...links me to the people I love.

Some random photos from this week.

On Sunday at The Pig at Combe, lovely old country hotel and restaurant near Honiton, where I took Robin's amazing aunty for lunch to celebrate her 90th birthday. 

We had starters - a crab tart, and a pea and spring onion spelt risotto. We both agreed the beetroot and roasted Jerusalem artichokes were the bees knees.

The petits fours - or as they called them the 'piggy' fours - were complimentary-  ( I'd phoned in advance and told them about the birthday) which I thought was a lovely touch. I also thought the white squares with greenish/bluish veins were blue cheese but they turned out to be white chocolate and mint truffles. 

They have a wonderful walled vegetable garden in the grounds which we walked around afterwards - full of different varieties of mint - but not for long as the wind was icy.

In my front garden - a gorgeous rhododendron - not as spectacular as the ones at Killerton but I love it. The other day I met the lovely man who designed and planted our garden 14 years ago outside a neighbour's house.  He hadn't heard about Robin and was very shocked. He said his brother's wife died recently too - they were married 45 years, and known each other since they were 15. He is still unbelieving. Like me.

A Pieris by the front door...

and everywhere in the back garden brunnera, forget-me-not, has self seeded...

which I also love....which reminds me of my mother.

Everything in the garden links me to the people  I love.

 

I'm so pleased the magnolia survived the frost and the first flowers are just coming out now....it was  a gift from my nephew many years ago.

This bird bath was a wedding gift to us from a dear friend who I met when I was teaching EFL in Hastings 40 years ago. She has now developed alzheimer's disease which is heart breaking. She is the same age as  me.

In the spring park all this week...

gunnera...

'my' 

mallards...

and a pink blue bell by the path.

Today I fill in time in Exeter while my car is at the garage having new air-bags fitted.  Some models of the Honda Jazz, which I drive, are being re-called for faulty parts. I share a courtesy bus into town with an amazing woman who is also having new airbags. 

She is 87, a widow for 22 years,  lives on her own, does all her own cleaning and gardening - including cutting the grass - on her half acre plot and does keep-fit and swims and belongs to all sorts of local societies like the University of the Third Age.

She made a snowman in her garden when we had all that heavy snow and put her husband's old gardening hat on him. She said when she moved the hat just came with her and still hangs on a hook in the garage.

Among other things, we talked about beetroot chutney recipes and the merger between Asda and Sainsbury's.

Like Robin's aunty.... and my father.... her indomitable spirit is an inspiration to me. I hope I'll be like them when I'm that age. But at the moment I feel like these umbrellas...just hanging on by a thread to each day that comes....sometimes open and sometimes closed.

 And I don't know why these umbrellas are strung up in the High Street in Exeter. Maybe because it's a bank holiday this weekend.... I love it that someone had a crazy creative idea and made it happen.

This evening I don't let myself get too hungry and perk up last night's pasta with purple sprouting broccoli, spinach and a whole bulb of young green garlic that I bought at the farmers' market yesterday. I eat it watching the pigeons and the blackbirds hustling over the last of the wild bird seed I have left out in several places in the garden. 

I must buy some more tomorrow. They eat more than me those pigeons.