A New Toy!

I've been waiting for this for a while and today it finally came - my lovely new camera. It has an 18x zoom and all kinds of fancy settings which I still have to get to grips with, on the technical front I am not a fast learner:) One of the settings is a night time one and another is specifically for sunsets so I have great hopes of these eventually. I've been playing with it a little so will just add some of my first efforts for you to see - hopefully there will be better and more interesting ones to come in the future. None are outdoors because it has been wet and windy all day.


This is the blanket that I've just finished for Gabriel, some of you may feel that you've seen it before as indeed you have - it's the same one I made for Kaitlyn but in primrose instead of white. I've used the 'any light' setting for this.



Mr B Baggins looking highly suspicious of my activities! His bedding looks a mess but every day after I have carefully laid it out all neat and comfy looking he equally carefully scrapes half of them into an untidy but obviously more satisfactory heap.


Some of my small friends, using the 'any light' setting again, I haven't mentioned my teddy bears before, I don't exactly collect them but sometimes one 'speaks' to me and I have to take him home with me. It's actually a few years since any additions have been made but that doesn't mean that there won't be the odd new one in the future!

The last picture was actually taken with my old camera which I've passed on to Neil and Cesca - Cesca took this one. Being a dad is obviously an exhausting business:):)

In A Whirl!

The days seem to be passing faster and faster recently though I'm not quite sure why as I'm not really doing any more than usual. It's one of the odd things about time - sometimes it drags by ( especially when you are small and waiting for Christmas to come!)and at other times it passes at the speed of light, particularly if you have some sort of deadline to meet. I've got quite a bit I want to write about but right now I don't have the available time to sit and work on them, number one priority at the moment is to finish the blanket that I'm knitting for Gabriel ready for when he eventually goes home. He's still doing well and all the tubes and monitors are gone now except his feeding tube, he's having to take his milk mostly through that as he doesn't stay awake long enough to take a proper feed. He'll get there though.
Rel (under the microscope) has tagged me for this Meme, I'll just do that for today so here goes:

A. Available or single? No

B. Best Friend? Sandi

C. Cake or Pie? Cake

D. Drink of choice? Hot chocolate with marshmallows

E. Essential Item? Gardening book

F. Favourite colour? Soft apricot

G. Gummy bears or worms? These must be American candies I think so the answer
is fruit jellies:)

H. Hometown? Macclesfield, Cheshire, England

I. Indulgence? Books

J. January or February? February because Spring is near and both my parents died in January.

K. Kids and names? Stephen, Neil, Juliette

L. Life is incomplete without? Books - family and friends are a given of course.

M. Marriage date? 1st August 1972

N. Number of siblings? None

O. Oranges or apples? Oranges

P. Phobias/fears? Spiders, heights with water below,

Q. Favourite quote?

The wonder of the world,
The beauty and the power,
The shapes of things,
Their colours, lights and shades,
These I saw.
Look ye also while life lasts.

R. Reasons to smile? Two lovely grandchildren and a world full of beauty - see Q.

S. Season? Autumn

T. Tag 3 people - Janet (I know you love Memes:) ), Tea and Granny K - but only if you have time and inclination.

U. Unknown fact about me? I have looked out over The Promised Land - see photo at the top of this post - taken on top of Mount Nebo looking out towards Jerusalem etc.You will need to click on the photo to read the board. I have no clear photos because visibility was very poor that day.

V. Vegetable you hate? None really, I'm not a massive vegetable fan but I eat pretty well all of them.

W.Worst habit? Finishing other people's sentences!! I try to curb it but sometimes my mouth opens before I can stop it:):)

X. X-rays you've had? Chest and tooth

Y. Your favourite foods? risotto,pasta,full English breakfast,pancakes with blueberry syrup and just about any pudding you care to name.

