The Way of the Wombat

For anyone who needed their day brightening a little -

Yesterday morning the first two flowers on Barbie the camellia opened;



In one of the pots there are anemones in flower;



And this is my favourite snowdrop picture from this year;



And in the kitchen the gerbera that is now 4 years old, has had a new lease of life since I re-potted it;



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So that is the current state of the wombat.

My favourite patch of colour in the garden, to brighten up what is a grey and gloomy morning here.



Caravaggio, for his many fans 😁



And a picture I took over in Peel on Saturday when I was going searching on the beach in the picture for scallop shells. As you can see the castle has the builders in!





The little cove at the back of the castle is called the Fenella Beach and is the best place I know to collect scallop shells - the shells from the local scallop fishing are dumped back out to sea but the tides and currents bring a lot of them back to this one small spot.

Why was I collecting scallop shells? I was leading a family service at church on Sunday where our theme was Pilgrimage. It took me about 10 minutes to collect the 40 or so needed to give one to each member of the congregation.

It is TT! The first since 2019. An expected 36,000 extra people will be on the island by next week - currently about 15,000 of them are here and it is already busy, busy, busy!

We are running a refreshments service at church as usual; our church is on the course, less than 500m from the start line, and has a large outdoor area where the bikes go past only 3 or 4 metres away from our stone wall.



This is the church garden - you can see the stone wall at the left.

We sell basic tea and coffee, crisps, some bought in chocolate bars, and then filled baps and lots and lots of home made cakes.

But at least when I am at home, busy doing some of the baking, my own garden also looks good as I stand at the kitchen sink!



Note the washing line of assorted towels and oven mitts :)

I have taken so many pictures in the garden over the past couple of days - I am just going to share a few of them.

The laburnum tree in the corner is beautiful at the minute -





And near the base of it -



I took those three pictures whilst sitting out on the decking which is at that end of the garden. But I mainly sat looking down to the other end because... this;



That is mainly the clematis :) The tree it climbs up is in my neighbour's garden and is around 4 or 5m tall!

More of that clematis in another post. But also down at the decking end Marjory, the baby clematis that I planted last year, is growing nicely and actually has three flowers so far - but she has hidden them under her new leaves -



Yes - she really is called Marjory - she is Clematis Montana Marjory.

Also down that end of the garden I have another volunteer; this is Herb Robert. The bees like it and that bit in front of the holly is fairly empty at present, so I'm happy for it to stay... for now.



And finally for today - the first of the nasturtiums is in flower in another quiet spot - I planted some there two years ago and they have naturalised and just reappear of their own accord now.

The garden is wearing a lot of pinks at present -

The magnolia is all flower and no leaves -



There is an abundance of blossom on the marguerites -



And the first fat buds of the wall of clematis are opening -



The pieris was red - but has begun to fade to an amazing shade of pink. I'm sure it wasn't this bright last year -



And seals - yesterday my husband and I took our (step)granddaughter C. seal spotting. (I only mention the 'step' aspect because those who knew us in the past might wonder how we suddenly have 12 and 13 year old grandchildren.)







And this is a 20 second video that C took - if you click on it it will take you to Flickr where you can watch it -



As you can tell, our sea-spotting was successful :)

Easter Sunday is a day of joy! I started the day with coffee in bed, because I have a good husband - then I got up, put a large chicken ready to go in the oven so that said husband could put it on to cook whilst I was out, and gathered up all my bits for Sunday School.


We have been considering 'Christ the superhero' and had a prayer, and colouring, related to that theme, and then we thought of small kindnesses and small braveries... as epitomised by Saint Veronica who was brave enough to step out of a jeering crowd to carry out her small act of kindness in mopping blood and sweat from Jesus' face. This is a level of bravery and kindness an eight or nine year old can cope with in real life.

Then we went on to think about the way in which we incorporate the pagan symbols of new life into our celebration of the resurrection. And to put that theme together with the small kindnesses by making something for ourselves and something to go and give to someone else at the end of the service.

