Wednesday 1 October 2008

Catching Up


Where does the time go? Apparently it's two weeks since I wrote anything here, although it seems much less. And it's not as if life has been completely free of incident...

Well, the good weather is partly to blame. We had over two weeks without any rain and (mostly) with sunshine. I was easily tempted into more dog walking than usual, gardening, etc. I have planted 50 daffodil bulbs, which is a lot of work in the stony shaley claybank that is my 'back garden' and the even stonier but flatter patch at the front. I also acquired a beautiful blue and gold glazed pot from a boot sale, which has been planted up with a blueberry (currently with glorious bright red leaves), daffodil bulbs and pansies. This has been parked next to the front door, and one of the pansies already has a flower. Other gardening has mostly involved the removal of montbretia to try to give some space to put other stuff in, and lots of overdue weeding.

Last weekend was the last of the good weather, it would appear. On Saturday we went to a 50th birthday party and it was still warm enough for it to be held in house, marquee and garden. The dress code - posh frocks and flipflops - was interpreted in some interesting ways, particularly by some gentlemen who had DJs with bermuda shorts. Long red velvet sleeves with ruffles are not ideal for barbecuing mackerel in the dark, I must say, but the results were delicious!

On Sunday Ty and I went through to Plym Bridge to meet the gang for a walk. There were ten walkers, three dogs, one cyclist and one neighbour who met us for lunch. We went along the cycle route which is mostly a disused country railway (including quite a long tunnel) five miles to Clearbrook on Dartmoor for a very pleasant lunch in the garden of the Skylark Inn and back in time for tea (well, icecream from the van before it closed for the afternoon). It was very easy walking as it was almost all flat, but we did have one or two problems with cyclists who seemed to feel walkers were not allowed (not true) or that it was acceptable to come up behind people at full speed and barge straight through. Don't bicycles have bells any more? We were walking responsibly, keeping to one side of the path, keeping the dogs under control, etc, but still had a couple of uncomfortable moments.

On Monday the weather changed. It's gone distinctly autumnal, very windy and quite cool with showers of rain. Not quite cold enough to put the heating on or get out the bit quilt, but I am sitting here wearing woolly socks and a fleecy jacket over the Tshirt and leggings I wore for pilates class tonight. Ron's brother came down on Monday for a couple of days - it's a pity he missed the Indian Summer.

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