MargoMusing

 This weekend is a bank holiday weekend, which means 3 days off. It is also traditional for the weather to be terrible!

It's been very hot over the last couple of days (you know, the days we've been spending in the office) so of course at around 3 a.m. on Saturday morning there was a massive thunderstorm, with torrential rain, and lots of very loud thunder. 

I'm sure that the rain will be good for the garden and fields, but I could have done without being woken at that time of night!

The forecast suggested that we were likely to get more rain over the weekend, but other than a very brief shower, Saturday was dry (although very warm and muggy a lot of the time) so I was able to cut the grass both at the front and back.  

I had turf laid at the back, when I had the gravel removed last year. The front, where I had tarmac removed, was just replaced with topsoil, and I wasn't quick enough to plant it so have an awful lot of docks and nettles and other things I don't really want,but am gradually working on getting rid of the weeds, and getting grass to grow. 

I also planted some young hydrangeas (grown from cuttings from my parents' garden) earlier in the year, which seem to be doing reasonably well. I hope, eventually, that I will have a selection of bushes and flowers - and maybe even a vegetable patch.

The clematis I planted last year is thriving, and has just started to flower, and my tomato plants (in pots and grow bags) and peas (also in pots and grow bags) seem to be doing well; the tomatoes are starting to flower, and the peas have both flowers and little baby mange-tout pods. 

Given that my track record on growing things to eat hasn't been great, and mostly seems to consist of growing things to be eaten by slugs, or to die for no apparent reason, it is very gratifying! I'm really hoping that this year I will get a reasonable crop of tomatoes. The last few years I've grown them, the fruit has't had time to ripen before it gets too cold, but I started the seedlings off earlier this year, and I'm keeping some of them in pots indoors, so hopefully those will ripen, even if the outdoors ones don't!

So, I've been pottering around, doing a bit of weeding and pruning and re-potting, and I also did various bits of housework, because sometimes you run out of excuses not to! 

After all our shopping, we headed down to Devon, to my parents home, for the Easter weekend. Both my sisters were there, plus K's fiance. On Saturday evening, we decided to support local enterprise by visiting the local pub (One of the many good things about my parents' home is that the pub is within easy walking distance. And it has good beer)

Sunday morning involved ringing for some of us: my parents have been teaching a group of people to ring, as there was no local band in the village when they moved there. The church has been having some building works done, as a result of which the bells have not been available since just after Christmas, and Easter Day was the first service (other than a wedding the previous afternoon) for which the bells were rung.
I had got up early-ish, so decided to join my mum and dad and have a quick ring, then I left them to it, bought a Sunday paper or two and wandered back to the house. The field opposite their house is currently full of sheep and lambs, and I enjoyed hearing the bells and the bleating of the lambs.

As they were predicting rain, for later, we decided to head out to the seaside for a walk after breakfast, and we went to Baggy Point.
It was a greyish day, but didn't actually rain on us while we were walking. There were lots of people there, but also lots of wild flowers - I spotted primroses, violets, thrift, bladder campion, and a few others whose names I didn't know. There were skylarks, singing their best, and black-blacked gulls, looking sinister. In the sea were many surfers, inspired more by hope than reality, as the sea was flat as a pancake.

We then divided the party, with the more energetic half going on for a longer walk (and later, I heard, ending up in a pub) and the more decrepit half of the party walking back, via a small National Trust cafe with some of the slowest service I have met with for some considerable time! (The cake was nice, but it wasn't nice enough to justify the wait!)

And later, it being Easter, we ate roast lamb, with all the trimmings.

Easter Monday, being a bank holiday, was naturally soaking wet. I don't think it stopped raining at all, so we were forced to stay indoors, reading and eating chocolate and other good things. It was most restful.

And while my sisters both then departed, to drive home in the rain, I had booked Tuesday as a day off, so was able to stay on, and drove home in sunshine (and occasional hail) on Tuesday afternoon. It was a nice weekend.

(Originally posted at http://margomusing.blogspot.com/2010/06/its-weekend.html - please comment there or here)

I guess that after last weekend’s excitement, the rest of the week was always going to be a bit of a anticlimax. It was mostly spent working, and trying to catch up on lost sleep.

There was time, however, to help Cheryl move, on Monday evening, and to enjoy the signs of spring – I drive past woodland on my way to work, and over the past week the bluebells have all come out, as has the wild garlic, although that has not yet reached full strength as you cannot yet smell it as you drive past! The horse-chestnuts are in full flower, and on all the residential streets there are ornamental cherry trees covered with pink or white blossom.

It was wet and windy this morning, so the blossom was falling like snow.

In my own garden, the kingcups in my miniature pond are out in force, the clematis plant I bought last year seems to have woken up and is galloping at speed up the trellis, and the aquilegia is our, although oddly, all of those seem to be purple this year (I’m sure at least one was white, last year…) The rock geraniums are flowering busily (They are a bit pink for me, but seem to be VERY hardy, so I think I shall have them around for a while)

I shall also have an excellent crop of Herb Robert, although as that’s technically a weed, I probably shouldn’t boast about it – it is quite pretty, however, and grows in the cracks of the paving I haven’t been able to take up, yet.

And the lettuce, tomato, cauliflower and herb seedlings which I planted out all seem still to be alive, and growing, and not yet completely devoured by slugs and snails.

Once it stops raining, I shall go out and do a bit of weeding, and meanwhile, as it is a weekend, I think I shall do some baking – I think I feel a poppy seed cake coming on..