360/61 Grass.

Well I had just opened the curtains before I looked at the prompt, so the first thing I has seen was the rough and thick mossy grass of our front garden. A great lawn takes a lot of tending if its going to be a lawn, us, we have grass.. Zac was the main mower so the job will come to Colin again or maybe Ross and the girls.. at least its a ride-on. Pops' grass and the bit below the workshops gets done at the same time, so its almost a tractor and topper job! ..especially if we leave too long between trims.

Pops has a pond and lots more prettiness in his garden so I'm going to use some of his photos today, also to give Zac and Uncle Bill chance to see the new bird feeder on the decking over there. Pops loves to see the bull finches and the robins he feeds, also the buzzard and heron he gets coming round the pond.  He goes fishing sometimes in the summer with his pal Derek, I couldn't resist this picture.. kind of fits the 'grass' theme for the day doesn't it....

 

Office world wasn't quite as bad as I / we had expected but much of the day was spent still trying to get databases and emails to support each other.. I told the guys of my blogging about it and they reckoned there would be no damns and blasts, much more likely some 'bugger's and worse! The guys have taken on my 'daily word' and today they reckon I should have written about how the grass is generally greener... yesterday when the emails and server were still in a mode we were all comfy with....though to be fair I was very excited when I got a few glimpses of how good it's going to be....x

365/60 Extraordinary.

Being a kind on ordered person (well in my head at least) I like that this extra day comes at day 60, like it's at a tidy place in the year. I read the prompt as soon as it was posted, I was up early as I feel the responsibility more when on my own with the girls..and have to do the college taxi run.  All day I have been looking for and noticing the out of the ordinary..

...as I drove back home at 8.30 the sun broke through, the first time in lots of days, like a welcome reminder of the souls we have loved and lost acknowledging they are still close..it wasn't as dark as the picture but the contrast is high and it was early..

 Later as I passed the landing I thought I should share this second coming of the orchid...

and now, amazingly I am home much earlier than usual as we have been doing work on updating our system and well, why not....and tomorrow will be painful with all new software to get used to.. lots of damns, blasts and oh, I sees !!!!

....though a couple extra hours is soon lost here! .. and just in case blogging isn't enough, my craft bag, tidy, or close to it, is ready to get jumbled..you see, a very extraordinary day!

365/59 Grey.

When I mentioned to Jordan what Suzie's prompt for today was she asked me if she may be a little depressed... mmm, grey / misty / rain... so we're hoping that March will bring some brightness all round.

It's hard to find an interesting 'grey' in today's happenings. The weather, (still bland and miserable) my fridge and freezer (?) , my girl's favourite of all my outfits (and no, I'm not going up to get changed just for a photo..) ..

...so here it is, my black / grey spot craft bag and a bag from my favourite of shops, especially knowing there is a nice new cardi in there I have yet to give an outing! Funny, you know you are a fully fledged grown up when you buy new clothes and they stay in the bag a couple of weeks before you start to wear and get enjoyment from them... it's a children of the 60's thing I think, where you had to savour the wait and then have the new item as 'best' for the appropriate amount of time before it became regular wear! I have still got many 'best clothes' items in my wardrobe which never got the right occasion to get full utilisation before going out of fashion.. we never learn it seems, and sadly I have passed the inclination on to my girls.. well one of them..

.. so, the boys are out, easy tea for J and Pops and me.. and I'm a poet!!.. and off to do a little scrapbooking..third time in a week.. go girl!

365/58 Misty / trees

Well Suzie didn't reckon on there being much mist about today, but hey, this is Cornwall and for those of us who live here it is pretty regular..but at least mist means quiet and no wind or driving rain.. every cloud has a misty lining eh?!

I thought I'd show our monkey tree, it is the mainstay of our garden, everything around it changes but not the tree. This view is from our front door, which is kind of the back door as we always enter the house from the yard behind.. but when you stand back it is definitely the front of the house. When we bought the house the garden was so overgrown and the house had a deep dressing of ivy. It was sad to remove it all but it harboured so many bugs which ended up in the house!

Well, it will definitely be a changing view over the year, the hedge at the back fills right up and makes the garden really private in the summer..

365/57 Light.

Well I slept better last night, somehow, and lost an extra hour by dozing off again this morning, so to be honest, I didn't really have a morning..!  Later Col and I went out, taking flowers for our Mums and my Dad of course...the weather 'out to the westard' we agreed was pretty pensive, no real movement, grey, almost drizzle, like it was waiting for a good gust of wind to come move it along... a bit like us, waiting for the next adventure, the next season..


It can be a dreary feeling going to visit churchyards in that kind of weather, but as we got to St. Levan and got out of the car the air seemed clearer and the drizzle had gone, so much so we took a good breath and we even spoke about how much better it felt.  Although I am not a regular church going person, I am one of those who attend on the usual occasions, there is a certain something for me there... its a combination of nostalgia, contact with the people I grew up with, a payment of respect / homage, I'm not sure, but even Colin agrees that that place has a special aura, and being 'at the end of the road' literally makes it all the more quiet, special, personal to you, a place to appreciate the quiet and family.  I love it that it is something he 'gets' ..as often I ramble on and he just humours me, crazy bird!

