What a mix this weekend turned out to be - rain, grey and cold for most of Saturday followed by beautiful sunshine and brilliant nlue skies for Sunday. Typically, we arranged Isabella's birthday party for the wrong day and instead of playing in the garden with the paddling pool and bubble machine to hand, the children were racing around the house bravely clutching their chocolate cake to help them on their way!
Ah well, it was still a lovely day consisting of my bestest friend popping over in the morning for a cup of tea and a chat as Dave and I cooked pizza toppings, pasta salad, brownies and of course the gorgeous chocolate birthday cake traditionally made by dave. Actually, Mr Dave was a bit of a star as he donned his apron (a blue and brown deckchair striped pipany version obviously!)and had cooked a batch of scones, loaf of bread and sausage rolls, aided and abetted by Isabella, by 9.30 am!
The picure above is of the posy I picked for my friend as it was also her birthday. Funny how all the flowers in the garden just now seem to be shades of purple, from soft lilacs through to the deeper mauves of the aquilegia. The contrast with the rich orange of Black Prince marigolds was quite startling and not something I would usually use without a few toning shades to soothe it a little, yet the whole made a very pleasing nosegay (love that word) for a very special person.
Sunday consisted of yet more cooking - a roast for lunch and a marmalade cake made with our own marmalade - then up to the allotment in the afternoon to find rabbits ahd got in despite the fence and eaten our lettuces! Arghh!! Obviously we need to sink it a bit deeper, but at least we found this out before everything else got too far forward - determined to start looking on the bright side as we have had weeks of things going awry: tumble dryer broke, lightbulb went on the sewing machine as I sewed late one night, still having car problems, etc......
Still, the runner bean canes are in and sown, more of the field is skimmed and dug, spinach is planted out and I can almost taste the iron goodness to come. Just hope the rabbits aren't of the Popeye variety! As Dave and I worked the children picnicked on egg and mayo sandwiches (made form our own duck eggs - yum) and basically just watched apart from Elias who is a fantastic little worker and is never happier than when he is chopping, digging or lugging weighty things around! Next weekend we are hoping to build our own pizza oven, so watch this space!
And in the meantime, I hope you enjoyed the tour I took of the garden this morning accompanied by Fatty Arbuckle (one of the cats) and chook (the cuckoo maran) who can both be spotted in some of the pictures - aren't foxgloves just gorgeous with the velvety softness of the stems and those gorgeous spotted petals? The peony is in bud as are the papavers and chives are all around. More pictures soon.
Pipany xx