Z.Zodiac? Virgo




While looking for the photo taken on Mount Nebo I came across another from the same trip showing me standing in front of the rock formation in Wadi Rum known as the Seven Pillars of Wisdom - named by the local Bedouin in honour of Lawrence of Arabia. We followed in his footsteps to some extent on this outing, driving out into the desert in open top jeeps visiting various places connected with him. I discovered then that I love the desert, it is frightening but in its own way it is stunningly beautiful. And the sand is unbelievably hot!

A New Arrival

This is Gabriel,my new little grandson, born on Tuesday afternoon. He weighed 3 pounds 13 ounces and is in intensive care but doing well. He's in an incubator so I've just taken part of the photo to put here. he's just beautiful and was very lively and responsive when I saw him yesterday, no cuddles yet though, I have to wait until he goes onto the Special Care unit for that - hopefully later today. Before that though I'm having his cousin Kaitlyn for the day while Steve and Hannah pack and prepare for their trip to Russia, they leave on Saturday for two weeks. Rather them than me, Kaitlyn is a real livewire now and I think they'll have their hands full. Should be interesting though,Steve has been wanting to go to Russia for some years.

The Romance of Herbs

It's been back to winter again during the last few days but after the previous weekend that I spent working in the garden in warm sunshine, I'm really turning my thoughts to spring and summer. The scene outside the window doesn't fit in with these thoughts so I've resorted to looking through some of my books to tide me over.
I was looking through a herb book I have by Lesley Bremness and came across the herb 'melilot' which immediately conjured up in my mind a picture of a medieval lady walking in a flowery mead. Melilot is such an evocative name and I started thinking of other herb names that conjure up similar visions for me.
Sweet Cicely is another pretty name and this produces a mind picture of a quiet, shady country lane with the wonderful smell of aniseed drifting on the air. It drifts on the air in my garden too as it is one of the herbs that I grow. In fact when I think about it most of the herb names which conjure up country lanes and Tudor country gardens for me have the word 'sweet' in them - meadowsweet, sweet rocket,sweet violet, sweet woodruff - and sweet briar rose, this always brings a vision of a Shakespeare's bank

'where the wild thyme blows,
where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
quite over-canopied with lush woodbine,
with sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight.'

Can you think of a more beautiful vision for a cold February day? A vision to hold onto until the reality becomes available.



One of the phrases I love that also conjures up wonderful mind pictures for me is 'the Tudor stillroom'. These must have been such pleasant places to work in filled as they would have been with flowers and herbs drying and waiting to be made into all kinds of sweet bags,medicines, lotions,ointments,pot pourris and perfumes - the stillroom produced an endless stream of supplies for the Tudor household.


Lavender and roses have always been among the most popular flowers for making pot pourri and sweet bags to scent the linen. I grow the Apothecary's Rose which is thought to be the oldest cultivated rose in existence and it is also the Red Rose of Lancaster which, along with the White Rose of York, gave its name to the Wars of the Roses between the great houses of York and Lancaster in the 15th century. The photograph above is actually Reine des Violettes which only dates back to the 1860s. It has a wonderful perfume though, this is the most important thing for me in the roses that I grow.



A Tudor herb garden would have been full of many kinds of herbs, they were used much more then than they are now, many plants that we regard as ornamental were then important herbs. Cowslips for instance were used in salves and to treat whooping cough and bronchitis, and Ladies Mantle( Alchemilla mollis) was a 'women's herb' and was also used as a wound herb. I love Ladies Mantle, it's beautiful both in leaf and flower and grows practically anywhere. The photo above is the period garden outside Bayleaf farmhouse at the Weald & Downland Museum. Those of you who have been with me some time will probably remember the descriptions of my visits there last summer.



Herbs are not all just summer plants, above is one of my rosemary bushes after the snowfall last week. Sage also can be picked all year round, the sage bush in flower at the beginning of this post provides me with leaves for the turkey stuffing every Christmas Eve.
Just so that you can be prepared - if you plant an elder (the Elder Mother is the protectress of all herbs)in your garden and stand under it at midnight on Midsummer Eve you will see the King of the Fairies and all his courtiers go by.

