the summer in brief

How to break a long silence? A quick catch up.

I provided the admin and housekeeping support for our annual Arts Trail weekend.

The Mister was away volunteering with the Iona community and my photos were not as good as his would have been.

I did a bit of solo travel:

• By car to visit my sister and see the Lichfield Mystery Plays
• By train to Stratford to visit daughter, s-i-l and granddaughter and to see an understudy performance of Twelfth Night (brilliant!)
• By train to Glasgow to visit my cousin
• By train and ferries and coach to Iona for a week’s visit and catch up with the Mister
• And back home again by ferries, coach and trains visiting daughter no. 3 and all of her family in Lancashire en route.

I found that journeys completed successfully alone leave me with a real buzz of achievement. There’s something about it that makes me feel capable and alive.

I did the usual amount of knitting and stitching

  We had visitors:

• From Devon
• From Holland
• From the Czech Republic
• From Leeds
• From South Africa
• Daughter no. 3 and two of her littlies
• And currently an actor friend who is rehearsing and performing in Bristol

 That’s a lot of bedlinen!

We have celebrated some birthdays

 

We have had a reunion of college friends some forty years on

We have visited Devon for the Preview of an exhibition by friends

 

We have been to a “secret” gig

Seen a couple of films

Visited Stratford again to see the Comedy of Errors

 

We have watched the Olympics on the telly (and now the Paralympics)

 

I have watched these sunflowers grow painfully slowly to (finally) produce a tiny flower!

white hope

A little bit of hope on a grey day!

For at least seven years we have had a window box of white pelargoniums sitting on the outside sill of the window in our basement light-well . It’s very sheltered down there and although it doesn’t get a great deal of bright light the plants have thrived on benign neglect, getting taller and taller and flowering almost all year round. I really love them; they’re not as intense and showy as the red or pink ones I generally put on the front windowsill (and have to renew every spring), but I love their quiet persistence and delicate old-fashioned blooms.

This year I have begun to fear that they are on the way out. They had become impossibly “leggy” in the continuing search for light and were falling and breaking. I decided it was time to have a go at taking cuttings. (Foolproof according to the BBC gardening website). These are the results.
Not only have they taken and rooted, but they are bursting into flower as well. I’m sure a gardening purist would say that I should have nipped off the flower buds to give the roots more chance to develop, but I just couldn’t bear to. This year’s gardening has been deeply disappointing after my enthusiastic start blogged back in April, so I’m just taking a little bit of encouragement where I find it.

star chart - final instalment

Here's the update on the rest of my 50 before 60 manifesto:
33. Continue to explore faith and doubt with my spiritual director: still doing this regularly; in fact I saw her today.
34. Do work filing once a month instead of a marathon when life becomes impossible: have definitely got better at this, but there's a bit of a pile at the moment - this is a good reminder.
35. Make a simnel cake: Yes, did this and reported on it here.
36. Go to cinema once a month: started well on this, but have lapsed of late. There hasn’t been much that appealed to me and there’s no point just going for the sake of it.
37. Finish my "cortona" quilt: I’ve been working on this.
39. Make a range of "earth friendly" cotton shopping bags for the Arts Trail: Yes, did this – reported here.
41. Have a pedicure: this didn’t turn out quite as planned, but Ruth suggested that we should have mutual footcare evenings. She’s having difficulty reaching her feet because of advanced pregnancy and I struggle too because of stiff joints and avoirdupois, so it’s worked out well and means that my feet are getting regular treatment rather than just a one-off.
42. Write up detailed job notes for my successor at work: not started this, but have started talking and planning for the changeover.
48. Reawaken my interest in wildflowers and foster my granddaughter’s existing interest in flowers by teaching her the names of wildflowers and collecting some to press: we have done a little bit of this and started a scrap book.

elegant ladies

I've been getting such pleasure from these beautiful amaryllis. They grow so fast and bloom so dramatically. I bought these in Ikea of all places in early December. My normal preference for colour is a definite shade like the red, but I'm so glad I got the pale one as well - that pinky blush is so delicate and lovely.