16 July: To foreign parts

Away for a weekend near Cambridge, to visit family we haven't seen for a while.
On the journey down the A1, we came up to the back end of a traffic jam south of Grantham. With no idea how long the tail-back was, or what was causing it, we followed out habit of taking the next turning off the main road, and navigating our way back further along the road. (Me being able to read a map and all that.)
And, as so often happens, we had an absolutely charming trip through a bit of the country we've never seen before, knew nothing at all about, and really enjoyed the detour. Our revised route took us through Stamford, which neither of us has ever been near before, and it looked so interesting we may well go back there some time to have a good look round.

It was necessary to go into Cambridge on Saturday for some essentials, so we had lunch there in a very nice vegetarian restaurant.
There were a million or two tourists milling about.

We, of course, weren't actual tourists, as the children diverted our attention from the sights by employing the crafty strategy of needing the loo fairly frequently. At least we now know several handy loos in the town!
The journey home was incredibly hot (or could it be my age?), and then the raspberries needed picking and the seedlings needed watering before we could catch up on the weekend's happenings in Le Tour.

14 July: Busy, busy

All yesterday morning with a carpet shampooer trying to eradicate the marks where my husband's cat had been sick on the carpet. (It's fine if you find it soon afterwards and clear it up, but when it's been there all night....)

Then planting out some seedlings into the rock-hard, dry-clay soil at the bottom of the garden. There's a blister on my palm from the trowel handle.

And most of the evening (after Le Tour on TV) sorting out some more family history information from the 1891 census. Enough new leads there to start me off again, and I thought I'd done just about all I could until I can get to some County Record Offices for parish records.

12 July: a quiet life

Firstly, if anyone is trying to send an e-mail with a new e-address, remember we have a highly effective spam filter - phone or post with details!
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Picking the raspberries is keeping me busy. It seems to have been unfavourable for the growth of the canes this year, and the poor spindly things are bending right over with the weight of the fruit. it makes picking them more difficult. At least the birds are finding it just as hard.
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A neighbour's cat has discovered our bird-feeding arrangements, and a couple of times we've spotted a sturdy black furry tail sticking out of a large hellebore by the bird feeder, and shooed him away. He's a handsome cat, but he gets fed at home, so he doesn't need the birds.
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With cooler evenings, and Le Tour on TV, I've been making progress with my striped cardigan, and finished the sewing up and the edgings. There's still the buttons to sew on, and button loops to make, and tidying and blocking. It's turned out heavier than I expected, but as I made it up as I went along, that's not really surprising. Anyway, if you need a woollen cardigan, you usually need a warm one.

5 July: Bits and pieces

A number of things to mention, as it's been a few days since the last posting.

First there has been the sad task of disposing of the last remaining house martin chick's body. When we came home yesterday, we found the remains of the entire nest, including a tiny live chick, lying in the drive - it had fallen off the wall.
Following RSPB instructions, we fashioned a substitute nest from a plastic box, and fastened it by the bathroom window, which was as near as we could get it to the original site above the window. The idea was that the chick's cries would attract the parents to the box, and they would continue to feed the chick.
The parent birds returned many times to the place the nest had been, but completely ignored the nearby box containing their chick - it was probably too weak to call by then anyway.
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On a more cheerful note, the raspberries are getting ripe enough to pick - if I can beat the sparrows and blackbirds to them!
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There has been some publicity lately about a woman who had a stroke, and now allegedly sounds more like a Jamaican than the Geordie she really is (she sounds just like a Geordie to me). This has been described as "Foreign Accent Syndrome", which is surely an invention of an imaginative journalist.
But those of you who know me will appreciate that this Syndrome has haunted me for the past 25 years, ever since I moved to the North-East.
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And a couple of pictures - from a visit this week to Wallington House in Northumberland . Resisting the gardens, which are one of the great attractions there, I turned my camera on the famous gargoyle heads on the front lawn.

Here they are all in a row, and below is a close up. Wonder what they look like by moonlight?


P.S. "I told you so in May" - well July actually: my notice of retirement has gone to my line manager.

July 2: Wool and wheels

Yesterday we went to the Woolfest at Cockermouth. Photos are only from the livestock section - the sales and demonstration areas were too packed with people to be able to photograph - anyway I was too busy with a bit of retail frenzy.

