Bank Holiday Sunday

Bank holiday Sunday dawned bright and cheerful- well I assume the dawn was bright, I was having a lie in so missed the early actions of the sun. It was looking good when I did get up though!
I have to work tomorrow (bank holiday Monday) so all of my holiday feeling has to be squeezed into this one day, and the appearance of such beautiful sunshine was good to see.

Our garden is in a bit of a state at the moment. We are having the wall ties replaced and the bricks re-pointed so there is cement dust everywhere!! The plants are coated in it, the patio is a very strange light shade of beige, even after a wash down with a hose and a brush, there are workers tools and buckets all over the lawn and bottles of stuff loitering the steps (they aren't fantastically tidy workmen and have broken various bits around the garden- flower pots, broom handle, lights...). The cat is covered in the dust as he rolls around in it outside, and the floors inside are also gritty underfoot. This stuff really does get everywhere.

So, I will only show you the pretty parts of the garden, with a close enough zoom that you cannot see the chaos reigning everywhere else. We are particularly excited by our Chinese Lanterns this year, which sounds kind of sad, but these plants were originally put into a pot about three or four years ago and this is the first time we actually have genuine bonafide orange lanterns! The plants have got bigger and stronger every year so perhaps they are meant to build up to producing the lanterns.

This Clematis is having another crack at flowering. It usually flowers early on in the year, but then gets covered by this deep purple bindweed-esque flower which shades the Clematis, encouraging it to have another go. The two purples together can be quite spectacular.

Our Quince tree is pretty laden with fruit at the moment. It is a scraggly excuse for a fruit tree and is unfortunately in quite a difficult area to reach so we don't usually manage to get much of the fruit from it. I have never made anything with a Quince, have you? Can you recommend a recipe?

Since the neighbours cut down a load of trees at the bottom of their garden, we have a pretty far reaching view down over the valley and towards the high street of Uckfield. We aren't sure if we like this yet, whilst it's quite interesting to have a view of the streets below, it is quite open and we get a lot of wind through this area. It has made this area of the garden a lot lighter though so we might be able to grow some different plants here in the future.

Ziggy is thrilled at the return of the sunshine, and it has been boiling hot today! August has been a bit of a wash out really with grey drizzle days, and the return of cooler temperatures. But this weekend has been really nice and sunny, something that is meant to continue through this week- which is marvellous as I am in the carnival next weekend and it was very wet last year so we are hoping for dry weather this time around.

An August bank holiday family tradition is to have a garden party at my Grandmother's house with some far flung relatives who travel down for the yearly visit. One comes over from the Isle of Wight and got up at about 4 in the morning to get on various ferries, trains and buses.  We all just about squished onto the patio (the downside of downsizing) with one chair precariously placed on the edge of a step, and ate a jolly good salad style lunch with various types of salads (Vietnamese prawn salad, Greek salad, salmon with beetroot and rice salad, vegetable plot salad...) combined with cooked chicken and fresh bread. The puddings were just as delicious and disappeared so fast I didn't even think about photographing them- for they were Nigella-worthy! We had mint and chocolate torte, raspberry semifreddo and fruit salad. The semifreddo was luuurvly, sort of tart and sweet at the same time, and of course freezing cold, which was welcome during the heat of the day whilst sat out on a sun trap patio.

 

When not eating or showing relatives around the studio, I was working once more on my stitchscape minis which sort of got thrust aside during the larger Christmas themed 'scapes. There are still a few to go in this set but hopefully I can turn more of my attention to it and get these little lovelies finished. I am also halfway through writing up the instructions for the Summer Sweet stitchscape and just have to get The Mother to proof read it and get a test print out to make sure my pages are all the right way around. I've never made a proper booklet before so it's causing me a few head scratches!
If you are off tomorrow, have a lovely bank holiday Monday!