National Botanic Garden of Wales

Today we visited the National Botanic Garden of Wales which is one of our favourite days out. Just 40 minutes drive for us in the Preselis takes us to the garden which lies off the A48 between Carmarthen and Cross Hands.

The garden has been open since May 2000 and initially opened to great acclaim. I was fortunate to be taken for a birthday treat on a guided tour the year before the gardens opened. After that we fell into the habit of visiting at the end of August every year. But then something went wrong. One birthday - August Bank Holiday - we visited and it was a sad place. Lots of people were there, but they were trailing dispiritedly about. Around the Great Glasshouse people were sitting around as if miserably waiting for the last bus. It looked run down, neglected and depressed, like a supermarket with a closing down sale. Funds were short, our local newspaper reported, and it warned that the botanic garden could close unless a rescue package could be found. Monty Don mentioned the garden on Gardener's World and urged people to support it and help save it. So we did! Support it, that is, I can't claim to have saved it, that role belongs to some unknown genius or geniuses who worked out what needed to be done to save the place and did it.

The next time we visited the garden it had been rejuvenated. The plants were perky again, the rubbish had been cleared. The glasshouse was sparkling. The restaurant had an entirely different style of menu - lots of filling, healthy food. The shop had stopped selling tat, the amazing double walled garden had been designed and planted, and quite beautifully planted at that. That was two years ago and since then the place has - excuse the pun - blossomed and we love it.

There are rolling acres of mown grass to run about in, three huge lakes with ducks, glorious borders, wild flower meadows, dipping ponds, a rill leading from the Great Glasshouse to the circle of decision, the amazing double-walled garden, a new tropical house, woodland, farmland (all organic), a great children's play area... I could go on!

There is a very relaxed, laid back air to the garden. The welcome is warm. Today we were met as we walked from the entrance, up the hill following the rill to the glasshouse, by the land train and its jovial driver. His carriages were empty so he stopped and offered us a lift. In we got and were taken along past the lakes and on up to the Great Glasshouse. We love the glasshouse, especially now the plants have filled up all the gaps. It is divided into different zones, so one minute you might be in the Mediterranean, the next in Australia. The planting is imaginative. You sit down for coffee amongst the olive trees, then you cross bridges (there is a valley with a waterfall and pool in the middle of the glasshouse) and have to duck under deliciously fragrant blooms. Often we find ourselves following our noses, chasing the scent of one of the flowers. These pictures (above and below) show the Wallace Garden in front of Principality House. This garden's curving pathways reflect the shape of DNA and the planting shows the history of plant breeding and genetics. It has food crops and garden plants and this year the display of dahlias is breathtaking.

Across from the Wallace Garden is the Stable Block (above) which now houses the shop, ice cream booth (selling Mary's Farmhouse ice cream, made in the Preseli Hills), restaurant and gallery. When we first visited the garden in 1999 before it opened, this was being used as council flats. It was dilapidated and ugly. Not any more. The play park is off to the right, with willow tunnels and mazes, and a plethora of wooden play equipment - wobbly bridges, balancing poles, tunnels and a funky wooden xylophone.

The walled garden (above) has been divided into four quadrants. Three use plants to explain the evolution of flowering plants and the fourth is a kitchen garden. The brand new tropical glasshouse (seen in the background) has orchids, bromeliads, bananas and other varieties which will no doubt adore its warm, moist environment.

This tree pansy was looking fantastic with the sun shining through its leaves.

This little knot garden is tucked into a gap by the auricula theatre (below) between the two walls of the garden. The box hedges have matured now and I think it looks lovely. The theatre (below) currently houses a gorgeous display of streptocarpus.

The garden also offers activities for children, including pond dipping at just £1 per child. You get a tray, a net and go off to the dipping ponds to catch wildlife which you then take back to the Aqualab and peer at under the microscope. It is totally absorbing and fascinating. We caught a water beetle, water fleas, tiny water nymphs and a pond skater which made a bid for freedom before we got back to the lab. Other activities included using materials found in the garden to make a raft to float a grape down the rill. A genius activity for children, all of whom find the rill completely fascinating. It's great for a game of Pooh sticks too, but the rill does disappear into the ground and out again a couple of times which can be a little challenging for the average stick!

It takes all day to see the various components of the garden and I still haven't been to the Japanese garden. That's one for next time.

www.gardenofwales.org.uk

While the sun shines...

We have had two weeks of the school holidays now and the first week was a bit of a wash out. First Rosie was ill and it was raining, then I took both girls for their injections (Rosie, 3, is just having her baby injections; Hannah, 5, is having her pre-school boosters. We’re a bit behind.) and it was raining, then Hannah was ill and it was raining.

Then the rain stopped, the sun came out and we did normal holiday things like go to Newgale beach last Saturday and eat sandy sandwiches and ice cream. We built a sandcastle with a moat and then a seaweed fire breathing dragon using the big smooth cobbles from Newgale’s sea defences.

We then went to Hilton Court Gardens which has a wooded garden with a maze of paths mown in between the trees, just perfect for little girls to race about. It has a lake with waterlillies and dragonflies and a tea shop which serves truly fabulous cakes.

