23rd May

We had rain overnight, quite a bit really but it meant that everywhere was so much cooler and this morning it was a real pleasure to go outside to feel the cool on your skin.

John wanted to embark on a project which he has been thinking about for months and which he said, optimistically, would take 'a couple of hours' for which read it took us all day and we were knackered!!

Even though it started out nice and cool once the sun had burned away the early morning mist and clouds it got pretty warm and pretty windy.

Anyway the project in question was to 'pretty up' the side of my shed which is visible when you are in the seating area outside the back.

I had taken some Vinca from Sheila and Klaus's some time ago and planted a tiny bit in the corner and it has gone mad and this year was stunning with loads of bluey-purple flowers.  Behind is some sort of variegated climber which I forgot to cut back this year and should have done because it is looking a bit leggy and we have the rose dedicated to Hadge in a pot.  We wanted to turn this into a tasteful memorial corner because we also have a piece of marble from my Dad's grave which was incorrectly engraved but which we asked to keep when they replaced it.  To be fair the errors are unnoticeable if you don't know what accent my Dad should have had on the final 'e' of his middle name (it should be an acute accent not a dot) and the first speech-marks on the bottom line should be 66 not 99.

So after a fair few hours of cutting back and building a wooden framework and staining we ended up with our memorial corner which has the marble on the side of the shed and Hadge's rose moved into the corner where it will be protected from any winds.  I even managed to persuade John to put me two 'shutters' either side of the window although lord knows what was going on in his head when it came to putting the hinges on - it took him about 10 goes before he got them the right way round.  I love it and it brought a bit of a tear to my eye as I think Dad would have approved too.

The finishing touch was to add a rustic heart which I have had knocking around for a while and which I didn't know what to do with - I had a second one which I covered in origami flowers and which I gave to Elena so in some ways it reminds me of her.  I hope people don't think it is creepy - I hope it is just a nice spot where we have some lovely reminders of my father and my father-in-law.

We were knackered by the time we finished so we had planned to eat the other half of our takeaway but only managed to eat the satay before waving the white flag and retiring to bed for a nice early night - we didn't get an uninterrupted night's sleep but will tell you all about that tomorrow.