeks and have spent the day processing them all. At £1 each from the shops, they are a very valuable crop! We now have some pots of leeks in white sauce as a ‘ready’ veg, prepped leeks for the base of a risotto and four bottles of leek and potato soup – a very productive and pretty tiring day. 
The current book from The ShelterBox Book Group is ‘Scattered’ by Aamna Modhin. This is a powerful and gripping story told by a journalist who visited Calais as she was reporting on the refugee crisis and here begins to come to terms with being a refugee herself. It is a wonderful mix of personal history and journalistic detail, all told in a very readable style. I really cared about Aamna and her family and I learned a great deal about the whole refugee situation which the media doesn’t really show. There’s an excellent glossary, notes section and bibliography. It seems a perfect choice for the ShelterBox book group and I’m looking forward to the Q&A with the author next week.
We finished the streets of London jigsaw.
It was hard but was lovely to remember walking those streets in the early days of our being together . We even found the street where we came upon a junk shop and there in the window was a painting of Truro Cathedral! How serendipitous was that, it being my home city? We had met at the end of October, found the painting while I was with my lovely Mr S in early January and then we agreed to be married on January 4th, just ten weeks after meeting!
We are just home from watching a fascinating film, The Lost Boys of Carbis Bay, about a group of men who explore and climb around in the old tin mines of Cornwall, incredibly dangerous but obviously very fulfilling for those involved.
What a wonderful day as two of my communities came together, The Roots gang to plant an orchard and the Ingleheart Singers to entertain the crowd and then to sing Wassail to welcome the trees to their new home! Enjoy the gallery. Click on any photo for a bigger version and the caption.
I spent the day baking for tonight and tomorrow. One cake was for this evening when we joined friends and others for an open mic evening with a pot luck supper. The other cake and the bread buns are for tomorrow when we have a Tree Planting event at Community Roots and will need to feed the volunteers and the choir. 
There is always an interesting spread at a pot luck supper and tonight there was a special treat – utterly delicious ba bao fan, Eight Treasures Rice.
One of the ‘turns’ was a wonderful player of an accordion.
The evening was in aid of Children of Peace.
I’ve made the curtain for the back door today to hang on the new rail put up last week.
We have a new jigsaw, a present from my lovely Mr S’s brother at Christmas. It is a street map of the part of London where they grew up. We’re not sure if it’s going to be very hard as so many pieces look alike or easy because the road names are all so familiar. I’ll let you know.
I love this poem by Simon Armitage, so few words that tell the whole story. It is taken from his collection, ‘Dwell’ inspired by The Lost Gardens of Heligan.
In between jobs at Community Roots today, I walked around all the poly tunnels to see what was growing.
I love seeing random daffodils growing on the verges.
We have just finished one of the jigsaws given to us for Christmas. It was quite a challenge and very satisfying to complete.
We can’t believe the growth and the beauty of our Amaryllis!
Equally, the beauty of these birthday present chocolates has amazed us. They look like little planets. The company’s strap-line is “A Collision of Art & Chocolate.”
And more, a remarkable birthday card which opens to be a drum kit!
Here is this month’s Happiness Calendar, all about being friendly.
Our eldest daughter came to visit for my lovely Mr S’s birthday so we went to the Blue Bar at Porthtowan for lunch and M walked down to the sea.
Our walk in the afternoon was nearer to home and I was caught by the sunbeams behind Carn Brea.
Tonight it’s the Snow moon and the clouds passing by have given us haloes around and beside the full moon.
I’ve been working on the new curtain today. It always pleases me to use my Mum’s patchwork pin cushion. Look carefully, you can see her tiny hand stitches.
This afternoon I made our favourite cheesecake and made it into individual servings. You may know the delicious puds you can buy in individual dishes…..I’ve been collecting the little glass pots and today made a dozen cheese cakes. We ate two to test them! .
I used this recipe.
And a song, a most important song, from Bruce Springsteen.
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