And that will be his first task in the morning…..

You know you have mates when you drop a birthday card off and perhaps angle for a cup of tea and you end up staying around their table for five hours.

It was William’s birthday today.  William and Anna live in Blossville between us and the annual  Montebourg chandeleur weekend where all the local nursery men line the streets selling bare rooted trees and bushes, so we planned to have a nosey around to see what was new on the market then take a tiny detour into Blossville on the way home. We have in the past, spent a lot of money in Montebourg this time of year in order to build up our plant stock but as the years have gone by, we have propagated more and more from our first purchases  and now we are smugly satisfied  to see that the plants we have nurtured  with love and care cost a small fortune on the open market, so an appreciative thank you to the makers of  gardeners world who helped me realise, even I can make baby plants and that they might grow into big ones.  I made William a card and wrapped a jar of home made strawberry jam in a square of cellophane to give it French style but in reality it was like taking coals to Newcastle as Anna is the queen of jams and chutney, I confessed this thought to William who said that other peoples jam always tasted better, but he hasn’t tried mine and I fear he was just being kind. Needless to say when we got to Blossville  our welcome was huge and we were sat at table with cutlery in hand sharing a spontaneous lunch before we could say, thank you.  There is so much to talk about and I do sometime wonder if we will ever exhaust our  enthusiasm to chat and debate. The garden is a good and steady subject and Anna is on the cusp of developing her brand new garden this year and we are thrilled to be able to appreciate her plans and actually have an opinion and dare I say a bit of advice.  When we walked  in at one o’clock a cake came out of the oven and at four thirty it was iced and topped with birthday candles, we took photos and sang the most sung song on earth and had a good afternoon out.

It is bitterly cold at the moment and although we had plans to go on to the park to move a few plants and, oh yes, I forgot to mention that we bought two cultivated bramble bushes to grow over our new antique farm machine, but it was cold and I was feeling relaxed and happy on my spontaneous lunch and cake so we shut the shutters and loaded up the fire box and said maniana to today’s work plan.

As the weather has turned again Mike has decided to do another fat ball run for the birds  and set himself up in the lounge with seeds, fat blocks, large bowl and a sheet covering my precious rug. If he had been a teenager in my home I would have given him a stern talking to about the right place for the right job but he lives here, sometimes vacuum cleans, and that will be his first task in the morning…..Happy birthday to Miranda