Friday Five: Our Week

In between the showers we've been busy in the garden.  Our daughter brought several hanging baskets, some plants and a macrame pot holder with her.  We fixed up the spider plant in the macrame holder and changed the plants in the hanging baskets.  Some of them now have new strawberry plant cuttings.  We also cut the lavender that has finished flowering and hung it up in the covered yard to dry.

On rainy days Daughter D and I have been sitting with our crafting hobbies.  I've done some more of my embroidery and D made two Big Knit bags from an Ingrid Wagner kit.

On Sunday we enjoyed a retro style lunch, each of us making a course.  I made prawn cocktail.  The salad base was home grown tomatoes, cucumber and salad leaves.  (In fact we've been eating salad for lunch each day and every day we've shared the cooking with a different menu for our main evening meal every time).  Mr P cooked roast lamb with vegetables from the garden.  Daughter D made a blackberry and apple crumble.

Our local library librarian who leads our reading group sent an email to say that it was now possible to order a selection of books to collect, which is what I did and then I received another email to collect them this morning.  The usual procedure is in place - face covering, sanitiser at the door, one person at a time at a special table just beyond the entrance door etc.  My glasses steamed up probably because it was pouring with rain outside and warm in the library so it wasn't the joyous experience I'd been hoping for after so many weeks not  being able to walk in the park to the library and then browse the bookshelves, which is still not possible.  However, the random selection of books provided from the genre of crime fiction I had asked for include a couple I have read, but the majority I haven't.  A  new publication The Book of Sheffield - short stories and articles about Sheffield written by authors who know the city, sponsored by the University and Sheffield Libraries was included in my bag of books as a free gift.   2020 is Sheffield's Year of Reading when the enjoyment and benefits of reading are being promoted.  It's such a shame that libraries have had to be closed for months and now that their services are happening again in a limited way I shall use the order and collect books facility as often as I can.   The librarian has arranged for our reading group to meet up in the open air in the walled garden next to the library on a date in September.  Even if the weather isn't good I'm looking forward to seeing the other members of the group.

Once again thank you for stopping by.  Have a good weekend everyone.

Summer Days

We've been enjoying some socially distanced picnic lunches in the garden with family. On one occasion our granddaughter made focaccia.

I've been doing some crocheting and embroidery.

Mr P bottled some of his tomatoes and, of course, we've been eating some fresh in salads.

There are signs of the apple crop in a neighbour's garden. Our pear tree is laden with fruit, but no apples on the apple tree this year.

Rose hips and sunflowers in our local daughter's garden.

a sunset sky

Thank you for coming by.  Have a good day!

April and early May in our garden.

There's a lot going on in the garden at this time of the year.  We've had some rain showers which has lately helped alleviate the need to frequently water plants although Mr P does take the plants in pots in and out of the covered yard to harden them off and place them near an outside tap for a top up of water.

Here are a few collages of photos taken from early April until today. The highlights during April were the blossoms, blue skies, sunshine and seeing the first Spring flowers.  The tulips that followed were delightful. After seeds were sown the vegetables and herbs have been coming on well.

dianthus in hanging basket, tulips, white veronica 

Lilac and wisteria are now fully out in neighbours' gardens, but will soon be over. Clematis will go on flowering a while longer. There were two lilac heads on the ground in the lane which I brought home, gave them a sprinkling of water to revive them and then put them in water in a tea cup.

Blue tits and robins are coming into the garden now.

veg plot, courgette and tomato plants, thyme,

grape vines, fennel and salad leaves, marigold, 

peas, a variety of seeds, basil

Lily-of the valley just in bud, broccoli, peas,

amaryllis which has bloomed again for the third season,

 strawberry plants and new vine cutting, clematis (first season's buds)

blue wild geranium, violet, white pelargonium now planted out.

Finally, the blanket I'm working on at the moment.  I've just completed the second panel of nine squares in the same combination of colours.

Thank you for coming by.  Have a good week.

My week

Tulip time in the garden and time to bring out the solar powered garden water feature during this week of sunshine. 

The ''black' parrot tulip bulbs planted in the Autumn are beginning to open their flower heads. Of course, they're not true black, but dark purple.

A box of delights arrived - an Easter gift from son and family.

Another peace lily has flowered. It was one of the baby plants from an original that got re-potted last year brought to us by our Berkshire daughter.

Daughter D and I regularly exchange photos of what is growing in our gardens, by email. Below are the white hyacinths and varieties of tulip blooming in pots in her garden.