The sheep above is either Hebridean or Shetland, and the ones below are Wensleydale; they have wool like mohair.


And this one below is a Teeswater.


I bought kilos of fibre ready-prepared for spinning - Shetland, Blue Faced Leicester, and Merino, which I've never tried spinning but was on sale in such sensational colours I just HAD to have some. Also a high speed whorl for my Majacraft Little Gem wheel, for fine spinning, and a tensioned Lazy Kate, which will perhaps make plying less prone to tangles.

And we still managed to be home in time to catch part of Le Tour prologue. Pity Jan Ullrich isn't in it this year - he looks much fitter than the past few years, and Ivan Basso's absence will make a difference too.

So for the next 3 weeks (apart from rest days - Mondays), we will be glued to the TV every evening.

June 30: Better?

E-mail now working again. Think I've found a grey hair!

E-mail problem

Our e-mail has gone haywire. If you need to contact us, please use the phone.

29 June: Sunshine

It was nice enough to sit in the garden this afternoon, in shorts. The roses are looking good, and so is the clematis. Lots of foxgloves have seeded themselves in the borders, and the raspberries are growing larger, but not yet turning red. This year we have had some rhubarb off our single plant; it was planted 3 years ago, and we thought it had died, as nothing came up the first year - then last year a couple of leaves appeared, and this year there have been enough sticks for us to pull a few off once or twice.

June 28: Work

Yesterday my work shoes fell apart. They were old, well worn, and very comfortable. Today I discovered that June is not the best time to find suitable shoes to wear for work - unless hideously uncomfortable strappy sandals are what you want.
As a vegetarian, I prefer to have non-leather shoes if I can, but if they have to be leather, then they have to last as long as possible. What I really fancied was a pair of pink and black check sneakers, but settled for a pair of black DMs; sandal sort of thing, but dead comfy. They will last me well past the end of my employed life, and will be OK to wear away from work.

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Also yesterday DH chalked up 40 years service with his government department. Nobody noticed. Today I challenged him to get into conversation either "40 years service" or "40 years, man and boy" - and I'm pleased to say he managed to do so.
When he started there, it was a good career, and those who reached the grade he is at now were very well regarded, and well paid. Now he finds his years of specialist knowledge and expertise earn him just about an average wage, and has to cope with the constant major upheavals and job insecurity, plus of course hostility from the public, that are the main features of public service. When he is scrapped (perhaps next year, as his office is radically down-sizing) his work will probably be done by a temp hired from an employment agency.

June 27: Tragedy

Just got home from work, and found a tiny dead chick on the drive.It must be from the house martins' nest above the porch. I buried it in the border, then looked carefully at the nest. There is enough mess on the porch roof to indicate that the eggs have hatched, but there are 2 more tiny bodies on the porch roof! I'll have to get the steps out later and remove them.
What's gone wrong? It's been chilly the last few days, and it's rained, but for 3 chicks to die is awful.

June 25: The World Cup

As it's rained from dawn to now, and been rather chilly with it, we've had in indoors sort of day.

DH has been listening to some jazz, and watching an animated film (probably Japanese), and I have been hunched over a hot keyboard, doing some "armchair" family history research for a computer-less friend.

It's been really fun, following the clues he gave me, and using fairly limited resources, and coming up with a sketch of a family tree over 4 or 5 generations. Of course, I can't be sure it's all right, as I haven't been looking at primary source documents, but in the light of my previous experiences with this sort of research, it looks pretty plausible. I've parcelled up the pile of print-outs (needed a bulldog clip rather than a paper clip!), and crammed it all into an envelope for posting off.

Then to counter-act all that keyboarding, thinking, and peering at the screen, I've sat and spun half a bobbin of superwash fibre. I don't know if it will be machine washable when it's knitted up, but it doesn't half smell funny when it's wet!

And in another world, the football has continued without us.

June 22: Midsummer

The calendar says summer, but the thermometer doesn't! It was chilly enough for the central heating to come on this morning. So to pretend it's lovely and sunny, here are some colourful pictures from the garden earlier this week. The primulas above are seedlings from the original yellow one in the background - I was hoping it would cross with some of the others in that border, and it has obliged.

The rose on the pergola is now competing with 2 clematis - a large blue flowered one called Lord Nevill, and a small dark one called Etoile Violette. Both look good with the creamy white roses. Along the side of the path that goes under the pergola is a row of lavender -


The ordinary lavender just died, but this has done very well, and the smell and colour are wonderful!

