A mind of its own!

For the first time I have been able to sort out my garden, as the season goes along, not after the flowers are over or when the slugs have eaten all the veg. So this year the weather has messed things up, lovely month of April, but since then there has been little or no growth on the veg front. The courgette plants have barely grown and all the fowers have been male. The climbing beans have done well, but the small French beans have been attacked by the slugs.

Do you know what the most annoying thing is? I have filled in the pond and reseeded the area, with grass seed, ordinary green grass seed. What has grown? Tomatoes, courgettes, potatoes, and the odd bean or two.

Now tell me, should I leave them to grow and develop their fruit - or shall I fight for grass?

What could be more relaxing?

Than sitting out in the garden on a hot sunny day, reading a book, eating a salad and listening to the young swallows, house martins and swifts playing around in the sky above? There is a certain element of hooliganism in the young swifts, they scream around sounding rather like bully boys, whils the others tweeter around.

Then the bloomin RAF training school helicopters decide to join in - now they ARE the bully boys. They are bigger, noisier and far more menacing. And they come back again and again. When they spoil the peace on a daily basis, I almost feel like joining the pacifists in this world!!

A day out with the girls in Staffordshire.

What a lovely day it has been. I spent it with another Liz and some other friends of hers, at Trentham Gardens near Stoke on Trent, I used to spend some time there when I was training teachers in Stoke. If I had an hour or two between appointments, I would walk in the gardens. At that time they were overgrown and unkempt, but even so they were charging £2 to enter. So today was going to be interesting - how much would they have been improved?

Well, look at these sites:

http://www.thornber.net/staffs/html/trentham.html

http://www.trenthamleisure.co.uk/

We had a glorious time, the leisure to drink coffee and talk, walk around some very lovely shops as well as the gardens. And they were glorious!! The herbaceous borders were just at the height of their colour and the areas designed by Piet Oudolf, although in their infancy were extremely interesting and attractive. Oh I would love a large garden where there was space enough to plant blocks of a plant, not just one or two of them.

A really enjoyable day - and they had a Moshulu shop!!

Wow - what a telephone call!

Last Friday Wendy was due to come to stay. Wendy was the very kind person who put us up when we all arived at Lilongwe in Malawi last December. She didn't know us, but we stayed with her family at the start of our wonderful holiday. So, of course I asked her to come and stay if ever she came over to the UK.

My little house is not easy to find, so first time visitors usually ring from somewhere nearby - and that is what Wendy did. AND? Well, the electricity went off, the burglar alarm sounded and the telephone went dead. What a call!! As there was no current I couldn't turn the alarm off - drat! The electricity stayed off, so it was an area problem, not Wendy's call. But her phone had also had something happen to it, so she had to dismantle it to make it work again Do you get an idea that this is turning out to be a saga of problems? Mmmm. Finally, I managed to get hold of her and then sent her off in the opposite direction because she had approached our estate from the opposite way that I expected... but we manged it finally, I met her at the local cattery and led her home!

Her daughter is at that age where anything interactive is good, so we went off to Enginuity at Telford for our Saturday's entertainment. http://www.show.me.uk/museum/AM14330.html A great day was had, She did all the activities, including moving a steam engine (yes, a full sized one!) and made a very funny hand puppet. So I think Shropshire has impressed the lass from Malawi!
Meanwhile, I had to fight the router machine to get my computer back online. Virgin were not much use - at an expensive telephone rate! Belkin were superb, they sorted out the router problems and now things are working again and the call cost just 3p, as opposed to something like £5 for no help. Shall I change to Virgin for my mobile phone service? That needs some thinking about!!