Snow!

We had a little snow this morning and Bilbo Baggins thought it was wonderful - he loves playing in the snow as have all my dogs. This includes my old Scottie, MacIntosh,who usually had to be carried home because he had so many snowballs attached to his back legs that eventually he reached the point where he couldn't walk properly! Thawing him out when we got home took forever and resulted in large puddles of snow all over the kitchen floor. Bilbo has much longer legs so happily he doesn't have this problem.


Me and my stick.



Life is such fun!


I do wonder,though, what kind of idiots run the British media. The headlines this morning were all about 'heavy falls of snow' 'battling to get to work' rush hour chaos' and so on. Now I do know that we had haven't had as much snow here as other parts of the country but even so - the projected accumulation of snow was - are you ready for this in Canada and the USA! - as much as 15 CENTIMETRES in places!! Well, heavens to Murgatroyd!! It is just pathetic really, I know that my friend in New England has at least 2 or 3 feet of snow most winters and other parts of the US and Canada have as much if not more. Many European countries are usually under several feet of snow for most of the winter months too. They must be laughing themselves silly when they see the hype on British TV and in the papers. As for battling to work through 3 inches of snow! I can remember several occasions in the 1960s when I walked the 3 miles to work from our village to the nearby town through a foot or so of snow, then at the end of the day I walked the 3 miles home again. There were lots of people doing the same thing and it was quite good fun really. We walked in small groups and chatted and laughed as we went. I can also remember a few occasions in the 1980s when it snowed and all the buses stopped running and my husband walked 8 miles home fom work. He staggered in finally looking like a dying duck, it had taken him nearly 3 hours because, as he got out of the city, the snow became quite deep and hard to walk through especially in black leather business shoes. It's a long time since we had snow like that.

Oh! What a Beautiful Morning.......

Today has been absolutely glorious, blue skies, sunshine and warmth - I spent the morning working on the small border opposite my back door and I was wearing just a shirt - well, not just a shirt but you know what I mean:) The cream crocus tommasinianus above are in another little bed but had opened up in the warmth and light of the sun so I thought I'd take a picture.


These winter flowering iris are actually a much stronger lilac-y blue than they appear in the photo, normally I don't see the first flowers until late March though another garden nearby has them flowering much earlier than mine do. They may be a different variety though, these are called 'Mary Barnard'.


The results of my morning's labours! The dead looking sticks are a spring flowering clematis alpina and will look beautiful around April - maybe earlier this year!


This is the same border in mid-summer!


This afternoon J and I took the dogs up onto the moors for the first time this year, it's been too wet up to now, the moors are peat so hold the moisture and in parts even today we could feel the ground squelching and moving under our feet. Bilbo Baggins had a thoroughly good time.


Judy had another dog staying with her so there were three of them today -this is by a little moorland stream where they are having a drinks and paddling break.



Bilbo Baggins with his new friend JoJo - she's a one year old Border terrier.


This is how a lot of the moors look at this time of the year - you have to pick your path very carefully in places. Worth the effort though on a day like this.

A Touch of Spring

Yesterday was almost springlike with blue skies and sunshine, it was enough to tempt me outside for a while to do a little work in the garden. Not too much as I've learnt not to get too over enthusiastic after the winter, it pays to start with an hour or two and gradually work up to a full day out there. There are snowdrops all over, these are a small group in the front garden.


I turned one of the flowers up to photograph the inside, they are so pretty and yet this part isn't often noticed.

This is the inside of a winter flowering clematis - not mine unfortunately although I get the benefit of some of the flowers fom my neighbours plant which grows over and through the fence between us.

This is a group of helleborus orientalis already in bud, it's a rather special one that cost me an arm and a leg but the flowers are beautiful when they come out. The original plant was just a single flower stem but in the years it's been there it's increased steadily.


