Friday

 Good morning, everyone.  It's nice and early, the window in my bedroom at Dad's is wide open and the cool, fresh air is flooding in.  It's lovely.  It looks as if the sun will show his face at some point and the forecast here is for a dry and dull day.  Back home, they're supposed to get a bit of rain this afternoon - obviously we are a bit too far west to catch any here.
Even a bit of rain would be good; it's not been warm and dry for long enough to parch the soil and a few inches down it is still nice and damp so light rain would be great.

I've just taken a view from the window down the garden.  It's a lovely space although too much for Dad to manage now.  He has help from a gardener, Colin.

I'm slightly miffed to see that Dad's clematis ooh la la is three flowers (two and a half, really) ahead of mine - but mine has the more buds!   < grin >

It felt quite hot and a bit humid yesterday but, all the same, it was a good day.   Chris came over at ten bearing gifts - not five, but six, tomato plants.  They are all of the one type, golden crown, and I looked it up to discover that it is considered an excellent tomato, sweet, juice and delicious.  Good oh!  There wasn't room down the allotment for even one of them so they are not in the garden and I have my full complement of tomatoes for this year.  What with what's in the bed and what's in pots there are twenty plants at home and eight down the allotment so, fingers crossed, we won't go short.  Also, they seem to be a nice mix of colours, shapes and sizes.
I took a photo of the new plants but it's on my desktop and I'm on my laptop for a few day's of course.  Or no, hang on - I posted it to Chris on Facebook.  Maybe I can copy it from there . . .

Yes, I can!  I always plant four in this pot and I know they look a bit crowded but it doesn't seem to matter all that much.  I gave the soil a good scattering of water retaining crystals and slow release granules, plus a new topping of compost so, fingers crossed, they should be happy and reward me with lots of yellow deliciousness.

Anyway, thanks, Chris - very generous!

After lunch, I sorted things out, remembered to empty the bins and so on, and set out, taking in the allotment on the way for a watering.  Yesterday's newly planted tomatoes looked very happy and so they should!  However, of the three courgettes we planted out last weekend, two look reasonably happy with a bit of new, green growth, but the third looked distinctly on the fading out side of life.  It's supposed to be quite a bit cooler today so fingers crossed that it helps.  Everything else is looking pretty good really, although there's no sign of runners or mange touts yet and nor should there be.

After a very easy journey cross Essex and through Herts, I arrived at Dad's just five minutes before John which was great timing.  We had a good evening talking ways and means and today we all plan to go down to the mobility shop in town to look at various items that might help.

Before then, I'm off to Tesco to get stuff in for the weekend meals so I'd better get on with the rest of my social mediating fairly pronto!

Enjoy the day, whatever it brings.  xx