We had a very quiet Messy Church yesterday - only a handful of children. I guess it's because it was a nice, dry, sunny day - and we really haven't had many of those so far in June. So the park, and the Wildlife park and so on would be very attractive. Edie was missing as she was at the theatre! The Animal Guyz were there, and Lizzie said it was crammed full of children, so she thought that might be another reason we were quiet.

However the children who were there seemed to actually enjoy mainly being one to one with the people running each craft table - and we ate up cake that we had put in the freezer when TT ended so abruptly.

Our theme was Jonah and the Whale - or possibly the Basking Shark... Local children know basking sharks and some years ago two teenagers pointed out that one of those would have been perfect - enormous gaping mouth and fairly hollow inside!

We did sea themed crafts - here are just a sample -

Paper fish. NKY2 and her friend were in charge of showing the children how to make these from a square of paper. I did sit at home on Saturday morning drawing on all the cutting lines for them, but the cutting and gluing the children did themselves, with a little help from the teenagers if required. They 'move' beautifully (there is a video here.



These pictures involved glue, paint, tissue paper - making them was a big hit! The use of the clothes airer and pegs for them to hang to dry was something I saw at a children's group at another church, about 10 years ago, and 'adopted' straight away!



Small, brightly coloured, paper plates became fish and jelly fish -



And Alison brought a bag full of tangerines and some edible greenery - and showed them how they could use these to make pictures. We had this crab (OK, a bit short of legs, but James is only about 5!), also there were fish, an 'underwater snail', and a couple of others I didn't quite identify!



Also, Linda helped them make cards for next week - Fathers' Day, with a whale inside and the words 'You are whaley great!' And Gail helped them make their own fishing game, involving pipe cleaners, fish shapes, and a Jonah that could be eaten by the whale.

Now for the flowers - pics as much to help me keep track of when and where everything blooms!

I mentioned in a post at the beginning of June that Queen of Sweden was going to be beautiful this year, and I was right.





I was thinking of you, pondhopper, as I guess your roses will be almost over blooming now until you get cooler weather.

Also for you - my little bottle-brush is now developing proper 'brushes' -



And this is the new peony that was put in a couple of years ago and had one flower last year -



And finally, the million bells and the petunias in the metal troughs make me smile when I look out the window - or even sit on the decking now that it's not raining!



The metal troughs hang on the rail around the decking where I was standing, so the picture is taken from above this one.

And, in other news, NYK2 has her last GCSE exam tomorrow - then no more school, and her prom to look forward to. I picked her dress up from the seamstress earlier in the week, as the lady usually only works mornings, which made it difficult for D-d, and lives about half a mile from me.

D-d commented that she would have hesitated to ask me early last year, as the workshop is in the lady's garden, down quite a lot of steps, and she would have worried about my knee. Whereas now it is so much more stable that she thought I would be fine - and she was absolutely right! Hurrah for physiotherapy and weight loss!

And relax...TT ended more on a whimper than a bang - bad weather meant the last day of racing was cancelled after we all sat around ready to spring into action for about 3 hours. So we put some cakes and bread buns in the freezer at church, and all took some of our own cakes home to share with family.

S2C, NYK2, Vikki (who helps NYK2 with her maths), and I all ate carrot cake over the past few days, I put a fruit loaf in our freezer, and D-d picked up a Victoria sponge and the other freshly baked fruit loaf to take to their house. We are well caked!

Now to get ready for Messy Church on Saturday... (some of the cake in the church freezer will be used for that 🙂)

In the meantime, here are my A to Z pictures for May;

Q is for Quench;



These 'greatly reduced because they look more or less dead to us' petunias from Tesco are sitting in a sink in the church where the little bookshop is situated, quenching their thirst whilst I did my day in the shop. They recovered well and are in my galvanised plant holders on the decking, now.

R is for Rococo... Finding something rococo on our island was going to be very difficult, the island had nothing grander than a series of small whitewashed churches and sod-roofed dwellings during the rococo period, but I did a bit of lateral thinking -



Rock... Cocoa!

S is for Stitch -



T is for Tomato -



The flat bread was actually topped with cheese and red onion - but the soup was tomato!

And, finally for May, U is for Umbels. Umbels are where a plant grows a number of small heads together, in an umbrella shape, from one stem. This is the spurge in my garden.

