Thursday

Good morning.  It's nice and sunny outside right now but it was a pretty chilly night requiring a good snuggle under the quilt.  Will it stay nice?  Goodness knows; fingers crossed!

The weather was responsible for a change of plan yesterday.  Wrest Park didn't come off as the forecast was a bit dodgy although, typically, it ended up nice and we could have gone.  However, it sounded as if it would be a bit cold with sudden showers and we didn't fancy being caught out.

So instead we did little things.  First of all we went to a local health food shop as I needed instant yeast, dried cranberries, etc . . .  I ring the changes with yeast, using instant (breadmaker friendly) yeast, the dried yeast you have to activate (I love watching it foam up) and fresh yeast.  I had run out of the instant and, while you can get it in sachets, I refuse to buy sachets as they are so wickedly expensive.  Dove does little bags of it but you tend not to see them in supermarkets so I was glad to be able to stock up.

Then we went to a local butcher and I stocked up with meat, mostly to keep Grandson full up!

Finally, after that, we stopped off at a garden centre and had a very nice lunch.  I had toasted sandwich with cheese, bacon and caramelised onion chutney and it was gorgeous.  Must make some onion chutney now I have the time.  After we had eaten a full sufficiency we wandered around the plants as I have some garden vouchers, very kindly given to me by my children and their parents at the end of the school year.

I was surprisingly organised about it, for once.  I think I have mentioned before that when the crocosmia flowering is over I am having as many of them out as I can manage.  They're just not quite right there - wrong height and wrong colour and too invasive.  They won't be wasted as some will go into a container for future years and the rest will go to Beth who said she will be able to use them.

Anyway, the point is that I will have gaps in the middle of the flower bed.  I have that delphinium to plant and need a couple of other things, medium height, not too spready or invasive and must be pink, lilac, purple or white.

So after much deliberation and tooing and froing I bought a deliciously named Veronica Purpleicious (yes, really) which looks as if it will fill the bill perfectly, being long flowering (if one dead heads), about 40 to 50 cms high and not too spreading.
Here's a picture, borrowed from Google.

Pretty!

Then my eyes lit upon a very pretty little bell shaped flower called platycodon grandiflora and I just had to.  As we said, at that price it's no great loss if it doesn't last, although it is also a perennial so fingers crossed.  I got a pink one but I think I will go back and pick up a purple and a white plant too.  I am not 100% sure where to put them yet so I will do the usual and leave them in their pots (or maybe pot them on) and see where they look best.

It's a campanula, of course

As we wandered around, I spotted some tayberry plants, much further on than the little bush I have at present and, lo and behold, there was one ripe fruit on it.  I'm afraid I was very naughty.  I've not tasted a tayberry before, just read about how delicious they are.  I reckoned that this fruit, which was calling out to me, truly it was, would only shrivel and die on the plant so I picked it, gave it a surreptitious brush down and ate it.  Oh, my, it was very tasty indeed - sort of sweet and spicy, like a raspberry but different and very juicy.  Now, even more, I want my plant to produce at least a little fruit next year.  Fingers crossed!

Today we are hoping to get to Wrest Park.  The forecast is better and it seems that the sun will shine on us.  Fingers crossed!