Easter Monday

This post is dedicated to my dear friend who has lost her battle with cancer.

We used to keep in touch via this blog.  Rest in Peace.  I will miss you.

Today was to be a day at home cleaning and tidying and gardening.  We started our day with some of the fabulous grapefruit segments I had extracted from the many we have been given (thank you Marianne and thank you Lilian) they are sublime, fat and juicy and sweet and served with a generous dollop of Greek Yoghurt and a shaking of cinnamon for good measure.

It was a very warm day today - it must have been because after we had finished our chores we both went into the pool which was lovely and at around 23 degrees really warm for so early in the year.  

I tackled both bedrooms first.  It is now so warm at night that I wanted to remove any last vestiges of winter bedding - our bed has just a duvet cover and thin throw - throw to contain the cats at the end of the bed.  The spare room is similar with a duvet cover and a crocheted throw for a bit of colour.  It causes a bit of a conundrum packing away the thick duvets and throws because we are lacking in storage space but we wrapped everything up in thick jumbos bags and put them away in the pump house where we hope they will remain intact and untouched by any visiting family of rodents which has happened previously and resulted in me having to throw away my lovely duck down duvet set (4.5 tog and 9.5 tog which could be joined together).  The surfaces got a polish and the floors a mop and I have left the ironing board up in the spare room as I have a mountain to tackle when it is a little cooler.

Every day something new puts in an appearance in the garden.  Today the lovely irises have come into flower and add a lovely bluey-purple dash of colour to the kitchen garden.  I have also noticed that my two wild orchids have come up but are still in bud so I will wait until they open and post pictures.  They must have come courtesy of a bird at some point in the past.

Today was a day for cutting back and tidying.  In the front garden the wild yellow Bermuda Buttercup are past their best.  They add a certain cheerfulness early spring when there is little else around but they spread like wildfire and start to droop when they are going over.  They got consigned to the bin but I never get all the roots so will return next year.

The wild poppies are about to go wild in the aisles so will leave them to flower and set and sow their seeds before they get ripped out.  After they have finished the blue Nigella will start to flower and they too get left to go to seed so that they come back again next year along with the Californian poppies which I love and John hates because they look great when they first begin to flower and then get leggy and the blooms smaller.  

Elsewhere in the garden there is a riot of colour provided by the Osteospurmums and the Gazanias which never fail to put on a show.

See what I mean?

One good day in the garden like today means I don't have to do too much for several weeks - just a bit of pruning and a bit of dead-heading and a lot of watering until the next day I set aside.

I am very excited to include the photograph above which was on page 2 of today's Daily Telegraph.  This is the daughter of our friend Louise Rance who catered for our Silver Wedding anniversary afternoon tea and her daughter helped out with the service.  My what an amazing young woman she has turned into and an absolute credit to her Mum who was more than a little bit chuffed to see her featured in a national newspaper.

Sorry for the poor quality of this photograph but my phone struggled in the evening light.  We had asked Di and Rob to join us for an Easter drink but they couldn't so we had our Cypriot neighbours round, George and Pam and Lakis and Argy.  We had a nice evening - sadly Pam's hearing isn't so good again and so I worried she was a bit isolated when everyone was talking.