The Great TT Bake-in is underway - I've got gingerbread, fruit loaves, plain sponge cakes, and carrot cakes in the freezer and I know Kirsteen has banana cakes, gingerbread, and fruit loaves in hers, and Pauline has a freezer full of lemon drizzle cakes... Tomorrow I will see what fresh ones will be brought to church, then do a bit more baking - and we start serving the hordes first thing on Monday morning.

So for the next two weeks life will be baking and serving interspersed with the odd family thing, eating and sleeping!

However, today the sun shone for almost the first time in a couple of weeks - and I had time to spend in the garden - hurrah!

Here are some pictures - we are now moving into the hotter, summery, colours...

The peony is my view from the kitchen sink!



And this is the other side of the same flower bed -




( And there are more under this cut...Collapse )

And over the next two, busy weeks, the garden will be my retreat place for a few minutes of peace and quiet whenever I'm at home :)

S2C and I have been invited to go up to D-d's to watch with her and NYK2 - the male members of their household are doing other things and D-d and NYK2 are the big fans - so we are taking a supply of nibbly-bits and S2C's Strawberry and Lime cider and joining them!

I plan to take the lap-top - or to use the app, and so have start this post ready, so do feel free to add your contributions here even if my own are not as regular as usual!

I feel rather like the wombat in the icon. I have been laid low for the past few days with a really horrible cold, having not had even a sniffle over the worst of the winter.

I have had a sore throat, a very runny nose that is so red it looks as if I could give Rudolph a run for his money, earache, and a cough that seems to come from somewhere down in my boots.

Yesterday I took part in a 3 hour Zoom session of compulsory advanced safeguarding training for my role in church - I had a glass of water, throat sweets, and a piles of paper tissues at hand - and stayed on mute unless I actually had to answer a question, so that the noise of me coughing didn't make it difficult for everyone else to hear the person leading the course. But at least I was present :)

Today I just cancelled my physio session, and gave WI a miss as it wouldn't have been fair to give this to anyone else. Which was a shame as it was about the role of women in the Manx silver and lead mining industry.

My eyes got tired easily too, so I haven't been reading my Flist much, but will try to catch up in the next couple of days.

Here are my photos taken for the weekly A to Z challenges at Flickr for last month.

M is for Maroon, defined as a colour between red and brown -



N is for Narrow. There are some nice narrow paths and lanes around our island, although on a couple of days when I was near suitable ones I forgot to take a picture. But there were a few lovely pictures of narrow lanes and snickets by the end of the week - and I had this quote in my brain whenever I thought of the subject, so I took this and added text, which is allowable under the community rules.



O is for Oddity. This has simply appeared in my garden in the past two years - I definitely didn't plant it, and surrounded by clematis, honeysuckle and a couple of flowering shrubs it is definitely a bit of an oddity!



P is for Plants. I took this at the local garden centre - and was really chuffed when the group admins chose it for the group banner that week!

On Friday evening we had visitors we hadn't seen in years - or ever before! Alan was a friend from many, many, years ago; he was at our wedding forty years ago, and his mum used to babysit the infant D-d.

When we came home to the island we actually stayed with his Mum on a trip or two back to the North-East.

Last time we saw him was at least 15 years ago, probably longer, when he was over on the island on a motor-bike related 'lads trip'. I can't remember him even mentioning he was married, on that occasion...

So I got a message, via Flickr of all places, to say he and his wife Angela(!) were going to be on the island for a short holiday, could we meet up? Of course we could!

I picked them up and brought them up to our house - Alan carrying a small suitcase!

Angela is lovely.

And then Alan opened the suitcase and produced these -



A pair of beautiful cushions - with puffins on! These were a wedding anniversary gift from him and Lawrence - another friend from back in the day. They had chosen puffins without knowing about our puffin collection, but because they mate for life and it seemed apt! How good was that?

Conversation uncovered that he and Angela had been married for over 20 years - her children had been mid-teens at the time and so Alan and Angela now have toddler to teenaged grandchildren!

It was so good to spend time with them both - I eventually took them back to their hotel well after 11pm. We really must keep in touch better!

Whilst Alan and S2C spent time talking D&D, Angela and I were talking about gardens. Mine is now changing day by day - I took some photos about a week ago, and it looks so different by today that I went out and took some more to post instead.

For wiseheart - here is Caravaggio;





And the rest of the pictures are here - ( under this cut...Collapse )

I have another couple of pots to refill, and then it will just be dead-heading, watering, and sitting back and enjoying it all, all summer.