When the Chelsea Flower Show was on, and there were endless TV programmes about it, one of the plants that seemed popular this year was astrantia. It's a plant I've only had for 2 or 3 years, and it seems to be thriving without any problem - just what's wanted in a good garden plant.

June 20: Weaving and Packaging

This piece of weaving was not quite finished when we went on holiday, but now it's finished, fulled, and ready for use.

Perhaps the next thing to make on the weaving frame will be a shawl, using some nice soft hand-dyed and hand-spun yarn.

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Regarding the NFWI's protest today about packaging - our local council won't recycle plastic, and they don't collect cardboard. Our solution to the cardboard, including much supermarket packaging, is to put it all into a box in the conservatory ("conservation" being an appropriate use for a conservatory), and when it's full, take it to the local tip and hoy it in the skip marked "cardboard". Any plastic carrier bags are saved and returned to the collecting box at Tesco's. Back in the 1990s I made a number of patchwork bags, which hang in the broom cupboard and come out every week for the supermarket trip. If we are going to the town centre shops, I take one of the patchwork bags, and try to refuse shop carrier bags.
There isn't a farm shop nearby - is it greener to buy at the supermarket, or drive many extra miles (taking lots of extra time too), and still have to go to the supermarket for the other stuff?

Rhodes

Even though it was early in the season, it was still impossible to take photographs at tourist sites without including strangers. This is the acropolis above Rhodes town - there is a well-preserved stadium just below it, where one elderly Greek was jogging gently round, and another was stripped to his underpants, soaking up the sun. We left before he could take them off, too.


Not so many tourists here - it's the Archaeological museum. Had we been extra smart, we would have visited on Monday, as it was a Bank Holiday (as we discovered when we needed to change some money), and the museums were open but not charging for entry. We found that out when we went to the Grand Master's Palace.

There were few flowers about in the town, but they were very brilliantly coloured. The arches across the lanes are supposed to hold the buildings up in the event of an earthquake - would you like to rely on that?


And this is a typical lane in Rhodes Old town - cobbles, a scooter parked at the end, and a cat.

There were hundreds of cats, some well looked after, most not. One morning as we sat in a cafe with lemonade and baklavas, we watched a cat creep up on a parked scooter with a basket of shopping on the front. He reached up to the bag, but couldn't fish out whatever he was after, so he got up on the seat, then onto the handlebars, and reached his paw down into the basket. Unfortunately, he was spotted by a passer-by who tried to take a photo of him, and as he clearly didn't want to be caught (on camera or otherwise), he retreated under a nearby car.

June 16: Home again

From Mediterranean sunshine, it was a bit of a shock to arrive at a foggy 8 degree Newcastle airport at 5 a.m. yesterday.

Plan C ended up as a week in Rhodes, about which we knew absolutely nothing till we got there. We had a most enjoyable week, chilling "right to de bone", and doing what we do so well, i.e. pottering about. There was all the old town to explore, harbours, ruins, beaches, hundreds of eating places, all within easy strolling distance. There were even Greek dishes on the menu at many places. By luck rather than judgement, we stayed in an area sheltered from the wind off the Aegean Sea.

We took a couple of trips out, one to Lindos, which was a bit of a misunderstanding; and one a jeep safari (inevitably called "Off Rhodes"), which was very good, in spite of the obligatory stops at the businesses of several mates for them to try and sell us souma, honey, and wine.

The TV over there was interesting - the World Cup, of course, but not exclusively from the English point of view (where we stayed had a large proportion of German, Dutch and Italian guests); the only English speaking channel we found was CNN, but the soaps, sit-coms and "Who wants to be a Millionaire" (German version) were all instantly recognisable, even to us poor monolinguists.

Back home, some of the washing mountain has been tackled, and all our 174 photos have been downloaded, printed out and neatly labelled before we forget where they were all taken. If I can find the energy, I might even put a few up on the blog!

And after the vivid colours of the extravagant flowers of Rhodes, it was a delight to find all the roses in full bloom, plus the blue clematis, the oriental poppy, alliums, dianthus and foxgloves.

