Sunday Scribblings

Sunday and another new month - half the year already gone it's frightening isn't it?  Thank you all for your lovely comments on my previous post - I am not sure you should encourage me though as I get the bit between my teeth and then there's no stopping me!  A  little posy picked from the garden this afternoon - I always wished for a picking garden and have planted seeds to this effect but so far the slugs seem to have polished off anything which raised its head above the parapet in my picking garden so this is what I found instead.

Thanks for your comments on my bees - I will of course be honoured to have them living so close to my back door - last year it was wasps outside the bedroom window!  We were told that they never re-use the same nest and that if they weren't causing any bother to let them be so of course that is what we did.  I had a word with them and asked them to kindly refrain from coming into the bedroom whose window they had chosen to nest in close proximity to (oops that doesn't sound like very good English "never use a preposition to end a sentence with" or something?!)  You may laugh at my having a chat with them but it did the trick and we had no wasps in the house at all last summer.  It's the same with ants - we used to have ants nesting under the stones on the patio area outside our French windows when we lived in Guildford and I spoke nicely to them and said that as long as they remained outside I would promise never to use ant powder nor to pour kettles of boiling water on them (though I was once too late to stop my mother in law doing just that and then had to apologise profusely to the remaining ants) or to use any other horrible way to get rid of them - we would live in harmony.  Which we did.  I even discovered that French ants understand English as I told them the same and not once did we ever have a problem with ants in the house and none here either I am glad to say.  Now you know why I am weird!

Hasn't the weather been strange - one advantage of the many sudden downpours is that although we haven't had any long walks recently I do get plenty of exercise running in and out to the washing line; plenty of step climbing as the line is on the higher level and lots of bending picking the washing from the basket on the ground and stretching to put it on the line only to have to dash out again a few minutes later to fetch it all in and then repeat the same procedure the moment the sun comes out again!  It is lovely and warm and sunny in between the rain so the washing does eventually get dry and I must be using up calories mustn't I!

I bought this little terracotta tile in Wells recently as I thought it very apt - I really must learn to "seize the day" although I understand that Latin scholars might not agree with that translation.  I took it to mean something like living in the moment and using the time I have rather than wasting it.  Whatever - I like it on the shed where I see it every time I go to the washing line.

Alongside the pebbled washing line area is our boundary fence which adjoins a wood - it is lovely to have nothing but woodland next door on that side although as you can imagine it is not easy to have an immaculate garden with all the brambles, stinging nettles and wild plants not to mention badgers! just the other side of the fence.  Good job I don't care for neat striped lawns and regimented plants type gardens isn't it?  Some of the foxgloves have grown from seeds I saved from plants in our French garden - they didn't grow the first couple of years we were here but when I planted an English foxglove plant, purchased from the market, nearby they realised what they were supposed to do and came up and flowered this spring.  I am hoping they will seed themselves and that we might eventually have many more.

In this little no-man's land alongside the fence I also planted some wild strawberries - a gift from a friend they came as a little book of matches but instead of having phosphorus or whatever it is that matches have they had seeds.  Like the foxgloves they didn't seem to fancy living just there but now they have taken to the area and have even produced fruit this year.

No supersize portions here though this was the number to be shared between two of us - good job the wanderer isn't here now isn't it?!!  I told my husband it was nouvelle cuisine though I hadn't drizzled couli artistically on the dish!!

Isn't lavender meant to be a Mediterranean plant which flourishes in dry hot summers?  Nobody told ours that and it's beautiful this year!

The patchwork group I used to belong to in France is hosting an exhibition this October and anyone can enter their work.  A couple of friends suggested I might like to enter something - the theme to be Legends, Myths and Stories.  My French friend had suggested I did something with an English twist to it and after much thought (and absolutely no action!) I decided to do something based on Glastonbury.  I did quite a bit of research into the various legends related to the town which was fascinating and wondered about doing something like a fabric book as it was to be story based.  I got as far as wondering how such a thing might be displayed - maybe a concertina type book would be best so I could do all the pages and join them afterwards and it could be displayed opened out, each page to be a small crazy patchwork with a picture (printed on fabric) of perhaps the Glastonbury Thorn, Joseph of Aramathea, King Arthur, the Chalice Well and so on as the centre piece.  Today is the last date for entering although the item doesn't have to be submitted till September BUT one must send a photo of the piece even if it is not finished.  Well of course mine is not even started so I think I will have to pass on that now!!  Actually, remembering how wonderful the items were in a previous exhibition which I went to with my friend when we lived in France, I wonder if it was a subconscious wish not to have my work seen alongside theirs which has had me delaying getting started?! The above photo shows how far I had got with it - not a single stitch made!  I truly do need to seize the day if by that is meant get on with it and stop messing about!