Here, there and everywhere

As promised, here are some photos of our the hanging baskets, which I did all on my own – and they’re very successful. Peeping out on the left hand side is our clematis which has been lovely this year.

This last picture is of my hibiscus, taken a few days ago. I hope you can see the bud, which I focused on. I am afraid that my optimism about this plant was misplaced. Today I touched a bud and it came off in my hands. It had been nipped off the stalk. There are now only ten buds left, and whatever is eating them - birds, squirrels or deer, are likely to continue to destroy them, I suspect.

I seem to have been very busy recently; today, my two sisters in law and three brothers in law came for lunch. It’s the first time we’ve all met up for some time. It’s a matter of co-ordination – not choice – because we get on well together. The last time we were due to meet up, one sister-in-law had flu, so there were five of us, not seven. Although I was in my usual panic, when they arrived (still chopping up a fruit salad and putting apple crumble in the oven) all went well. We had turkey, roast potatoes and veg. for lunch and French bread, smoked salmon and cream cheese in the evening. One sister in law brought the salmon, and the other one made profiteroles for the evening. I have a huge surplus now of things I needn’t have bought – like cream, which we don’t normally eat, and chocolate brownies, which I made, but which we will eat only very slowly. It was a lovely afternoon, and we sat out in the garden. It was good to have some summer sunshine.

Apart from this, I had a day in London, and my old school friend and I visited the National Portrait Gallery to see an exhibition which we go to every year, sponsored by BP. We always disagree with the judges, but there’s a variety of different styles. Part of the occasion, of course, is spent updating each other on our respective families, and what’s going on in our lives. We stopped to look at the http://www.london.gov.uk/fourthplinth/ Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, where a young woman was playing ‘Hangman’, and writing down letters as suggested by children standing around the base of the plinth. It wasn’t as high up as I had imagined it would be, but she was having difficulty getting her voice to carry. Later on, inside the National Portrait Gallery, we saw another person up there, via the video link. This young man was painting the surroundings – Trafalgar Square, and St Martin in the Field. Quite a good painting, but he was having a job holding it down in the wind. For a better picture than I could produce look here:

http://www.london.gov.uk/trafalgarsquare/index.jsp

Last weekend, we visited the ProdigalD and family in Herefordshire. You can see how isolated their home is, and the view of sheep in a nearby field, in the photos above. We were there for lunch on Saturday, and all went for a long walk on Sunday, at a nearby country park with Sorrel the Labrador.

We stayed one night at The Old Cow Shed – a converted barn where we’ve stayed before, and one night at Grove Farm, on the way to Ludlow. At both places we were made extremely comfortable. They are far better than an anonymous hotel. Below is the kitchen at The Old Cow Shed, and a garden view of local oasthouses.

Above two geese at Grove Farm.

We travelled to Ludlow to meet my friend from work of many years ago together with her husband, before coming home on Monday night.

So this week was a foreshortened week, but there was a get together with another friend on Wednesday, and a Goldenford meeting on Tuesday night. Talking of which, Bruce, my MySpace friend commented about Tainted Tree on his blog, ‘I heartily encourage book lovers who enjoy romance and mystery to get a copy....but you can't have mine!’ and in a review in the Historical Novel Society Review, the reader included in his comments, ‘There are good characterisations of likeable people showing firm distinctions between middle class and country yokel types …’ ‘The book has some excellent family dialogue which races along most satisfactorily …’ There were some things he didn’t like; he claimed I missed out on some important historical events, but of course, the book wasn’t written as a historical novel in the first place.

This week, I hope to be more relaxed than last, though I have my book to finish for the Reading Circle on Thursday, dinner out on Friday and Guildford Writers on Tuesday. Also bookkeeping to complete. But at least I’m not doing the cooking for anyone.