Time Flies!

I thought I'd get round to posting a bit more often, but it seems I'm as slow as ever. However, I am delighted to say that those manky old bulbs that I bunged in at the last minute have decided they'd rather live and give me a spot of colour in one corner of the garden, than die, even though I was sure I hadn't planted them deep enough for them to flower.

Spring flowers always make me want to smile! One of our Priests popped in for a cuppa last night, after doing a "heavy" shift at the school, hearing confessions - (unfortunately, I don't thing he got a lot of customers.) He said that his mother always loved gardening, and how civilizing he thought it was to  have a well-kept garden. It made me think maybe I should overcome my reluctance to do anything with this one since we are mere tenants. I have been silly really, thinking like that, since we've never stayed long enough in any place for me to reap the benefits of my endeavours (in terms of the overall picture, although I have seen some wonderful plants develop). Maybe I should make an effort to get this one up to scratch, so that even if we move on, someone else will have the benefit of it.
Trouble is, finding the time!
I've just discovered in the last few days a new article of clothing, that every modestly-dressed young miss needs for her trips to the park - "Skorts" - a mixture of skirt and shorts, and today I made up a pattern for a pair and completed them so that my friend's little girl would have something to wear in the garden.

All cut out and ready to go!

Is it a skirt?

No, It's a skort!

 Been knocking out Mantillas too, just in case anyone wants one - there seems to have been a proliferation of ladies starting to want to cover their heads at Mass, so I've been asked to make a few...

I like to make them nice and big, so that they don't feel like a doily stuck on the top of one's head!

Maybe after Easter I'll start digging the garden, and getting rid of the nettles, eek!

Blog Revamp; Now I Really Must do Something About the Garden!

I do like Roses and so I thought I'd change my header and background, especially as there are no rose bushes in our new garden.  As we are now in accommodation that has been provided with my husband's new job, the garden (having had several tenant carers in the past few years) although tidy, is in need of a bit of TLC. Actually, I'd have to say it's more than tidy, it's rather boring, but do I want to go to all the effort of digging up the invasive weeds, and planting out new borders and shrubs, if we are not destined to stay here any great length of time?  (Somehow, we always seem to move on after about 5 years of hard labour in a garden - yep, just at the moment when it was all beginning to come together..sigh). I did purchase a huge load of bulbs very cheaply in December, but when I tried to dig some borders up there was such a tangle of roots that I didn't get very far. So the poor things sat in the garage, until a few weeks ago, when I had a mad hour or so of plonking them into the soil wherever I could. I wil be intrigued to see if any of them come up!

Still, we do have two fine Pigeons who like to be sentinels for Our Lady of the Compost Corner (we really must find her a more fitting niche!).

The Monkey Donkey!

We moved, had lots on the go, no time or inclination to blog, 'till now...

So, here we go again.

Sometimes you just feel like a bit of an









You spend so much time trying hard to do the right thing, but in the end haven't got a clue whether what you're doing is the right thing, or not. Take the case of a home-educating mother with one son. He's about the age when he could go to school, his Dad's got a job at a very good school, but... because he was home-educated he got really into tennis (a great outlet, and if that mother is going to supportively watch any sport, tennis would be the one) so much so, that he's become quite good at it. The school does not specialise in tennis. He doesn't want to give it up. So we carry on home-educating, and getting stuck in the rounds of tennis training, tennis competition, until that mother begins to feel like a real donkey. So she carries on, carrying him around on her back* through the leafy counties of Southern England (and doing a bit of sewing in between times) in the vague hope that he will get some kind of education from the books that get pushed in his direction, when he hasn't got a racquet in his hand.

Is the plodding along worthwhile? In the great scheme of things, who knows? But Providentially (so it seems) the tennis monkey is improving, having won two tournaments last weekend, so maybe the home-schooled boy will improve too, and in the long run, maybe the donkey will cheer up...



















*Actually it's a nice little red car, Deo Gratias.