A garden party...

We had an invitation to a garden party for a friend's 'significant' birthday at the weekend, and enjoyed an afternoon tea of homemade scones with several different fillings, both sweet (my favourites were the Quark with blueberries) and savoury (the best cheese scones, from a Delia recipe which I have to find and try out).  What could be nicer than fresh scones and glasses of Buck's Fizz, on a perfect sunny day - bliss!

The party was held in a wonderful long garden, divided into different sections. A stepped section filled to bursting point with frothy forget-me-not, and all the usual cottage garden favourites popping up in between, gives way to a formal area with raised beds, garden sculptures and trees, and a curved path which sweeps past an immaculate lawn. The owners also run a lovely b&b, so you can always visit for yourself!

My favourite part, however, is the 'working' space at the back of the garden, filled with greenhouses, vegetable plots, fruit bushes in cages, wood piles, several ponds which are home to newts and frogs, a scattering of buckets, pots and tools, as well as sundry ad hoc structures to house some of the bits and bobs that are accumulated throughout the life of a garden.

And how about this for a wall colour? I know I could never be this bold, but it's really effective - especially with that zing of orange in front of it.

Our generous hosts, and an abundance of rhubarb, ensured we left with armfuls of the stuff (rhubarb wine is C's plan), plus a promise of some frog spawn next year. I also seem to have come away with definite greenhouse envy! I think I might need my own garden shed too. You know. To store the tools to build the pond to accommodate the frog spawn next year... Keep up!

This little piggy....

A quick jaunt yesterday, with friends, to a charity bring-and-buy book sale held in a private 16th century house, which also has b&b facilities. It was really charming - filled with oak beams, antique furniture, patterned crockery and all the other individual, homely touches that sum up comfortable English country style. Biscuits (including wafer-thin, heart-shaped shortbread) and cakes, all home-made, with tea and coffee served in proper cups and saucers, made for a very genteel and self-indulgent half hour. I spent as much time admiring the house as looking at books, but I contributed to a very good cause by donating three books and coming home with seven...so much for de-cluttering! Amongst those I bought was a book called Fopdoodle and Salmagundi, a book of 'words and meanings from Dr Johnson's Dictionary that time forgot'.

It was a bit of a dull day, but the journey home was brightened by the fields of oilseed rape looming on the horizon, and glimpsed between the trees. The smell of the stuff is quite distinctively musty. I don't find it unbearably unpleasant - but it does make me think of suitcases full of ancient clothes that desperately need to be freshened up, and preferably without too much close examination beforehand! Some hate the colour, but I love the almost artificial brightness of it, and every year plan to paint it. Perhaps this is the year!

Then we spotted an unusual sight - a little family of around a dozen little black piglets, out with mum, snuffling around in a field dotted with dandelions.

As the runaways (for that's what they were) got nearer to the road we (with our city ways!) were mightily relieved when two locals took charge by phoning the farmer and ushering the whole lot back home - the little black piggies scattering like marbles every so often before scurrying back to catch up with mum. Very sweet!

So now I must make sure I don't have an erke (adj. Idle; lazy; slothful) day and get to it... Blue skies, strong winds and sunshine today - perhaps I need to go and get some more inspirational pictures of yellow fields!