Among this morning's post was an unexpected letter from America, it contained this lovely ATC from Janet of Just bee-cause - and just for fun!! The photo doesn't do it justice as the colours are much stronger than they appear to be, I love the little handmade envelope with my initial on as much as the ATC. Thank you Janet, it was a lovely surprise to start my day.



The last couple of photos were taken by my husband who has taken to spending large parts of his day lying flat on the dining room floor taking photographs of the birds in our garden - not to mention the grey squirrels and occasional visiting cats. The bird above is a bullfinch feeding from the pile of seeds that I cunningly place at the top of the terrace steps. They are becoming quite scarce in the UK now but we see a pair regularly especially when the plum tree comes into flower:)


This is the robin - English version and much smaller than the American robin. This is the one that appears on all the Christmas cards.


This shows his red breast better, I really need to play with them and enlarge,crop, sharpen etc but don't have time today. Clicking to enlarge the images might help.


Finally, the ever present, unfortunately, grey squirrel. These are responsible for the near extinction of our beautiful,native red squirrel which is now found in only a few parts of the UK. The red squirrel is the one that Beatrix Potter wrote about in Squirrel Nutkin and is also the friend of Alison Uttley's Little Grey Rabbit.
The greys also kill young trees by debarking them and in the nesting season they steal both eggs and chicks from birds' nests. They are NOT my favourite form of wildlife, cute as they look!
Edited to say I've cleaned the photos up a bit now so hopefully they look better.

A Little Family History

Recently I've enjoyed seeing old photos on other blogs and reading the stories attached to them. I have very few old photos of my own family which is a source of great regret to me as I'm a keen family historian. I gaze with envy on all the wonderful Victorian and Edwardian photos that other people have. The few older ones that I have all came to me via various cousins of varying degrees but I'll save those for another post. Clicking on the photos will make them clearer. The photograph above is of my parents on their wedding day - 31st July 1938. The bridesmaid is my dad's sister, Aunty Winnie - her full name was Winifred Victory - she was born on November 11th 1918, the day that WW1 ended hence her second name. On her 80th birthday she made the front page of the local paper because of this. The little boy peeping round on the left will be featuring again further down.


I love this photo because almost all my father's brothers and sisters as well as my gran and a couple of cousins are on it - a real rarity as far as I'm concerned. The bride is my Aunty Doreen marrying Uncle George who was in the Royal Canadian Air Force. My mum and dad are either side of the Canadian airman on the back row. Gran is next to the bride. It is 1945 and shortly afterwards Doreen was one of the war brides being shipped across to Canada.She was 18 years old and never saw her mother again. I met her and my five Canadian cousins for the first time in 1999 when I went to Canada to see them. When I came through the Arrivals gate at Dorval she knew me immediately - she said 'Oh it's just like our Bill walking towards me'! Aunty Doreen had never been back to the UK due originally to lack of money and more recently to fear of flying. The year after my visit though she finally conquered this and came home for a visit with two of my cousins after a gap of 55 years. It was quite a homecoming as you can probably imagine. She is still with us aged 81.


This is the little boy in the first photo quite a few years later - October 1952 to be precise. My dad's youngest sibling marrying my Aunty May, both still going strong at 75 and 71.


This is Uncle John's wedding again with my gran on the left and another of my dad's sisters,my Aunty May, carrying my cousin Sheila. At the front on the left is her son, my cousin Peter, and on the right my cousin Terry who is the son of yet another sister, my Aunty Lilian. I have an awful lot of cousins! Aunty May is another one still going strong at the age of 86.


Finally we have the bridesmaids,on the left is yours truly aged 6 and on the right my cousin Glenys aged 7. My mum made our outfits, the dresses, the little Dutch bonnets and the muffs that we carried - all in pale pink. I still have the locket that I'm wearing, it was our present from Uncle John and Aunty May. Three days later I was in bed with chicken pox! My mum caught it from me and was really ill so Aunty May, the new bride, came back from her honeymoon and then spent nearly two weeks looking after me and my mum. Welcome to the real world Aunty May! She's always been my favourite aunt even though she isn't a blood relative, she's never got any older in my head either, I still think of John and May as a young couple. Must go over to Cheshire and see them soon.