I have put pictures of the, very colourful, outcome of this ( under this cut... )

The chicken dinner, followed by the Very Chocolate Trifle (a layer of chocolate chip muffins soaked with a little chocolate Bailey's, a layer of cherries, a layer of vanilla custard and a layer of chocolate custard, topped with whipped cream and served in small bowls) was good.

We visited Mum in the afternoon to take her her Easter Egg and a couple of large fairy cakes from Saturday's baking, and then D-d had another complete dinner before going home as it was so good!

I have a Lindt Egg, and a Thornton's one. I have eaten just a few of the chocolates D-d chose to go with the Thornton's one.

Today has been a beautiful day, the temperature actually reached 20C. And I have finally (don't laugh) tried taking pictures with my phone and downloading them onto the computer - I was finally told by D-d that I still needed a cable to do this - they didn't actually 'do it wirelessly if only I knew how' :) I know, I can be very tech unsavvy sometimes!

To celebrate this moment of enlightenment I've taken a few pictures in the yard, using the phone, which are ( under this cut.... )

I've posted my Back to Middle Earth Month story to the community ready to be 'unveiled' on March 12th. I think I followed all the instructions...

I think I need a glass of wine after that - posting was almost as difficult as writing it, making sure I followed all the instructions plus making sure the recipe format was OK, and the photo I added... (My prompt was The turning of the year brings feasts and holidays. It's time to enjoy the bounty that was saved for the winter. Create a story or a work of art featuring a Winter seasonal food. Bonus for including a recipe. - but how I answered it will only be made public in another 6 days time!)

And - a small sign of spring, at last!

Thank you to everyone for the good wishes, virtual hugs, and excellent advice following my shunt in the car on Friday. They have obviously helped as I am not as stiff and sore as predicted at all.

So firstly I am going to do the post I had intended for Friday - just a few pictures to show that we are having a nice autumn so far and so there is still a lot of colour in the garden. ( Read more... )

And I have been thinking of hobbits - I always think of hobbits when I am pickling spiced pears for Christmas and winter eating - I have begun to think of them as 'Sam's Spiced Pears'. And I was thinking that to me hobbits live in a version of Tolkien's England - so if they drink cider it is, of course, alcoholic - as apple juice would be called just that, not cider, and if they talk of a field of corn, they mean wheat, not maize, and so on.

And it occurred to me that the mental image of some of my friends must be very different when they think of these things. It was actually brought home to me when Cairistiona had one of the Dunedan women 'shucking' corn - and I puzzled over what she could be doing to it - until I realised it was what you did to what we call sweetcorn. So now I sometimes try to see The Shire, or The Angle, as it must appear to my American friends - and it makes me smile.

I wonder what else we see totally differently in our mind's eye?

Those of you who are friends of bojojoti will have seen her posts with pictures of all her different small gardens within her large one. You will be amused to see that mine, on the other hand, grows only in a series of pots between the house and the back gate!

But it is quite colourful...

This is the view from the back of the house -



And I have put a few close ups ( under this cut.. )

In the past couple of days we have read the following;

On the Guardian website re Serena Williams win at Wimbledon - 'Serena wins the title after two sets of surgery'.

On the Sky TV Guide, tonight we see that BBC Parliament is showing 'Localised Child Grooming Committee'...!

And on Friday, when the island had our extra public holiday to celebrate the Jubilee, it being the day after Tynwald Day and so giving us a 4 day weekend, it was very, very wet. Our local on-line news was doing its best to keep us up to date with what was and wasn't cancelled. We learnt that 'The Village Party in Kirk Michael will go ahead, indoors, but the parade through the village by the fire station has been cancelled.'

Yesterday, on the other hand was sunny. I thought both friends in the rain, and those whose gardens have been wilted by the heat, might like to see ( the first rose, the nasturtiums, and a visitor )