Polished

The day started off sunny, but the storm clouds soon gathered and for most of the afternoon we experienced spells of torrential rain interspersed with occasional sunny intervals. The heavy rain made these gorgeous mahogany Rudbeckia blooms appear almost polished and glossy.

Most of the sunniest part of the day was spent visiting Pete's Mum, who is rather poorly again with a chest infection. She was looking much more frail on this visit, and it was clear that she's very fed up with the deterioration in her health over the past few months, which seems to be accelerating. She's always been such an independent soul that she's finding it hard to accept that she needs a lot of help and support at this point in her life. Although she had some rather tearful moments, we also managed to make her laugh too, and hopefully when this infection clears her spirits will pick up again.

We had hoped to do some botanical recording after we left, but the rain beat us to it, so we drove straight home through several cloudbursts and clouds of spray from the lorries. I didn't do much in the afternoon apart from a bit of food shopping but nevertheless feel extraordinarily tired this evening. Fortunately tomorrow should be a fairly quiet day before Chris and I go off on a mini-adventure on Monday.