MR. HCB'S PAINTED LADY

I was quite late getting up this morning, but had nowhere special to go, so just “bumbled along” until lunchtime.  However, I did go out into the garden to take a few photographs and these beautiful flowers on Mr. HCB’s Painted Lady runner beans caught my eye - sorry to disappoint you if you thought it would be a shot of me!

You will see that they are climbing up Mr. HCB’s contraptions very well and thanks to rain yesterday and another gentle downpour this morning, they should come on in leaps and bounds.  I wish more of our neighbours ate lettuce - as you can see from my extra, there is a lot in one of Mr. HCB’s raised beds - in fact as we say, it is "coming out of our ears"!

Before I had lunch, I did my bit for our online Church service on Sunday, singing my part for the chosen song.  It always sounds awful (to me anyway) when it is just my voice, but Susan, one of our Elders, does a good job putting it together with the music.  She plays the guitar and as this week Rachel can’t record herself playing the flute because there is lots of building work going on next door, Janet will be playing her saxophone.  It is amazing how all these things go together so well and who knew we could all do such wonderful things until we were in a position that we had to do them during lockdown.

There was quite a storm just after lunch, but I decided I still wanted to go out for my “singing” walk after the rain had stopped.  However, stouter footwear was called for, so I asked Mr. HCB to find my walking boots in the garage. I also asked him to check that there were no spiders or mice inside - bearing in mind that my last pair were commandeered by a family of mice for their home and were well chewed!

It smelt lovely and fresh as I walked round the field, and I enjoyed singing and praying as I walked and didn’t see another person or dog.  There is certainly a lot more traffic on the roads, but I am quite oblivious to that in “my field”, which is great.

We had two deliveries today - one a new Magic Keyboard for my Macbook - the other one was playing up and the space bar wasn’t working, so Mr. HCB now has that - because his typing speed against mine is very much slower so it doesn’t bother him. I also had quite a few John Lewis vouchers, so decided to treat myself. 

The other delivery was some hand sanitiser with moisturiser from Purdy & Figg which we thought we would try as both of us are getting rather sore hands because we keep washing them and hand cream tends to make them very greasy.  I only ordered this on Monday, and it arrived before lunchtime today - excellent service and time will tell how good this is, but so far, things are looking and feeling good - in fact I'm sure my hands are softer. 

“Gardening requires lots of water, 
     most of it in the form of perspiration!”
Lou Erickson