Running

 just to stand still.

 Although this cold spell may stem the advancing tide a little,

the alliums are opening and the irises too.

Daily postings required to keep the record in order.

As someone cheerily pointed out on the radio this morning,
only eight weeks until the nights start drawing in.

This little one is away on tour.
Such is the life of a Thespian's child.
She has already had her first speaking part on the radio.

Colour saturation

Wakehurst Place and a private garden showing off their

rhododendrons and clematis.

This little pot and its contents, yielded by our garden.

Tulip time

Inspired by the school of not-doing-things-by-halves

as exemplified by this garden

and many others

I decided last year to have a cutting patch for tulips.

When it came to actually paying for them and considering the effort

of planting such quantities of bulbs,

I reverted to type and managed only half a bed,

amounting to about forty tulips.

These I have been mightily pleased with however.

I supplemented my vases with some taken from Great Dixter.

Not stolen I hasten to add.

They were being sold for £1 a bunch.

I passed one of my old pound coins to them.

They have to be used up by October 15th.

At Kew they have planted a tulip meadow.

It's very effective but I'm not sure if they intended them

to be in flower at the same time as the pink blossom above.

Everything is so early this year.

And finally a display at a Spring Flower show,

the three identical blooms in a vase category.

I didn't enter.

Maybe next year.

Post script:

lovely even as they faded.

If it's Wednesday it must be Milwaukee

Brilliant sign sent by son from Milwaukee airport.

He was surely in urgent need of this facility 
as he hurtled around the USA for his work this last week. 

His thirtieth birthday was spent in transit.

Some recombobulating needed here too as I

  think back to his first emerging in Arrivals.

His Emergency emergence indeed

after spending far too long in transit!

My own birthday was spent in hospital with him 
where time stood still in a private room miraculously provided
by the NHS and filled with early Sweet Peas by my mother.

We brought him home after five days, in a carry cot
strapped onto the back seat of the car.
I remember that they gave me the little tin foil bowl
that they used to 'top and tail' him at bath time.
I clung to that bowl like a talisman until it wore out
and I realised that I would have to replace it with a bowl of my own
and that it would probably be alright.

Treasure

I dug this up in the garden.

Isn't it sweet?

Measuring just 6cm in diameter,

probably a little souvenir pin tray from the 1950s.

It is so Parisian,

and such a charming thing to find when one is being

scratched by brambles and stung by nettles.