Here are the last few of the onions we grew last year. We are going to have to buy for a few months until the ones planted today, more than last year, are ready for harvest.
Last of last summer’s harvest
Heat treated sets arrived by post
Planted out today
For Ukraine
Not usually a fan of pink, I really like these pink tulips with the blue of the muscari.
A couple of days ago when I posted about the delicious lemon cake, JR commented about another of Rachel Roddy’s recipes and I looked it up, Tagliatelle with lentil and mushroom ragu. It also sounded delicious and came with the recommendation from a friend so I made it for this evening – truly scrumptious.
It’s officially Spring and all over Cornwall there are swathes of shades of yellow, both primroses and gorse in the hedgerows and hundreds of daffodils lining the sides of the roads. It is glorious and our route to Truro today was a pleasure.
The lovely Mr S saw his surgeon today, seven weeks after his knee replacement surgery. All declared a success. The hard work on exercises is paying off.
It is World Poetry Day today so I give you today’s poem from my book, A Poet For Every Day Of The Year. I was a big fan of flower fairies as a child.
When I visited friends recently, they picked some daffodils from their woodland for me to take home to the lovely Mr Smith and they are in front of the wood burner in the sitting room. We love how the outside petals are twisty.
This delightful chart came my way today and it made me smile – books and kittens? Can’t do much better!
Another poem for you today, again with the people of Ukraine in our hearts. .
We learned a new piece at choir yesterday and it was so joyful, I thought you might like to hear it. The music is by Mozart.
Our Spring border lifts the spirits.
Sunflowers
A shaky phone-cam filmed it all and soThe whole world sees a peasant woman findingStrangers in her land do what peasants always doFor strangers as she ignores the guns and standsFour square and strong and offers them a gift,Those soldiers with their guns and bandoliers,Grenades and wire cutters, their killing knives.Their helmets and their gibbering headsets.She holds out to them her gift: handfulsFistfuls of sunflower seeds, little pods of graceAnd welcome. It is the way with peasant peopleEverywhere, even in this day of days,For those who have the least will always give the most.But the seeds came wrapped in words,These words,“Keep them in your pockets boys so, when we buryYou in Ukraine’s soil, sunflowers will climb fromYour graves toward the blue sky of the truth:Here take them, they are good, I harvested them last year.Take them so that the flowers will be a monument toThe murdered children and the familiesYou bombed out of their homes; the flowersWill stretch their golden faces to the skyAnd in the night the flowers will whisperSoftly to the wind, ‘Here lie the murderersThat came out of the East, unwelcome and unwanted,Destroyers of beauty, carriers of madness,Cursed for all eternity.’The fields of flowers will drop their seedsEach year so that those to come will understandTheir stories, stronger than granite,More beautiful than marble,These sunflowers will tell the worldHow your young lives were wasted hereOn our rich soil made richer by your bonesAnd flesh, and your own mothers will comeThroughout the empty yearsTo water with their salty tearsThe endless fields of flower heads,Golden, turning in the sun.”
I’m loving that we are still harvesting leeks from the allotment.
The lovely Mr S spotted a butterfly on the windowsill and caught this photo for me.
Heartbreakingly beautiful…… professional pianist Irina Maniukina playing Chopin (Aeolian Harp’ Étude, Op. 25, # 1) before finally leaving her home south of Kyiv.
Particularly poignant that Irina played Chopin, who left his homeland Poland as it (with Lithuanians & Ukrainians) rebelled against & was then crushed by the Russian empire.
— Howard Goodall (@Howard_Goodall) March 13, 2022
Our niece had a baby recently so I’ve made some Sally-boots for our Grand niece, her big brother having had some a couple of years ago.
Yesterday’s wild wind blew some of our front garden narcissi off their stalks.
The poet laureate, Simon Armitage has written about the Ukraine invasion. The link is an article in The Guardian about him.
Resistance
It’s war again: a family
carries its family out of a pranged house
under a burning thatch.The next scene smacks
of archive newsreel: platforms and trains
(never again, never again),toddlers passed
over heads and shoulders, lifetimes stowed
in luggage racks.It’s war again: unmistakable smoke
on the near horizon mistaken
for thick fog. Fingers crossed.An old blue tractor
tows an armoured tank
into no-man’s land.It’s the ceasefire hour: godspeed the columns
of winter coats and fur-lined hoods,
the high-wire walkover buckled bridges
managing cases and bags,
balancing west and east – godspeed.It’s war again: the woman in black
gives sunflower seeds to the soldier, insists
his marrow will nourishthe national flower. In dreams
let bullets be birds, let cluster bombs
burst into flocks.False news is news
with the pity
edited out. It’s war again:an air-raid siren can’t fully mute
the cathedral bells –
let’s call that hope.Simon Armitage
Such a wild, stormy afternoon that gave us this view from our rainy window.
Today I was shown another photo of a post-box topper.
Post box topper from Pelton, Co Durham
A friend sent this video for us.
I visited friends this afternoon and took a little posy of Spring flowers picked from our front garden. 
Music restores the soul.
I came home from choir this afternoon to find a lovely old cake tin on the doorstep, full of freshly baked cheese scones! There was also some arnica balm for Mr S – what thoughtful and welcome gifts – but who left them there? We are wondering who our guardian angel might be. We’d love to say thank you properly….. 
I managed to find some time for the first time in six weeks to work on my glass. I cut these two and will copper foil them tomorrow. 
P.S. Thank you N, the scones are truly delicious. 🙂
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