Not Rosemoor ...But Still Beautiful

We planned a day at RHS Rosemoor Gardens  - a dear friend and I - but we never got there.

We stopped on the way for coffee at the wonderful middle eastern  Baobab cafe in Crediton....ended up staying there for fabulous crunchy salad/aubergine/tahina lunch... and walking round the town later where we found roses growing

 

 in other people's gardens, 

in the park,

in the playground,

and in the church ( which was originally the first cathedral in Devon built in the ninth century) where 

the ladies of the church were setting up for a flower festival at the weekend.

The  floor of the church was strewn with buckets of flowers in water - some of them sent down from 

Covent Garden - like these chrysanthemums - their heads covered in white net bonnets to make them last till Saturday,

and some like these rattle grasses cut from their own gardens to add to the elaborate arrangements all around the church.

  Not Rosemoor but all still beautiful.

  Back home in my garden another poppy has opened in 

burnt orange

  fragile splendour.

And I get a brief glimpse of the bullfinch...and no photo of it, but this morning I catch sight of the  pink/ blue/white markings of a jay as is swoops out of the elm tree at the bottom of the garden beyond the stream ...can't believe my luck...hope it will come to the bird feeder one day...but maybe only when the starling family have departed ...if they ever do.

And now I'm too tired to write any more...and need to sleep like this pussy cat which was dozing on the giant oak stump in my neighbour's garden this morning when I pulled the curtains....imagining my  day would be one particular way and it turned out to be another....different but still beautiful.