Last Pause in Advent post and other stuff

From the sublime to the ridiculous?

I went to church today (the first time in years I am sorry to say!) - to a little chapel in the neighbouring village which I'd been thinking of going to for a long time.  It was the carol service and since I had had such a positive experience in Salisbury recently I felt I'd like to go.  No soaring spires here nor hundreds of years of history, no wonderful stonemasonry just a simple little chapel tucked away just off the A30 in the village.  No choir, no organ just a harmonium to accompany the singing, and only about a dozen of us in the congregation, no vicar or priest in flowing robes either as it was a lay preacher today.  What a contrast with the cathedral in Salisbury!!  However it was a lovely little service and I came away feeling a lot more like Christmas for didn't Jesus say that "wherever two or three gather together in my name I am there with them"? And the words that the lay preacher read to us (it couldn't be called a sermon) spoke to me just as the words of the vicar/priest/dean or whoever he was at Salisbury had done and I felt at peace with myself and life in general.

Another cat!

The postman rang the bell earlier today - yes on a Sunday which did surprise me - and handed me a big purple box labeled "Live plants open immediately"!  On opening it I discovered this little topiary set - a little box plant along with a wire cat shaped frame - which had been sent to me by a friend.  Two things I love: 1)  box which I love for it's perfume which always transports me back to childhood days at one of the big houses we lived in and 2) a cat it would take me a book to write about why I love cats!  I don't know if I will be able to care for it as I should orwhether I will be able to clip it into shape or not but it will be fun trying!

Another present

A week or so ago I asked Mr M if he could nail a piece of wood to a post for me to use as a bird table as not all birds are happy eating from the ground and anyway it is so wet on the ground just now, as you can see in the photo, the seed gets sodden.  Well of course such a request required internet research and a "pattern" was found and as always it also required a trip to the hardware store as even though Mr M has a shed full of little drawers which must contain every known size of nail and screw he didn't have any cup hooks suitable to hang a home made fat/seed filled coconut shell as I had suggested underneath the table top!!  I did suggest a bent nail or something but of course that wouldn't do!  Anyway today was the unveiling and it is now in situ - I just hope the birds like it though I am sure the squirrels will soon find it if not!

So you see I feel a lot more like Christmas now as to me the things that matter are love and friendship as shown in my topiary cat and bird table along with a reminder of what it's really all about in my two recent visits to the cathedral and the chapel.

How can a hole weigh so much?

There is a huge cat shaped hole in my life which seems also to be a heavy weight in my heart.  My beloved friend who had shared my life for over 17 years has died and everywhere there are reminders of him.  There are shadows which seem to be him until I realise afresh that they cannot be, there is a pile of bowls and some packets of Whiskas in the cupboard which we no longer need, his brush and comb lie accusingly where I left them after his last brushing - his coat was beautiful till the last - and a box of little balls and toys which hadn't been played with for some while now.  There is no chirrup to say Good Morning when Mr M gets up in the morning to make our cup of tea, no soft warm body lying next to me on the settee, no need to open the door carefully in case he is just behind it, just a big empty hole.

The fire will be lit but he won't be lying in front of it, the mint will grow again in the spring and he won't be here to roll in it, and now that we can go out and not worry about being back early enough for him we don't want to go out anyway.  I hope that wherever he has gone he will find endless sunny days filled with birdsong which he can now hear and butterflies he can now see not to mention clumps of mint to roll in and maybe Bambi waiting to show him the ropes!

Having been in this dark and shadowy place last December when his sister died I know that there will be light and joy in my life again but just for the moment I cannot see how.  I want to lie low for a while and lick my wounds but I will be back later. 

Watching the wildlife in the garden

 I have just been sitting in the shade at the table in the garden with my cup of tea and enjoying watching the antics of our resident blackbird and his wife.

 The attraction was this little tree - amalanchier canadensis - which has tiny fruit they apparently enjoy but these are on very delicate little branches not strong enough to take even the weight of a blackbird.

 Mrs BB came first and tried to take a berry and her weight made the branch bend so much she fell to the ground but still with the berry in her beak.  She flew off into the woods you can see over our fence here and soon returned to have another go.  Maybe she has young ones who all want one!

 After a couple of trips Mr BB arrived and he had a different approach - he stood on the ground beneath the tree eyeing up the prize and then jumped up to grab it!  After a few turns each they didn't return - maybe because the babies had had one each or maybe because I was trying to get a photo.

