Making Me Happy

Tomatoes and beans I bought in the organic farmers' market this morning....

 and yellow peppers and courgettes -  my husband grew the green stripy one at the allotment.

The yellow and red and orange theme took me into my photo albums.....

to this rain daisy(?) in Somerset....

to these African Marigolds in Auckland, NZ...

to these red hot pokers in Cromwell, NZ...

to these tomatoes in my friend's green house in Scotland...

 and to this orange hulled ship in Aberdeen, Scotland.

Recently a friend sent me a quote ...

Do one thing every day that makes you happy.

It made me happy just now choosing these photos and all the memories of the places and times and the dear people attached to them....

It made me happy this morning hearing my husband's lovely Age UK be-friender say with delight,

Oh, he's so cute,

when she saw the little ceramic dog he's made her.  I think so too.

It made me happy when I stuffed my juicer with huge bunches of Russian kale and spinach - abundant surplus from my sister's garden -  and with lemons and ginger, celery and carrots, apples and cucumber whizzing up a pungent green juice for lunch.....while my husband ate lunch ( not a smoothie) with my brother in law in a gastro pub. 

It  made me happy this evening sitting in our Deeksha meditation circle  - remembering to pour some love into my long neglected inner child.... and to feel the relief of having a place to start my healing journey.

And it made me very happy afterwards to taste a slice of fabulous light and moist Coconut and Date birthday cake ...the very talented cake-maker friend gave me the recipe -  which I discover I already have in my old Cranks Cookery book -  which although I've had for many years (the pages all splattered and falling out) I've never made this particular cake..... 

something to do on another day which I know will make me happy.

For No Reason

South West France

Dartmoor Devon

Dartmoor Devon

Yerevan Armenia

Art in the sky above Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa

A lovely day....in a town by the sea.....with  three dear friends....celebrating another birthday.....indulging in a cafe lunch ......browsing in the shops.... heart nourished by their company....

This evening I feel bolshie and tired.....resisting the things still to do....watering the garden.....writing emails.....cooking the blackberries..... making supper.....Googling places to stay in the Forest of Dean for our week away in September..... ordering homeopathic remedies for my husband's itchy eyes.....

I just want to watch a Meryl Streep DVD, August Osage Country.....but the time has run out now and it's due back at the library tomorrow.....

So maybe I'll keep it..... watch it on Friday...... and pay the fine.......

The sky was so beautiful tonight....soft grey and marbled pink....resisting nothing.....just glowing its glory...... for no reason..... because that's what it does... night after night....not trying to be anything else except its own natural self.

Munificent Birthday Feast

A baby watermelon.... when I cut into it this morning I was expecting rows of flat black shiny pips inside but found these instead -  tiny white ones like soft milk teeth...

Today we sat on rugs spread in the shade under huge sycamore trees in a small, peaceful park in Bristol - sharing a munificent picnic feast - celebrating my nephew's birthday. We piled our paper plates with award winning cheeses..... soft bread, crusty bread, olive bread and walnut bread..... salty butter, salty crisps....... home-made chutneys and silver skinned onions.........homegrown sugar snap peas, lettuces and cucumber.......yellow tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, roasted with garlic and basil tomatoes....... crunchy green olives........ and a basket of  fruits - Mejul dates, sugar dusted figs, rose blushed pears, donut peaches - all washed down with ginger beer, white wine and elderflower fizz.

And all the while my little three year old great nephew played around us - hopping  in and out of the wicker picnic basket,  running in and out of the shade, kicking a ball, chasing his grandparents in his little bare feet, riding their legs, escaping tickles from his great uncle, sitting astride his father's back -  little fingers tugging his hair, swinging and rolling in his mother's arms - always chuckling, laughing, arm waving gleeful.

Later, back at the house he helped his father blow out the birthday candles and like the rest of us tucked into a slice of the sticky lemon polenta cake, the elegant lemon tart, the homemade pisctachio biscotti and the bowl of strawberries, raspberries blackberries and wedges of cool pink watermelon.

Needless to say we didn't need supper tonight.

Lesson For The Day

SATURDAY

We drive north -   an hour into mid- Devon to Bampton on the edges of Exmoor ....for lunch at the Bridge House - the hotel/restaurant owned by the couple who used to run my favourite cafe in Topsham....

and we sit in the  sloping garden at the back by the fish pond...

and have lovely salads - couscous and halloumi cheese/ smoked trout and peashoots -  in the shade of an umbrella...

and wisteria dripping over the fence above us.