7 June: Holiday!

Just a couple of flowers to keep you all going for a week or so, while we are away in sunnier climes. Actually it would be hard to be sunnier than it has been here for the last couple of days, but it's our fortnight off work, and we need a change. Plans A and B fell through, so a hastily arranged Plan C kicks off this afternoon.

The rose above is Old Blush, now fully out. Below is one of the first flowers on Mme. Alfred Carriere, who scrambles all over the pergola in unrestrained fashion - this flower is, of course, high up, and had to be photographed at arm's length, guessing where to point! Pity the sunshine wasn't on it. More when we get back. Now, where's the sun cream....

4 June: Old Folkies

Having been nowhere near a folk club for years and years, last night DH and I went to see/hear Jez Lowe at Frosterley Village Hall - on his own, no Bad Pennies. Very good performance, and he's still writing excellent songs. He did one about the Durham Big Meeting that I need to get on a CD. One of his songs was about the shipyards, and as well as Tyneside and Clydeside there were mentions of Jarrow and Barrow.

My great-grandfather worked in the shipyard at Barrow, as did my grandfather and my two great-uncles. Grandfather was quite an athlete, winning 2 race walks organised by the company (Vickers, Sons and Maxim) in 1903. He and his brothers escaped from the shipyard onto the stage, singing in the Music Halls, which is where my grandparents met. One of the projects planned for my retirement is more research on their stage careers.

After an absence of some weeks, the ice cream van is back - playing the Blue Peter theme tune at double speed.

2 June: This week in the garden

This is the first rose of summer. Only a bud in the picture taken on Wednesday, but now fully open. It's a variety called Old Blush, lots of pretty flowers on a rather spindly bush - but perhaps that's just it's particular location.

Very near to that rose, but on the other side of the fence, is our neighbour's eucalyptus tree (and a bit of the buddleia nobody pruned this spring). It was planted by the previous occupants of the house, and it will almost certainly be chopped down when the new owners discover just how tall it's going to grow! 3 years old, it's about 20 feet high now. Most of the back-garden trees round here are chopped off at a height of 8-10 feet. This, of course, encourages the growth of multiple leaders, but the idiots who do it think they will just stop the tree growing any taller.


Under our young rowan tree, in the shady border, the pinkbells (they are bluebells, but the flowers are actually pinkish) look good against a background of lungwort leaves.


And over in the sunny border, alliums are spreading like crazy from a few bulbs put in a couple of years ago. Behind this one is a philadelphus bush, and one of those "lambs' lugs" plants.


The bird baths are doing a roaring trade. The one that is on a stalk (pedestal is much too grand for a plastic item from the garden centre) is quite deep, and the blackbirds have brought their youngsters there for a wash and brush up. The shallow dish of water on the ground, meanwhile, has been hosting a mass splash featuring 6 or 8 adult and juvenile sparrows - they don't stand still long enough to be counted. And the house martins definitely don't have chicks yet - no fecal packets on the porch roof, but the parents crap on the car every time!

May 31: Fame at last!

The String Bag has been listed on diamond geezer's blog today as one of MANY that link to his blog.

About time the links list was updated with some of the other regular reads. Here goes with hours of harmless fun grappling with the technical bits. Don't hold your breath - it could take some time.

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Later: That seems to be OK. You'll tell me if it isn't, won't you?

May 29: Spring Bank Holiday

Proper Bank Holiday weather - chilly with intermittent sharp showers of rain. Yesterday was sunny, if a bit breezy, so DH and I went for a walk.

We parked near Beamish Museum and set off through the delightfully named Hell Hole Wood.


Continuing on through woods and across fields, crossing a lane and a road, we reached Causey Gill, and paused to take a picture of Causey Arch, built in 1727, the oldest railway bridge in the world. The rails carried horse-drawn wagons until the invention of the steam locomotive.


Our return route passed Beamish golf course, and the Museum's Home Farm, where we were amused by the road sign saying "Beware of visitors". Carefully dodging the wild visitors, we gained the safety of Hell Hole Wood again, and back to the car. We ambitiously thought we'd be home for lunch, but the six miles took us longer than we'd anticipated (all those stops to take photos), so we were starving by the time we got back home.

Today we are avoiding the Bank Holiday crowds by staying at home - the estate is always quiet on Bank Holidays. DH cleaned out the interior of his car, before the accumulated dirt and muck could form sedimentary rock.