This is the same couple of blackbirds I think who came daily in the winter for their porridge.  Yes I did say porridge!  I was having porridge each morning for my breakfast and wondered if the birds might enjoy the pan scrapings along with the seed I usually put out and yes the blackbird did like it and started to come every day, bringing his wife, and to be ready and waiting when I put it out.  One morning I decided to have muesli instead and he got very annoyed that there was no porridge to the point that I actually made a small amount of porridge for him and he soon gobbled that up and seemed to say "Not before time"!  He has become incredibly tame - too tame for his own good I think and he will have his bath within feet of me sitting on the bench outside the kitchen door.  Mrs BB is a little more circumspect though and if she sees me she flies off but Blackie as I call him is as tame as a robin now!!  Thomas is no danger to them now that he is elderly and a bit slow but I can't be sure no other cats are not hiding in the garden - it would be sad if Mr BB's trust is misplaced one day.

Goodbye my friend

 
The post Christmas blues arrived early this year as even though the world didn't end on Friday 21st as forecast it was a sad day for me.  I took little Bambi to the vet for a scan following recurrent bouts of cystitis and fully expected to collect her later in the day.  However the vet called to say that the cause of her problem was most likely a "diffuse tumour" of the bladder and there was nothing that could be done it would only get worse so did I want her to put Bambi down whilst she was still sedated or to have her home and have to put her through the stress of another trip to the surgery later.  How can you make a decision like that?

I wanted her back of course but maybe for her sake it would be better to do it now.  A few minutes later I called the vet to say "Do it" and then was filled with remorse, guilt and of course incredible sadness.  I miss her terribly - Tom has always been more affectionate than Bambi, and so easier perhaps to love, but for company Bambi was my girl as she was always where I was.  Now there is no little cat waiting just inside the front door when I return home, no little cat sitting on the chair next to mine at the kitchen table (her favourite place) no little cat at my feet the moment I open a tin of tuna, no gooseberry green eyes beseeching me to pick her up for a cuddle (she mellowed as she got older and realised that being fussed was actually quite good), my heart is broken and although I do know (having been in this dark place before) that time the great healer will work its magic and I will be able to think of Bambi without this terrible weight of sadness just now I want to lie low so forgive me if I haven't been around lately to comment on your posts.  Christmas passed in a bit of a blur here I am afraid and the only good thing is that I have lost several pounds in weight everything tasting like cardboard to me just now!

The year 2012 has been a strange year here chez Marigold and I am hoping that 2013 will be a better year filled with good things for us all - so my best wishes to you all for a very happy new year.

Cat + mint = catmint?

This is catmint (photo courtesy of Google images - hairy pot plants co.uk) and it bears no resemblance to ordinary mint the sort I grow for mint sauce....

but Thomas has taken a sudden liking to the ordinary kind and is to be found rolling in it


rubbing it into his face

and generally going silly in it!! He has never done this before so I don't know what's got into him and his sister Bambi thinks he's gone mad but he is obviously enjoying himself and happily the mint seems to recover from his attentions and in any case I have plenty of it this year.

FAVOURITE THINGS FRIDAY

Two favourites for the price of one here - Tom plus Springtime complete with primroses!

Ever since the day we went to the RSPCA, to see if there were any cats needing a home, as we had a vacancy, and Tom climbed up my sleeve to my shoulder and meowed in my ear saying "Take me home with you" he has been my special baby!! As a kitten I think he thought I was his mother as he used to lie curled up on my lap and suck his own tummy whilst kneading his paws as cats do. He did grow out of sucking himself rather as a child grows out of sucking its thumb but he still comes to me for a cuddle and he just has to be loved.

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He is a master of relaxation and can make himself comfortable anywhere. Look how his little toes curl with happiness!

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Such a trusting little animal - tummy all ready for a rub! Try it with his sister and you'd get your hand bitten but Thomas rarely bites or scratches and then only if I overdo the play and he forgets I am not actually another cat!!

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I went up to London as planned yesterday and met my friends at the Garden Museum in Lambeth just across the river from where all the student protests were taking place. I don't have any photos but am hoping one of the friends will e-mail me some of hers and I can show you later.

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Have a good weekend and many thanks to all those of you who have commented on my previous posts.

Friday Favourites

I certainly seem to have touched a nerve with my Christmas Scrooge post! I thought you might say what an old misery I must be not to mention a tightwad too, but no, I was amazed to see how many of you agreed with me. Thank you all so much for your comments including those new bloggers who visited - it's good to meet new friends.

Having enjoyed Helsie's Favourite Things Friday post I decided to join in and post some of my favourite things on a Friday - won't promise to keep it up for ever or even to do it every Friday but now and then at least! If you fancy joining in pop over to Mrs Pyjamas here

First up - favourite flower fotos (couldn't resist the alliteration there!) My all time favourite flower is the primrose as seen here....

and a little later comes the apple blossom whose perfume is a favourite.


