Our front garden has become very overgrown over the winter. While it has rained such a lot, it has also been relatively warm here in Cornwall and the weeds haven’t stopped growing so it was wonderful to have it all professionally tidied and weeded!
Before – weeds, brambles and dead palm fronds
After and tidy! Now I can replan and replant my Suffragette Garden.
A little of the purple, white and green that has survived being swamped by weeds
Walking up from town in the rain today, we were stopped in our tracks by this beautiful Rhododenron in a neighbour’s garden.
I picked this little bouquet in our Suffragette garden this afternoon to take to friends where we were planning on tea and cake in the garden. The rain drove us indoors yet again but we had a lovely time together. It’s so good to be able to spend happy times with friends again. 
We’ve found a new place for one of our Kachina dolls. This one is a Cricket and we bought it in the Heard Museum in Phoenix in 2016. For more information on Kachinas, check out this post.
We love our purple Clematis – this one is in my Suffragette garden but flowers more next door than for us!
I love the colour combination of this Day Lily with the Agapanthus.
Lovely colour combination
Our Lily pots are at their best.
Lilies and more Lilies
Today marks the anniversary of the Great 1913 Women’s Pilgrimage starting in the South West where women walked from Land’s End to Hyde Park demanding their right to vote and to be acknowledged as citizens.
Dreadnought began with this inspirational story of courage and rage, and we marked the centenary of the pilgrimage by touring a new play Oxygen in 2013 to the places the women had stopped and rallied one hundred years earlier. My choir leader, Claire Ingleheart wrote the music for the play, “Oxygen” and many of the choir turned up to sing at Land’s End prior to walking the first few miles of the walk together.
My Suffragette garden has the right colours at the right moment! My regular readers will know that my Great Granny, Mary Wiseman, was a Suffragette, was force fed in Holloway Prison and received the portcullis brooch from Mrs Pankhurst for her struggles. I am very proud of her, hence my garden and my tattoo. 
Here’s a recording of The Ingleheart Singers singing Oxygen in Truro Cathedral. I’m not amongst them as I was recovering from a replacement hip op but I was able to record it for you.
My post today is for our Dear Friend, N, with all the love we can muster. First, one of next door’s cats posing on a post.
Our Suffragette garden is full of white and green. The purple bits (crocuses/Hebe) finished before the Narcissi burst into life or haven’t flowered yet (purple tulips)but we are reminded of the strength of those amazing women whenever we are in the front garden. We can find that strength now. 
This poem came my way the other day and I wrote to the poet to ask for permission to share it with you here – Serenity Prayer by Brian Bilston, so apt at the moment. Thank you BB. I have posted one of his poems before. Click here to read it.
I love the delicacy of the skeleton Hydrangea flower in contrast with the still pink bloom.
Hydrangea
In the garden centre, there was a whole display of purple, white and green to make a Suffragette garden.
In the garden centre
Sunset tonight from St Agnes Beacon over to St Ives was quite disappointing until a beautiful pink bloom appeared in the dark grey clouds.
Sunset over St Ives
The garden is drinking up the very welcome rain today and everything is glistening. My Suffragette garden has white and purple blooms and an Ivy leaf that has fallen has purple and green with a white pebble or two nearby. together.
The Hebe is full of fluffy purple flowers.
Hebe
Underplanting the Hebe are some tiny white Cyclamen and I noticed the flowers for the first time today.
Cyclamen
For new readers, my Suffragette garden is planted in honour of my Great Granny who was imprisoned in Holloway for her actions in trying to get the vote for women. She was force-fed while in prison and in another branch of the family we have the Holloway Brooch presented to all those who were so treated.
The Holloway Brooch
It’s Election Day here in the UK and my Suffragette Garden, in purple, white and green is doing its bit this morning. I planted it to honour my Great Granny who was a Suffragette and who was force fed in Holloway for her actions to get women the vote.
2 After singing this morning – always uplifting and good for the soul – N,G and I watched a pair of swans on the Penryn River where the tide was nearly out. They were trying so hard to take off! One nearly made it, leaving the mud but quickly landing back in the water and swimming back round to its mate who hadn’t got airborne. Just look at the mud on the one that hasn’t been back in the water yet!
Swan
The pair, one very muddy
3 The tulips in the Suffragette Garden are lovely too but I got the timing wrong. The white ones have been and gone and now the purple Parrots are in flower.
Parrot Tulip
1 It’s lovely that the days are so much longer and that we now get the evening sunshine across the back garden. This was truly a golden hour.
2 Today is Shakespeare’s Birthday and also the date of his death. He was born in 1564 and died in 1616 so all those wonderful plays and poems were written by the time he reached 52! The Globe Theatre in London have made this delicious looking cake in his honour.
Globe cake by Shakespeare’s Globe
3 My Suffragette garden, planted in purple, white and green to honour the Suffragettes, especially my Great Granny who was imprisoned in Holloway for her actions, is looking beautiful at the moment as the purple tulips are joining the white ones.
1 My Suffragette garden is full of white daffodils and tulips. The purple tulips are almost ready to bloom. I so hope they will flower before the white tulips have faded.
White daffodils and tulips
2 The new Clematis, ‘Early Sensation’, has a few flowers which are very pretty.
White Clematis
3 The baby ducklings in today’s post by Marilyn remind me of a beautiful little book my parents bought when they were in Boston many years ago (and Boston is in all our minds this week with such sadness.) “Make Way for Ducklings” by Robert McCloskey is about a policeman who stops the traffic so that the mother duck can take her ducklings across the road to the pond in the park, a beautiful story about a beautiful city to whose citizens we send condolences.
Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey
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