I have dyed some wool, in an attempt to match what is running out before the sleeves of the cardigan are done. Don't knitting patterns always say "make sure all the wool is from the same dye lot"? Well, there's no pattern, as it's being made up as I go along. Even using the same recipe and amounts, it's come out rather different - but perhaps not different enough to stop me using it.

And just for a bit of added colour, here's a picture of a comfrey flower from a local wayside clump.

Novelties

The low boredom threshold was crossed this week. So steps had to be taken to liven things up a bit.

Tried some mealtime variety - the mixed saute vegetables were very good, as was the home-grown rhubarb, but the dhal and veggie hot dogs with lettuce was a digestive disaster. Any food tends to produce wind these days, but this particular combination was dynamite. Let's move on....

And, BTW, have you noticed how this is the phrase of the moment? After some nasty incident like murder, they all used to have to "come to terms with it", but now they "move on".

With retirement coming up over the horizon (well, at the end of the year), there's the prospect of all that lovely time to get on with lots of projects. The family history might get converted into a book properly, and there'll be plenty of time for spinning and knitting. As an extension to this, there is now a new toy crammed into my small workroom (what an estate agent might call a child's bedroom).

It's a Spriggs Patented Tri Loom, made to order in Columbia, Missouri. Essentially three large pieces of wood and a box of nails, for making triangular pieces of weaving in various sizes up to 7 feet along the diagonal. A preliminary attempt has worked very well, and it looks like it'll be a great toy.

Its journey here could be followed on the UPS website by entering its tracking number - it was checked in to Columbia, Missouri at 7.25 p.m. USA Eastern Time on 24th May (they are 5 hours behind us, so that would be 12.25 a.m. on 25th May our time), went to St. Louis, Missouri that evening with adverse weather conditions causing a delay; adverse weather affected its onward journey to Louisville, Kentucky; it left Louisville at 6.49 a.m. on 25th May, travelling to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, leaving there at 9.56 a.m. for Cologne, Germany; by 2.11 a.m. (local time) on 26th May it was leaving Cologne bound for the East Midlands Airport in England; by 3.09 a.m. (again our local time) it was setting out from the East Midlands to the local County Durham depot, and it was delivered here before lunch on the 26th May. Under 36 hours for the whole distance, including delays. Perhaps UPS could advise the Royal Mail?

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Although it was such a bad spring for our garden birds, we have a family of 3 fledged sparrowlings accompanying their parents to our bird feeders, and the house martins in their nest above the bathroom window make their foreign burbling noises in the early mornings; they have either eggs or chicks in there.

The jogging has been shelved for the time being (lovely mixed metaphor there) for the sake of my poorly knee. I'll have to find another way of combatting the middle-age spread. Actually, going to Tesco's is quite good - compared with all the tubs of lard pushing trolleys full of pies, lager and crisps, I feel positively svelte. And when I think about it, I'm only 2 sizes bigger than I was when I was 16.

21 May: more of the same

The stitchwort is still flowering, though the dandelions are past their best, and the vetch is beginning to appear. This week has been quite wet here, and there has been a strong breeze - this beech tree's new leaves were actually rippling in the wind:


Back home in the garden, the acers have opened new leaves. This is a potted acer griseum - wonderful colour and the still crumpled new growth is quite furry.


The knitting has progressed, with the weather being more suitd to the indoor pursuit. The body of the striped item is finished, and there is about half a pound of mixed colours left; I am unsure if this is enough to mix with the basic colours to make 2 sleeves, but I've cast one on, and hope to make both sleeves in random stripes the same as the completed body.

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In a completely different vein, an overheard on a bus the other day (students probably) - "so did Jesus actually have any of Mary's DNA then?"

Views in the comments box, please.

Not the normal routine

This week has seen a couple of events that were different from the usual pattern of life here.
The first was an Open day at the exhibition of the local Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers. Guild members brought spinning and weaving equipment to the exhibition venue, and demonstrated the various activities to visitors. This was totally new for me; I have never actually spun in company before, let alone in public, so I was rather more than a trifle nervous about it. But it was OK - I managed to pretend I was an expert, and none of the visitors knew the difference.

It turned out to be quite fun - one of the spinners went out to get a sandwich, and bumped into a coach-load of tourists coming out of the Bishop's palace, and told them they really shouldn't miss this wonderful and exciting exhibition. They all crowded in, providing the busiest twenty minutes of the day. Some spinners from Yorkshire called in, on a visit to a local friend, and lots of people who came into the library saw what was going on, and dropped in to have a look.