This week Daughter D crocheted a mauve shawl with daisy pattern for a Berkshire group. (The pile of blankets is a photo taken from their Facebook page).  There was a call out from them (Wokingham in Need, who in different ways support the homeless and anyone in need) for those who can knit, crochet or sew to make items, especially blankets and shawls.  These items are given to those receiving care in a hospital or a hospice or other setting.

The fig tree is not in leaf, but there is plenty of other greenery in the garden.

Thank you for your visit.  I hope you have a peaceful and safe weekend.

Joining Riitta's Friday Bliss # 84 linkup

P.S. I've noticed that some photos on this blog post uploaded and then were lost overnight so I've had to re-do them. I'm not sure why this is happening.  Older blog posts have the same issue. It's another Blogger technical fault to solve.

Friday Bliss #81

It's another sunny day today so outside in the garden or indoors as we stay home the good weather continues to be appreciated.
Here are five photos of my week, joining Riitta's Friday Bliss......

I sit in the front room and read, write my journal and work on my embroidery project. I can look out of the front window and feel part of the neighbourhood community.  It's still very quiet and few people pass by.

Last evening by arrangement with our Whatsapp group for our street we agreed by text that all who were able to would stand on our respective doorsteps in order to clap and cheer and show our gratitude for all the medical and social care personnel who are working in challenging situations in our hospitals, medical centres, ambulance services, laboratories, private and care homes and related fields to look after all in need especially at this time of crisis. It was an emotional experience as our neighbours young and old stepped out into our front gardens, put porch lights on as by then it was dark and started clapping at 8pm.  We live in a crescent so we could not see everyone, but we could hear the clapping up and down the road and around the corner which is a little lane leading to the other houses. The clapping went on for at least ten minutes.  We waved to our immediate neighbours across the street and to our next door neighbours along the row of houses.  Up and down the UK in every community individuals were doing the same. Showing love and respect for the National Health Service workers was a Clap for Carers initiative.  Live television showed our local and national communities clapping as an act of appreciation.  We really felt united across the miles. We know that health workers are constantly battling away tirelessly for our benefit and we want to support them even more than ever.

There's a lot to write about in my journal.

I've got one more section of my tablecloth to embroider and I spend about an hour each afternoon on the project. I've put the tablecloth on a table to show you my progress.

This morning I picked a few primulas and miniature daffodils and arranged them in a small vase as a centre piece on our dining table.

Other things I've been doing is communicating with family, friends and neighbours, even though we're separated by distance, exchanging information and daily news, posting puzzles that we can all do together and generally keeping mentally occupied. What have you been doing to pass the time as we stay at home?

Thanks for coming by.  Have a good weekend whatever you're doing.

     Friday Bliss #81

Weekend happenings

Yesterday was Mother's Day in the UK or Mothering Sunday (as my own late mother would remind us).  In normal times we might have gone to a church service where the congregation would have been given a bunch of flowers by the young people to remind us of the tradition that in the olden days people working away from home, usually in domestic service, would be given time off to go home for the day to see their family, especially their mothers and would possibly take a bunch of wild flowers or a Simnel Cake which was a fruit cake made to use up ingredients at the beginning of Lent - a bit of a treat. This is one of the explanations for this day in the church calendar which has now extended to the wider UK community as Mother's Day and has become an occasion for some family time for many.

Well, we're not in normal times and with churches closed as part of the public places restrictions these physical fellowship gatherings are now taking place on line in the virtual world.  As we have not been going to church services because of mobility issues. We've recently been watching or listening to Christian television and radio programmes and have received inspiration from them. We think of those whose mothers are no longer with us or others who do not have children. I was grateful that our daughter down in Berkshire went to the cemetery with a bunch of flowers and tidied the family graves which she does when she can. 

All day we had phone calls from different members of our family as well as video linkups. I'm thankful that grandson recently showed me how to add an app so that family members have a group chat with us now that we are social distancing and in voluntary isolation.  Our neighbours are going to set up a chat group with a mobile app so that those in our street don't feel alone and our parish church has been in touch by email. Our next-door-neighbour has again also offered to get some basic food for us if she can find anything, talking to me at a distance as described before.  

flowers from family.....

...... and gifts including a magazine, a new transfer printed embroidery kit and embroidery thread so that I can finish off my present embroidery on the small tablecloth.  That will keep me busy for a long time as I'm a slow embroiderer and do about an hour a day in an afternoon.