Stormy Weather

Today has been a lovely, sunny day but pretty cold. Over the last ten days or so we have had some bad wind storms though and above is Bilbo Baggins among the top branches of a full grown ash tree that fell across the river near us at the weekend. This isn't the river in Eccleshall Woods - there are several close to us apart from the Limb Brook, this one is Old Hay Brook. Double clicking on some of the photos will make them clearer I think.


This is from a bit further back showing the main trunk actually across the water.

Another big branch that came down into the same river. The water level has dropped quite a bit now but last weekend it was running very fast and deep.

My husband was over at our other house on the Lancashire coast over the weekend to check up that all was well there. The bungalow is about 5 or 6 miles from Blackpool and he went up there with his camera and took these rather spectacular photos of the sea front. The promenade had been closed to traffic because it was so dangerous. I have to say that I'm very glad I wasn't crossing on the ferry to the Isle of Man that day! I may be a member of a seafaring island race but I am, regrettably, not a very good sailor! Mind you, Admiral Nelson wasn't either so I'm in good company!!


An even more spectacular wave breaking. Virtually every year people are swept into the water along this part of the coast and drowned because they don't respect the power of the sea and get too close.


Believe it or not there is an entire pier behind this wave.


And here it is!



Finally, I couldn't post about Blackpool without including a picture of the Tower.

A Bear of Very Little Brain

Like Winnie-the-Pooh I am a bear of very little brain at the moment. The virus I had over the New Year seems to have left me with a head that feels as though it is stuffed with cotton wool. Physically I am fine and I don't have any problems doing housework, knitting, going out with Bilbo Baggins etc, but anything requiring any thought or concentration appears to be beyond me.I can't think of comments to put on blogs I've read, I couldn't even come up with a title for a post on here much less actually write anything! It does look as though I'm improving though but this will just be a fairly disjointed mish mash of this and that and not very much:) The photo at the top is of the roses that Neil and Cesca brought me on New Year's Eve, this was a few days later but they lasted for two weeks altogether.
One or two blogs have been talking about the small pleasures of life that seem to pass a lot of people by. I think most of the things that bring me pleasure are small by many people's standards.

Certainly this one wouldn't be top of everyone's list but to me the sight of a pristine new notepad and a brand new pen brings enormous pleasure and it's one my eldest son shares with me. It holds all sorts of possibilities - lists of future projects, lists of ordinary everyday tasks that need doing, lists of plants I'd like for the garden, ideas for the next step in my family history research and on and on - it's a matter of deciding which one will get the honour of being put on that first, beautiful, empty page.


Another pleasure is knitting small things for my grandchildren, this is a poor photo of the little cardigan in a lovely soft primrose colour that I've just finished for the one that is still unborn. Now I have a pram blanket on the way and in between squares I'll do some little bootees.

More small pleasures are the sounds of nature - birds singing, a wild gale howling (so long as I'm inside and not out in it!), the sound of the river - sometimes slow and quiet, sometimes dancing and laughing as it goes and sometimes, after a storm,roaring past at tremendous speed. I love to hear the hum of insects on a hot summer day too - I'm talking about bees,hoverflies and things here not mosquitoes and the nasty flies that buzz round your ears and drive you mad. There are the pleasures of watching sunrises and magnificent sunsets and the moon in all its phases and walking on a beach hearing the sound of the sea - all kinds of marvellous things which are available to all of us, rich or poor,if we take the trouble to look and listen.
Apparently this is going to be it for the moment, I've been trying to upload more photos for the last day or so and most of the time I couldn't edit at all. Oh well, anything is better than nothing I suppose. I'm going to get the show on the road while I can!