While there, I noticed a poster advertising a gig by Vin Garbutt the following night, so DH and I went along to hear him. The last time I heard him sing live was probably about 1980, so it was really good to hear him again - especially in the light of his health problems of last year. Mind you, his heart operation and subsequent complications gave him a wonderful amount of material for his patter between songs - particularly good were the bits about his conversations with the doctors.

Vin isn't a singer who gets airplay on the BBC - he says it's because his songs are too long, but it just might be that anyone from further South than Doncaster probably wouldn't be able to understand his Teesside accent. Excellent songs, though, and a really entertaining performance.

14 May: "Hello trees"

Some more pictures from the garden this past week. Lots of cowslips, all self-sown, around the base of the rowan. This rowan was self-sown in our previous garden, and lived in a pot for several years before being released into the wild in our present garden. It's now about 10 feet tall. A similarly pot-grown seedling birch has grown to about 15 feet since being released 4 years ago.


The other pictures are all of trees still in pots - above is carpinus laxiflora - that's what's on the label, even though the endings don't agree in proper Latin. Below is gingko biloba.


And this one is (another non-agreeing) pinus parviflora. I'm not sure if these shoots are leaves/needles or flowers, but all will be revealed in a few days.


Fotherington-Thomas of course is a weedy wet (except when he plays tennis, when he am a tiger) for saying "Hello trees, hello sky", but it's OK for a girly.
(Guffaws of laughter from the family).

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The jogging has been impossible this week (poor swollen knee), but we have managed a couple of good walks. It's so good to be able to eat and then go out for a walk instead of slumping in front of the TV.

13 May: Home, sweet home.

Ah the joys of living on a modern housing estate!

In the winter we have the run-off from washing the cars frozen across the road, creating a hazard for those of us who can't skate, ski, rollerblade, skateboard or otherwise stand up on something that moves suddenly. And don't forget the fireworks - not only on 5 November, but at any time the master of the house comes home from the pub slightly merry and in the mood for fun. Christmas time brings out the competitive spirit in some residents, who attempt to plaster their houses with more twinkling fairy lights, flashing reindeer, and inflatable Santas than the neighbours.

In the summer it's barbecues on the decking, with the floodlights and the patio heater going full blast; lots of cans and bottles, fun and lots of laughs. Or sitting in the garden with the cricket/football/golf/Formula 1 on the telly indoors, but turned well up so it can be heard in the garden.
At holiday time, the burglar alarms have to be set, so that they can go off intermittently for the fortnight that the family's away. That's as well as the hyper-sensitive car alarm on the car that's left at home while they go to the Metrocentre in the 4x4.

An avalanche of charity collecting bags - there have been up to 4 in a week sometimes. The amount of large plastic bags that come through the door in a year is probably enough to create a temporary camp for refugees from flood/earthquake/war.

And all the time people banging on the door, suggesting a change of gas and electricity supplier, doing a "quick survey" which turns out to be 25 minutes of inane questions about TV adverts, or seeking to interest the home-owner in some sort of improvement to the house. How do they know when you've just started to knead bread or rub in pastry?

As the last houses to be built here were occupied under 4 years ago, it might seem that they would not need a lot doing to them (apart from the plumbing, which seems to have been hastily assembled in the dark by dyspraxic runaways from a home for the bewildered, using random parts from various countries with incompatible measurement systems, without the benefit of any instructions, whether translated from the Japanese into Croatian and thence into English or not).

Nevertheless, perfectly good tarmac drives have been ripped up and replaced with those little brick-like slabs that sink where the car wheels stand, and grow lovely grass in between; dozens of conservatories and "garden rooms" have been crammed into the already small back gardens; bathrooms and kitchens have been re-fitted, floors have been re-laid, gardens landscaped, and probably all the houses except ours totally redecorated.

Perhaps it's time to think of moving.

11 May: The bluebell wood

Blaid's wood in Durham city is carpeted with bluebells. Other flowers are out, too, like this wild garlic -


But bluebells everywhere, here with stitchwort:


There were celandines, dandelions, a bit of early cow parsley, garlic mustard, wood anemones, violets, and red campion, too. Small birds twittered and sang, a wood pigeon cooed, a crow was imitating a Dalek, and there was a distant whirr of the mower at the crematorium.