Today I had a Friday facial - now I was under no illusions that it would leave me looking like the picture (and indeed it didn't!) nor that I would actually leave with velvety smooth, youthfully radiant skin (and I didn't!) but I thought half an hour of pampering for £15 - redeemable against any purchase made - was a good idea especially as as I have had a cold which left me feeling in need of a pick me up. Well it was lovely and I enjoyed it no end.

Speaking of faces - here is favourite face - she has a scratch on her nose but isn't she beautiful and she doesn't have facials either! She was sitting at the table during lunch today and it was fishcakes so that explains her wistful look!

Finally Favourite quotes - thought as it is getting to that time of year I'd share this with you:

TEN COMANDMENTS FOR REDUCING STRESS

1 Thou shalt not be perfect nor even try to be

2 Thou shalt not try to be all things to all people

3 Thou shalt leave undone some things which ought to be done

4 Thou shalt not spread thyself too thin

5 Thou shalt learn to say "No"

6 Thou shalt schedule time for thyself and thy supportive network

7 Thou shalt switch off and do nothing regularly

8 Thou shalt be boring, untidy, inelegant and inattentive at times

9 Thou shalt not ever feel guilty

10 Especially thou shalt not be thine own worst enemy but thy best friend

And Thou shalt not take life too seriously!

If we can all keep these commandments over the next couple of months maybe this year Christmas will be better for everyone?!!!

Have a good weekend

Sunny September Sunday morning Stroll

We have had my sister-in-;law staying this weekend and this morning we took her to Ham Hill to show her the views. Remember I showed you some photos last week here?







On the way to the summit we passed a real autumn conucopia of fruits such as these lovely blackberries with their beautiful coloured leaves.....



...some lovely purple sloes - I always feel it is such a pity they don't live up to their promise and are so very very sour and only fit for making sloe gin which I don't like!

I am sure these glistening elderberries weren't here last week when I came looking!

Distant views didn't disappoint ....

.. nor did close ups - aren't these teasels against the skyline pretty and isn't that sky an amazing blue?

I've been more aware of skies recently for some reason and have noticed just how beautiful the cloud formations are.

A pleasant place to sit and take in the view although this morning there was a chilly wind so a more sheltered spot was nicer!

We wended our way back to the car planning to stop at Montacute House for a coffee till I remembered I hadn't brought my purse containing the National Trust tickets so we came home and enjoyed a coffee in our own garden instead!

Thomas is wondering if he might do well in the cold frame! He's not silly as it was a sheltered warm place to sit and next to our table and chairs so he was in a good place for some fussing too!

Flowers and memories

The postman brought this new catalogue yesterday - it is so beautifully presented I feel like a kid in a sweetie shop just reading it!

I want it all! It did however remind me that it is a while since I posted about my childhood and how it is that flowers seem to trigger memories for me.

So the following is another of my occasional ramblings on childhood memories - if you are not interested in that just skip the rest of the post!


Geraniums – I love them love the bright cheery colours and the smell too I like. I just have to rub my fingers across the leaves and then sniff – Mmmm!. As with many other flowers they are very evocative to me of times past.




When I was about 7 we moved to Suffolk where my mother had taken a job as cook at Reydon Hall http://local.upmystreet.com/picture-of-reydon-hall-near-southwold-suffolk-id-1067982.html We had a little apartment on the ground floor just behind the kitchen where we had a bedroom with windows opening onto the garden, a tiny kitchenette and a small rather dark sitting room with a red brick fireplace. There was a toilet and washbasin off the bedroom and a bathroom for our use on the second floor. The sitting room was dark partly because the window looked out onto the roof of the boiler house and this flat roof had a sort of raised bed built on top which was at certain times of the year filled with red geraniums. So although the room was shaded by plants the colour was often bright and cheerful. I loved my life there and although we had our own sitting room I was more often to be found either outside in the grounds or in the kitchen with my mother.

The kitchen was a large cosy room with windows on two sides, a big table in the middle and a huge Aga at one end in front of which were usually to be found several cats sleeping! One of the cats went missing one day and we could hear her calling but couldn’t find her anywhere and some time later when my mother opened the bottom warming oven to put the plates in to warm in readiness for lunch there was Spikey! We thought she was dead but she revived and went on to be the mother of several more batches of kittens!

One of Spikey’s kittens was a little ginger tom and she adored him and continued to cart him round in her mouth long after he was too big for such indignities. She eventually managed to tear through the skin on the scruff of his neck - he was far too heavy to be dragged round and her teeth were sharp! Poor Bassie (Sebastian) had to have his neck stitched and bandaged by the vet after that and I think Spikey realised that the bandage wasn’t very nice in her mouth and gave up carrying him. He didn’t seem to be in any way affected by his rather odd beginning in life though he must have been a little slow on the uptake or he wouldn’t have put up with it would he?

