Where are my secateurs?

We were going off to Selsey in West Sussex today, right on the coast line, and it would have been a most refreshing seaside day.  However, our plans changed quite suddenly, and early on , for we'd planned to leave about 7.30 am as the drive would have taken about two hours, and we wanted to have a full day there.

Ah, but it was not to be, perhaps another day!!  Instead I found some new gardening gloves, and a friend's secateurs, as I couldn't find my own, and got down to some serious gardening.

We used to have a vegetable garden for the dear SO to take care of, while I grew the herbs and flowers and those mostly in terracotta pots, plus a few wooden tubs; I had one Versailles tub, a square shaped wooden tub named after the garden tubs at Versailles, Paris, France, and it is a favourite container for mine.

My pots and tubs were in a somewhat poor state of affairs, and I'm afraid to say the overgrown plants were in a terrible condition..  It was a very busy morning, digging over the plants and compacted soil, and thankfully, the sun was shining and it was amazingly very hot; phew. 

And then we all went out to lunch, me, the dear SO and our kind friend of the secateurs.  We ate out in the garden of our local pub and had a most enjoyable meal but, unfortunately, the occasion was slightly spoilt by the hovering wasps.  We've not seen many this summer, because of the cold and the rain, but they appeared again today with the sun, and were a great nuisance!

Of course the sun was shining and it was hot, and why, because  the children have gone back to school, and without fail, the weather always improves when the new school term begins.  I remember when my children were very small, and going back to school in September, and requiring them to wear their new winter uniform on their first day back, as they were expected to do.

Well, not so on the second day of the new school year, oh no, not at all.  Summer dresses and perhaps a blazer for the girls, shirts and short trousers for the boys, were the children's chosen outfits and rightly so, for it was often far too hot for winter uniforms.  And the girls wore straw boaters with a blue ribbon band, and the boys their dark blue caps, and they all looked utterly adorable.

A little family research late afternoon and then it was my time to cook supper, and we had hot smoked salmon, creamed potatoes with fresh garden chives, and home grown green  beans plus some fresh carrots.

Altogether a very pleasant day!!  And Alice is getting very much better.

Daisy