Yesterday I attended a seminar at St, John's Mill; originally a water driven textile mill, unusual because the wheel was actually inside the building (and still is), it is a small conference centre run by a Christian Charity, but open for anyone and everyone.

It has a garden designed to be peaceful. The garden is one of my favourite places.

Let me take you on a walk...





( Read more...Collapse )

After that the day got busier - I will, hopefully, post about that, and some pics of our own garden, tomorrow.

Forty years ago today was the first the world heard of the Chernobyl Disaster.

It was also our wedding day.

So today is our 40th wedding anniversary. In some ways it seems a very long time ago, and in other ways it seems impossible that it is so long ago.

We scrubbed up pretty well back then;



I realise we have almost no recent photos of the two of us together. I must take one, or get one of the family to do it for me!

Slightly over 40 years ago, as newly-weds, we went to see The Tall Ships; they had gathered, for the first time, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where we lived then. We both fell in love with the most beautiful of them, a Polish Training Ship called Dar Młodzieży. Over the years I have followed reports of her travels.

And today, as if to celebrate our anniversary, she called into Douglas!

We went down to see her - she is still beautiful;



It's hard to get a sense of her size from my picture - but she is 108.8 m (357 ft) long, 62.1 m (204 ft) in height to the top of her masts, and sail area of 3,015 m2 (32,450 sq ft), when in full sail.

This is the view from the webcam that looks down at the outer harbour - her size is a little clearer, I think.





She has a crew of 40, plus 136 cadets - with their bunks, mess rooms, and classrooms. We saw quite a few of the cadets out and about in town - and discovered that the ship also carries her own bicycles with the ships name on the crossbars, as we met a couple of the crew cycling down the pier from where she was docked!

Honestly life has just been proceeding, with so little noteworthy that I hadn't realised how long it had been since I posted.

I have done my days in the bookshop, pottered in the garden, been to the island-wide WI AGM, taken up some new curtains, fed teenagers... and read a lot.

The WI AGM was good - we had a shortish business meeting, there were long-service awards presented, we got tea and cake - and there was a 3/4 hour interlude between the business meeting and the cake and special awards in which we were entertained by a group of local gentlemen called 'Mine's a Shanty' - who, not surprisingly, sing sea shanties.

The garden is waking up now from its winter sleep. The grass is growing and the newly emerging bees are glad of the dandelions. Bryan, our nice gardener, has not been able to do any work for us so far as he has injured his hand whilst at his martial arts club. It is only one finger - but he managed to break it into seven pieces! (as NYK2 said that is very impressive!). He has it in what he describes as 'scaffolding' - in other word a series of external fixators, which is making garden work difficult.

I decided to feed the teenagers on cake from a recipe I hadn't tried; an American recipe for a hot milk sponge. Useful, I thought, as we often have a milk surplus. I found two more or less identical recipes online and followed one of them carefully (I actually have a set of measuring cups for the odd recipe written by volume rather than weight), although it did occur to me that it was going to be sweet; we would use equal weight of sugar to flour, or less, whereas it required 2 cups of each, so more sugar than flour.

The recipes both said to start by beating the eggs well to put air in the mixture, and I gave them the 4 minutes with the stand mixer recommended before beating in the sugar, folding in the flour carefully, and then warming the milk with butter and 'stirring well'.

It did seem to me that as there was only 1 spoonful of baking powder to each cup of flour, the recipes expected the beaten eggs to add some of the rising - but by starting with them and then adding the other ingredients I was slowly reducing the air - but it was what the recipes said...

However - the cake did not rise well. And when it was out of the oven and cool I cut a thin strip off the end (oblong baking tin!) - to find that there were weirdly large air spaces in it, with over-solid cake between them - and it was too sweet. In the end I made a quick plain sponge and added the buttercream in time for the teenagers arriving - and kept the other one to show them, as three of the four bake. They agreed the texture was weird - sort of bendy rather than crumbly, and the big air spaces were weird - and we fed the birds on it!

Honestly, it was about the only interesting thing that happened in the last couple of weeks. No more D&D for a few weeks now, either; three of the four are sitting GCSEs over the next weeks, and will officially be on study leave from the end of next week.

I have some garden pics, if you are interested, ( under this cut...Collapse )

Now to head off to do my day in the bookshop for this week - and carry on enjoying the quiet life.