Another cat was Sooty – a black cat as you’d expect - who was a wonderful mother and usually seemed to be either pregnant or to have a litter of kittens to care for. When she was pregnant she loved the taste of chocolate and especially liked KitKat fingers! She would allow me and the family’s children to dress her up and wheel her about in the dolls’ pram and one time she chose this pram for her confinement!

I was forever rescuing the mice and occasional rabbits which the cats brought into the kitchen and sometimes got bitten by the victim for my efforts – no thoughts then of disease or whatnot and nothing dire ever happened to me luckily.

There were extensive grounds and I used to spend hours wandering through the kitchen garden (never the main garden of course!) and sometimes chatting with the gardener who let me go with him into the greenhouses and help him to pick the tomatoes – another scent which always takes me back! Or I would go down the lane to visit my friend whose mother was a domestic servant at the Hall and lived in one of the tied cottages nearby - the hedgerows seemed then to be always full of dog roses and honeysuckle and the verges filled with white cow parsley and other wild flowers. Of course it couldn't have been like this all the time and in winter it was bleak with the wind sweeping in from the east coast but it is the sunny summer days I remember most luckily

Another flower I always associate with this time and place is the gladiolus for there were many in the garden and in season a big arrangement in the entrance hall (not that I got to see that very often as I was not allowed to venture through to that part of the house)

Me on the beach!

On Saturday afternoons my mother and I would go to Southwold as it was her time off. We would sometimes go down to the beach if it was summer and I would have a paddle and my mother would sit on the sand and rest then we’d have tea in a little café I seem to remember was called Mrs Minnever’s or perhaps have an ice cream from one of the little shops – I particularly remember the pineapple flavoured ones which were my favourite. My mother would do any shopping she needed and we’d get the bus home and spend the evening in our sitting room having our supper and maybe listening to the radio.

We were living here when the King died and I well remember the sombre music interspersed with news reports all spoken in solemn tones that day on the radio – I didn’t understand why children’s hour was cancelled and why everyone seemed so miserable. See here for more on this day http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1802708.stm

Sadly my mother suffered a slipped disc and eventually required surgery. She was in hospital for 8 weeks and her sister gave up her own job and came to take over from my mother and to take care of me. Aunty Win and I used to cycle to Southwold to see her in the cottage hospital there but when she was transferred to the bigger hospital at Great Yarmouth for the operation we obviously couldn’t cycle and had to take the bus. I wasn’t allowed into the ward to see her – it was normal at the time that children were not allowed into the wards - and very distressing it was for me and I am sure for her too. My aunt was much stricter than my mother and I had to go to bed at 6.00 instead of being allowed to wait until 8.00 after dinner had been served as I had been used to doing with my mother – I hated those summer evenings when it was still light and I was incarcerated in the bedroom alone!

When my mother came out of the hospital having been told she would never work again we all three left Suffolk and went to stay at my grandfather’s house in the Forest of Dean. I can’t begin to imagine what my grandfather thought of this arrangement since having lived peacefully alone for so many years he now had two of his daughters and one of his granddaughters living with him so his peace would have been shattered.

I hope you haven't been too bored and that you might even have enjoyed your trip down memory lane with me (especially you Louise!)

Garden update

What a difference a week makes...

Our little veggie plot is coming on well - remember me showing you here when it was just a square of bare earth? Now we have beans and tomatoes

with a little border of nasturtiums and marigolds.

Beans dashing up the canes (I notice a weed there that needs to come out!)

My lovely marigolds were a present (in seed form) from Lesley at Printed Material back last year and I have them all over the garden as well as here with the veggies.

Nasturtiums looking so cheerful and, dare I say it, so far without blackfly! Of course this little square is nowhere large enough and we also have cucumbers, courgettes and more tomatoes in amongst the flower beds.

The heather is giving way to a further veggie plot little by little although someone isn't too happy about that! No wonder it is all flattened is it?!

Had another sort out in my work room last week (can't find anything - why am I such a messy worker I wonder?!) I had visions of a workroom like this until I realised there weren't any boxes of scraps of this and than nor all the usual rubbish I have in mine but one can dream can't one?!

I came across this little square of tapestry made many years ago and subsequently made into a small cushion cover which was now worn and dirty. Took the backing off and washed it - any ideas as to what I might use it for? Or perhaps it should join the rest in the back of the cupboard?

I had also made a start sometime on this - again I have no idea where this is going - any suggestions?!

Enjoy the remainder of this lovely sunny weekend - although us gardeners wouldn't mind a little rain now preferably at night!

PS I meant to add the button for Silver Pebble's Pass the Book to my sidebar yesterday but it has taken me till now to figure out how to do it - hope it works! Check it out - it sounds like a good idea!