I had in mind the prompt for today and hoped a ray of light may peek through the grey sky or onto the sea as we got there, but nothing we could capture. I took some pictures anyway and here's a selection and in retrospect I think you can see the light in them...the reflected glory of the daffodils, the pure white light of the snowdrops in the vicarage drive.. and I couldn't leave out the single garlic flower hiding across from the snowdrops which it surely would love to be!

'wish I was a snowdrop..'

365/56 Saturday.

There was a time when it was an early start for acro and dance class, followed by the usual food shop and catering for everyone, but of late the girls have been more occupied with work and generally doing their own thing and we have found ourselves 'home alone' for a few hours on Saturdays.  No chance to feel the empty nest though as taxi duties for the teens kicks in later on, tonight even collecting the pa-in-law from a social, so the best bit is a bit of blogging by the fire and 'easy tea'

.. poor Col, his day has involved plumbing in a bunch of new taps, we have been here 15 years and the life of lots of things seems to have been 14 and a half years!

Today we had the grand daughters here for a bit, its nice to mind them in the daytime so you get to play with them and also M&D get to have a break in daytime hours... going out in the evenings when you have young kids isn't always great, esp when an early night is really preferable to getting done up to have a night out!

The baby one is waving and a moment away from walking, but maybe she'll save that for her first birthday on 6 March..big sister is growing in leaps and bounds, and somehow we think that if Mum were here she'd say she talks as much as I did.. xx

365/55 Cloud.

Well there was a blanket of it over Cornwall all day today so I toyed with a blank entry or even a 'day off', but I know we have a lot of lovely sky pictures we have taken over the last few years and so I thought I'd share some.

Jordan took this one whilst on a Sail training week, then she Picassed it, showing promise for photography way back then, must have been two or three years ago..

.. but I guess this is one of my favourite recent pics (and I may have posted before) but how many blues can you paint into one picture, only nature itself has the full pallete..

365/54 In the detail..

Mmmm, so as I've been pondering a photo and something to say today, my mind kept wandering to the 'detail' in one of my layouts but I couldn't find something which hadn't been posted before... and there it was..
 Last year our scrap group had a monthly challenge and only a few of us completed it.. I only got 5 layouts finished and it was only an 8x8 album so pretty poor show on my part.. but I did try to make it an album about me and using some of the old photos which might not otherwise get the attention., and I do hope to finish all the layouts one day.

February was 'scrapbok a childhood memory' and I chose to do a double layout about me and my best childhood friend, a boy who lived opposite. He was about three years older than me, like an older brother, in fact more so than my only brother who was 11 and at Grammar School by the time I came along!


I really liked this page, the button papers were reminscent of the days : knitted jumpers with those pearly buttons on the shoulder, wooden pegs for the days before washing machines and tumble driers, a picture of us and my dog Meg, hanging out in front of Teddy's house where we played cars and sometimes tennis in the road.


I was so much the younger 'sister', I was the gullible trusting one, perfect foil for the long tall stories he loved to tell! I used to have his cast off wellies (he got new ones as the old ones had holes.. I had wellies you couldn't wear in the water! ) I had his trike the year he got a bike, then promptly ran it into the swollen river as I looked back to see if he was eating into the 'head start' he had given me in our race to the Carpenter's Shop!

After I left the cove we kept in touch through our teens, then we both got married and we haven't been in touch more than about twice, but I think of him a lot, we shared the same slot in time, the same experiences and there is something to be said for that...I think his birthday was February too..xxx

365/53 Ordinary....not!

Well the day couldn't end in a less ordinary way and that's fine by me! All the men in the house are away, Zac in Mexico somewhere this week,(well to be fair, he's at sea off the Mexico coast, with glimpses of cruise ports as a bonus!?)  Ross has gone out on his first trip with Colin, visiting customers and getting to know the M4! His dad is out at bowls and Kate out for tea, leaving me and JB at home.


Not wanting much tea and having some homework to do Jordan suggested I do some scrapbooking... now my kit is still in the kitchen hidden under the table after Saturday and my scrap room is a pit, (really needing an OCD son to come sort it again) but I was persuaded.. and got to do about three hours.. I used some of the great bits I bought on Saturday, fell head over heels in love with the Charcoal Inka Gold and did some crackled letters in prep for an album I have in mind...all very satisfying... tea never got made, we made do with bread and cheese and cups of tea, the fire never got lit and the TV not turned on...couldn't have been 'less ordinary' .... but hey, if our plan works it won't be the last time..

PS the charcoal silver is less shiny than it looks.. not too chavvy at all!

.. and as I wrote this two more interesting less than ordinary things have been discovered this very evening..... I have one of my pink orchids flowering (first as a gift a year ago when our 2nd g'daughter was born, it flowered til November).. and Richard Armitage (aka Guy of Gisborn and aka Luca in Spooks...swoon) is in the Hobbit.. sadly with a nose and beard, but the thought was good!..ahhh, and so to bed!

365/52 Sky high!

Well I am feeling a little fragile this evening,  probably fighting off a version of what Col had over the weekend, but so far not succombed, but I do think an early night and good sleep, maybe aided by couple glasses of wine will help!  Col has taken JB out for her first time driving with him, en route to 2 For Tuesday I imagine ... Kate and her chap and I had pancakes and I added raspberries to the usual lemon & sugar.. and I love raspberries!

 

So an easy photo for today, but given that it was from my HTC and indoors not a bad pair!