Several people were walking in the wood - one had a stout and wheezy old labrador dog, but the others were just enjoying the bluebells. I could have stayed there all day, but I had to visit Mr Tesco.

10 May: in the garden

This was one of the house martins reconstructing a nest at the front of our house last night. Last year's nest fell down during the winter. At one time there were two birds building, and a third trying to get in on the act. And all twittering like mad. It's not a very sharp photo, as it's my little 4 megapixel digital camera on maximum zoom, the sun was going down, and necessarily the nest is in shadow.


Elsewhere in the garden this primula/polyanthus looks cool with a background of euonymus. There are lots of different primulas in this border, and perhaps some of the seedlings coming up will be interesting hybrids.


What was originally one small plant of this spotted violet has begun to spread as well.


And this started out as just a couple of auricula plants brought from the previous garden. They are taking over another section of the border.

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Inside the house, the striped knitting is progressing slowly (not spending so much time watching TV); the small cloth dolls have come to a halt while the next steps are worked out - there was a frustrating evening looking for a bag of sequins which had got misplaced in the last reorganisation of the tiny workroom, then when they were found, they didn't seem appropriate. And the jogging has continued for a whole week - 3 outings, one of them with DH, resulting in slightly creaky knees.

Stitchwort

The stitchwort is flowering. Locally here it is along the hedges and path sides, in the same sort of places as bluebells. One of my favourite floral displays is bluebells, stitchwort, and red campion all out together in the woods.


There are still some flowers on the willow - this bee was feeding happily on what's left. There was a red-tailed bumble bee about, which just would not stay still long enough to be photographed.


This is not a good photograph from the point of view of composing the shot, attention to background and so on, but I was trying to get a record of the plant, which I couldn't readily identify. There was a very large patch of it by the roadside. Study of my battered copy of Fitter and Blamey ("The wild flowers of Britain and Northern Europe" by Richard and Alistair Fitter and Marjorie Blamey ) reveals that it's probably yellow archangel - a rather upmarket name for something that looks remarkably like a nettle. The only difference is that the plant in the picture has variegated leaves, which is not mentioned in the book. If this is wrong, please identify it correctly for me.

Botanic Gardens

After shopping for shoes and failing to find any that both appealled and fitted, a boost was required. So off to the Botanic gardens, where not only the gardens but also the coffee shop are most attractive. Once the body was fortified with coffee and the obligatory bun, the plants called. Above is the view from one of the gazebos - the early daffodils are over, but there are still plenty in bloom, partnering the plum blossom beautifully.


In one of the hothouses are several sorts of butterfly, as well as a pool full of goldfish. In tanks are spiders, insects and small amphibians. The cockroaches were wonderfully marked, but almost indistinguishable from the bark litter in their tank, so not very photogenic!


New growth is appearing all around - these leaves were particularly fresh and "just out of the wrapper".


There are a few sculptures in the gardens, including this heron in the pool near the hothouses. In the background is one of a circle of sculptures depicting North East historical worthies.


In the Himalayan Dell is this row of birches, looking spectacular today in the sunshine and before their leaves open. From this angle the building site (a new college) can't be seen.


But these tulips make my favourite picture of the day - a real blast of colour!

Things we used to do

OK folks, you can relax - this is a religion-free posting.

Today there's been a couple of activities that haven't been done for a while - cloth doll making and jogging.

Breakfast browsing/reading today was "Making creative cloth dolls" by Marthe le Van, and that triggered off a couple of ideas. I haven't done any sewing for ages, and it seemed like a good thing to try on a free day off work. Two freehand patterns were drawn on sheets of A4 paper, and two small dolls have been cut out, one is sewn together and stuffed, and the second is partly sewn together. Once assembled, they will have faces, hair and belly buttons added, and any other ornamentation, embellishment, or clothing that seems appropriate.

Jogging - 20 years ago it was fairly easy to run a half marathon, so why is it now so hard to jog not quite 3 miles? I could almost have walked it in the time it took. Probably something to do with sitting and knitting all winter, plus the left-over effect of the broken knee 2 years ago, and having that wired up for 10 months. The inactivity plus the eating equals the difficulty in finding running kit big enough. These hip bones used to stick out - now it's the avoirdupois that sticks out.

Progress reports on both activities in due course.