The Garden Now

There is still work to do in the garden (well, when is there not?), but it is coming along nicely. It's not how it would be if I had enough cash to get the landscapers in to give me some lovely curves; we had to work with what we had. But at least we have beds and grass and decking now, as well as the shed. The last picture is just to remind you of what we started with when we arrived here last June.

Daffodils on the Deck

Our pot planted daffodil bulbs took so long to grow that we thought we'd bought a dud batch. But eventually they sprouted and now we have the benefit of this beautiful line of them while all out neighbours' have wilted and died off. I put them all together in a line because I think they look so much better as an abundance than dotted around the garden.

In the first picture you can also see the finished deck my hubby built, and the three wooden planters he made with left over decking planks. We bought the wooden trellis for the climbing clematis we put in two of them. My sister gave me the clematis for my birthday recently. We're now thinking of moving the camelia in the centre one to the shadiest spot on the right. Then we'll join the two clematis boxes with more trellis on the top and a bench to sit on underneath it.

The garden is coming along well now. It's a far cry from the derelict site that greeted us when we moved in last July.

Our Blossom Tree

I took some pictures of this tree in our tiny front garden through the spare bedroom window this morning. We don't know what kind of tree it is and the falling leaves made such a mess in the autumn that we were considering removing it after checking that we were allowed to with the local council. Another reason for that is that it does block some of the light I want in the house. Now we have seen it in all its glory, I don't think I have the heart. Instead I think we should help it out by removing the ivy that could be strangling it to death.

Isabella Plantation

This little stream meanders through the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park, which is one of Greater London's Royal Parks. I was there recently with my granddaughter, crossing and recrossing it on the little wooden bridges placed there for visitors' delight. I don't know what these brilliant yellow flowers are called but they really make my picture, don't you think?

WW: Lanzarote - Papaygayo

Back to Lanzarote

I'm going to be busy, busy, busy for the next couple of weeks. So it's back to the Lanzarote comparisons again.

Here are a couple of pictures of the sophisticated marina near to our holiday apartment.

Blog to Plant a Tree for Free

Thanks to Best Travel Pictures in the World, I’m about to get a tree planted for my blog. The latest post there pointed me to this initiative to reforest the 5,500 acres of Plumas National Forest in California with 792,000 trees by the Arbor Day Foundation. The area at Plumas was devastated by fire in 2007 and replanting has started this spring.

The “My blog is carbon neutral” initiative, was originally started in Germany by the “Make it Green” programme, that has the goal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. A tree is planted for each blog that participates thereby neutralising the blog’s carbon footprint for the next 50 years! Every tree counts! Everyone can make a small contribution to the environment and you can too.

Just write a short blog post about the programme and include one of the buttons. You can get to them by clicking on my button above or in my side bar. Send the link to your blogpost to CO2-neutral@kaufda.de and they will plant a tree for you, neutralising the carbon dioxide emissions of your blog.

Grammatical Semi-Colons

Over the years I've often come across many people bewailing the fact that they're not confident about using semi-colons. In the Constant Content forum today I found this link; it's a good explanation with some really funny and memorable examples of semi-colon use. (Note my own semi-colon use here.)

Counting My Blessings

Getting older this year has been really lucky for me. I’ve had three days of celebrations.

On Friday I drove up to south London to my daughter’s home. In the evening she took me out for dinner and we had the most delicious Chinese meal, with some of my favourites – crispy duck, followed by scallops in mango sauce and hot crispy beef.

On Saturday I had my granddaughter to myself, and we took a picnic and had loads of fun in Richmond Park. At nearly seven years old, she is such a poser, as you can see from the photo. She’s also very loving and great company for a now even older biddy like me.


Today I came home in time for lunch with my husband, plus my sister and brother-in-law who drive up from Torquay just to treat us to a slap up meal in The Baker Arms at Lychett Minster, a pub that has been named the best place to eat in Britain. And my Sunday roast was perfect, rounded off with a lemon and blueberry jelly, a scoop of ice cream, strawberries and blueberries.

Most of my presents were for the garden and I now have a beautiful four year old camellia and two lovely clematis for the planters hubby made to sit on the decking. I can’t wait to get it all finished and take some more photos to show you.

What a lot of blessings I have to count.

Rewrites

The online Thesaurus has been working overtime for me today, since my assignment was to rewrite the same information in different ways three times. I’ve never had to rewrite more than once before, so it was a new experience. In fact, I wondered if I would find I could do it, but yes I managed it and have sent the pieces off to see if they are acceptable for their purpose. That I don’t understand, but it’s something to do with the search engines finding a particular site.

I wish they’d find mine. I can’t seem to get a rating, although the blog does come up when I search on my name.

It’s been a beautiful day here, sun shining in the window while I have been chained to my desk. Hubby got out the garden furniture to place on the new decking he’s made, so I might escape out there now with a glass of wine for a few minutes.

Barcelona

The last couple of days I have been writing about Barcelona. So I thought I'd give you a rest from Lanzarote and post this image of the Spanish city dominated by the spires of Gaudi's famous Sagrada Familia in the centre.

Lanzarote's La Graciosa

I've got a new batch of work, and there's so much of it, it's a bit scary. I'll be beavering all hours to make sure I can get it all done on time. Forgive me if my blog posts are somewhat scant. Anyway, I've plenty of Lanzarote photos showing all its contrasts.

This colourful wilderness is on the close offshore island of La Graciosa, where locals go to get away from the tourists. Some of them anyway. We joined them on a ferry one morning and went for a long walk during which I took this photo.

Lanzarote Again

I'm finding it hard to remember exactly where we saw these boats. But I do know that one day a sandstorm was blowing across from Morocco, East Africa, and maybe that's why there was such a haze in the distance. You can see it was quite windy by the white tops on the waves.

Lanzarote Holiday Memories

Being somewhat under the weather today, I felt stuck for imspiration. So I looked through my folders of photos and rememered that this is where we were on the first of April in 2006. Now I reckon we are the April fools for not having high-tailed it off there again this year. The picture is of the holiday village where we stayed in Lanzarote.

We based ourselves there for two weeks, and for the middle week, we hired a car and went all over the island, returning late afternoon to fall into the pool and cool off before our meal. Lanzarote is full of contrasts, especially at this time of year, so I'll try and post some different views in the days to come.