Mother’s Day has, in the past, been a bit of a bitter-sweet day for me but yesterday was very good indeed. I received this beautiful card from my daughter. She’d written a message inside which made me feel quite overwhelmed with love for her. She also gave me one of my favourite ‘witchy’ scented candles and a jigsaw puzzle of an art work which is right up my street - one of those puzzles that, when it is complete, is worthy of framing for display. We spent a gloriously warm and sunny day in the Peak District at a stately home which was hosting an arts and crafts fayre. The journey outwards was very scenic - lots of winding roads with hair pin bends that crossed vast swathes of moorland as we travelled higher into the vertiginous Peaks themselves. I have to admit the end of the journey left me feeling somewhat travel sick, what with all the lumpy bumping, twisty turning and looking out of the window and seeing the countryside dropping away steeply to certain death. I have nig...
This afternoon, I made myself mow the rest of the acreage on the Damson Cottage estate. I would much rather have settled with a book under a tree for a spot of lovely reading, but the grass shall not be allowed to become unmanageable this year, especially as March has been kind enough to grant us some lovely dry and sunny weather to gain a head start on all things horticultural. As I passed the rhubarb bed (rhubarb currently about six inches tall) I noticed these two having a high old time on the side of one of the dumpy bags I used to store leaf mulch: There was a lot of enthusiastic bumpy lurve action occurring. And that’s fine because the ladybird is the gardener’s friend for keeping aphids at bay, so the more the merrier, that’s what I say. Anyway, I set about mowing and clearing up Winter debris, and every time I passed the dumpy bag, they were still at it. I spent some time in the top corner of the garden, moving the pile of logs that constituted our ‘wildlife’ patch, ...