I liked having our  iced water in a milk bottle - I didn't know you could still get milk in bottles.

 I'd have liked to walk a while on the moor but my husband didn't feel up to it and after Friday I've learnt it's better to just go with his mood. I said we could always go for a walk later when it was cooler. But we didn't. Which was just how it was on Saturday.

SUNDAY

I pack a picnic and we head off to the National Trust's Montacute House in Somerset. We've been before but my husband doesn't remember it till we get  there.  We are immediately enveloped by the glorious perfume of the lime trees in full bloom - towering above us.

And immediately taking me back to a holiday we had in Greece with dear friends on the island where we honeymooned....and a long lunch we all ate under a cool canopy of linden blossom buzzing with bees.

Fig...

Gladioli -the colour of limes...

Clematis....

Spiny Bear's Breech....

thank you, Belinda for identifying it for me...

Verbena and open kitchen windows...

The Elizabethan facade of Montacute  House...

"Damn - I left the keys to the Jag inside...!"

Can't remember the name of this one...

Hollyhock - dark as claret....

Daisy....

This is the flower of the plant behind the rose....

Osteopermum....I think...

Dahlia and bee

Echinacea

Antirrhinum

Holllyhock

Nicotiana

These little bottles  of Chrysanths were on the picnic table where we stopped at the side of the A303 to have  made-on-the-farm  ice-cream on the way home, just missing by moments a horrible accident involving lots of mangled up cars.

Lesson for the day....have no expectations that today will be anything like yesterday ...or the day before....Friday's despair dissolved as we walked around this beautiful garden and even explored the rooms in the house full of paintings and tapestries.... as my husband said he really enjoyed himself. So I did too.

TODAY in Sidmouth

where we had a tiny promenade along the sea front, avoiding the crowds on the beach,

after my husband's session in the safe hands of our wonderful EFT counsellor who always finds a way to touch his heart. This time she asked him what he would say to himself if he was being his own intuitive healer and he said, 

Trust my ability.

Which means giving up trying to be perfect....and getting it right all the time. 

Something I could do too.

No Days Out

View of North Devon coast near Hartland from the field where we ate our picnic - in the strip of shade from the hedgerow - trying to avoid sitting on dry sheep shit.

Looking down on Hartland Quay.

Rose Madder - a parasite cobweb flung over a bush -  a tangled pink net.

Looking south from the top of the cliffs...

 Flashing Montbretia lining the path..

hot and bright as the day...

Looking back northwards the way we came.

Rustling dry grasses above the sea...memories of our honeymoon in Greece...

Don't want to write tonight - headache from the heat, from eating too much Sicilian Lemon Curd Ice cream on the sofa, from crying in the bath.

The blue sky photos only tell a part of the picture. A day out with my husband. A picnic on a beautiful summer's day by the sea. A walk along the cliffs with views to break your heart. Devon ice cream cone on the way home. ....romantic, idyllic, fun.

Except it isn't - not today......I want it to fit my pictures but nothing matches....nothing worse than a picnic packed  up in the back of the car, getting hungrier and hungrier, driving on and on beyond the place you thought was ideal and it's a scorching beach packed with holidaymakers..... and you can't find anywhere to park or stop.... not a single spot of shade in sight along winding narrow lanes....and you need the loo...

Nothing worse than longing to walk along the cliffs, to get out of the hot car at last and my husband saying he only wants to do a very short walk....and I insist on at least half an hour .... and it's too hot and his leg hurts and he's miserable...and I hate myself....and  so I miss the glory of a summer's day by the sea.

None of all that matters really - it's not about what happened today....it's that I have been clinging on to something - thinking it was a  magic solution - at least a small way to try and make my husband happy sometimes - to have days out together.

When I choose them they don't always work....he doesn't like where I choose....he doesn't enjoy walking anymore. When I ask him to choose he says he can't. He feels incompetent. He doesn't know what the places are when he looks at the map. He wants to go somewhere he hasn't been before but he doesn't know where that is.

I feel  stuck....at a loss....caught up in a tangled net of rose madder....don't know how to let him go....let  him slip through my fingers...let him take the shortest walk he wants....or no walk at all...and  be peaceful with that... I just can't do that right now... can't face all his empty hours with no days out to fill them...