I was there once pre-children with Mum. We had been for a tour around the gardens and were just sitting down to a pot of tea and a slice of poppy seed cake when a woman and her elderly mother arrived. The woman was quite primly dressed; a sort of twin set and pearls type, and very nicely spoken. Her mother was the sort of woman who would wear purple and eat a whole pound of sausages at one go. She was all grey-haired, twinkly-eyed mischief. In a granny hat.

“Look,” she announced in a loud, carrying voice to her prim daughter. “That tree over there is a Penis Glaucosa.”
“Mother,” shrieked Miss Prim in the style of Lady Bracknell saying ‘a handbag’, “I think you mean Pinus!”
Mother sat down to her tea with a very satisfied look on her face.

Monday found us at Colby Woodland Gardens again. We ran about the paths, pausing occasionally to admire the hydrangeas which are in full bloom at the moment. The walled garden is superb at this time of year. A lovely cool rill runs down the middle and there is an enviable rosemary hedge. I adore rosemary (which is why Rosie is called Rosemary). I am currently taking rosemary cuttings to make my own Colby-style rosemary hedge. The garden also boasts a fig tree, with big fat figs on it. My fig tree dropped all its baby figs during the dry spring, but it is in a pot, so perhaps I had better take the plunge and plant it in the ground. I have spent the past five years dithering over where to put it and, to be honest; I’m still none the wiser.

This year we have decided to make hay not haylage. Yes, I know we have taken this decision in the wettest year since records began! The past couple of years the haylage has been so dry, we have wondered why we bothered to wrap it, especially since the plastic is such a pain to get rid of. So, in the spirit of reduce, reuse, recycle, as Bob the Builder would say, it will not be wrapped, and our fingers will be firmly crossed until it is safely tucked away in the barn.

The hay was cut on Tuesday, turned on Wednesday, and rained on in the early hours of Thursday morning. But only a little. Mum has been phoning the turner and the baler and has vague promises that they will come (hopefully in the right order) to row the hay up and then big bale it. But everyone is so busy having been held up for six weeks by the wet weather. It will get done, though, it usually does.

Our Exmoor pony lodger has returned for a month. She has been away to a yard to be taught a few manners and now is much more polite about gateways and the fingers of small children. She has lost none of her feisty nature, however, and still thinks she should be first, whatever is happening. So far on this stay she has not broken any fence posts or gates and hasn’t started any riots yet. When the farrier visited on Tuesday morning she waited her turn like a good little girl. Last time she broke the gate latch because she wanted to see what was going on (and be first, of course).

So we are settling down to our summer routine of getting up late, forgetting to brush our hair and going out on alternate days. If it rains we do craft, so are slowly disappearing under a pile of drawings and paintings, including one, today, of a snowman.

Sunny days at home this week have involved climbing up the hill to inspect the hay and riding scooters back down again (it’s a very good slope). While the girls ride their scooters I plan my fantasy house which would be built up the hill with views of the Preselis and towards Tenby. This is in my fantasy world where the local planners would let me build a house in the middle of a field in the middle of a farm. Dream on! It would have lots of sunny windows, lovely wooden beams (oak) and a big, square kitchen with a table and an Aga. It would be far, far away from our noisy inconsiderate neighbours. Sigh.

Keep mum. Children about!

The sun is smiling on the Preselis today. Well, sometimes, at any rate, and the forecast is for sunny spells for the next five days. HALLELUIAH!!!

Yesterday’s gloom has mostly receded. I’m not sure where it came from, but I’m glad it has gone!

I was talking of a children’s party in the moaning blog. Whilst there I was chatting with another mum about children, what they say and how careful you have be about what you say in front of them. She recounted the tale of a child she knew would go home with the party bag and dad would look into it and say: “Oh, look, the usual rubbish”. At the next party, on receiving its party bag the child said (right in front of the hostess): “Oh look, the usual rubbish”! One very red-faced mother who couldn’t wait to get home and throttle her husband!

You do have to be so careful what you say in front of the children.

A colleague of mine used to live in a big house divided into three flats. She lived on the bottom floor with her daughter, then about six, and there were tenants on the two floors above. J always referred to the top floor tenant as being “not quite the full shilling”. So, one day there’s a knock on the door and J’s daughter runs to answer it. “Mum,” she yells from the doorway with the tenant. “It’s the one who’s not quite the full shilling!”

I don’t recall anything too embarrassing that my own children have said yet, save for the ritual humiliation of the public loo. Rosie, three, is quite fond of the embarrassingly intimate question in such a situation. I’ll spare you the details, those with young children already know what it is they say! If she has failed to embarrass me that way, she will fling open the door just as I’m pulling up my pants.

You learn, after a while, to attempt wild distraction when there’s a pause and small child looks up at you and says: “Mummy…” in a certain tone of voice. You shriek (frantically and maniacally): “Look Rosie! Look! Giraffe!” Rosie, then all grown up and sensible will say: “Don’t be silly mummy,” in a voice that could wither bamboo.

A couple of gems Rosie has come up with lately have included (on the swing): “Mummy, my tummy’s smiling,” and (in the car having just driven over a hump back bridge): “Mummy, my tummy’s laughing.”

Then there are the questions. How is pasta made, how is tomato sauce made, how are tomatoes made, how is cheese made, how are forks made, how are plates made? And that is just a simple spaghetti tea! Roast dinners are fraught with danger, lamb especially.

"Who is this?" they'll ask, or (worse): "Mummy, how do lambs get made?"

"Ask Daddy."

Hannah, now five, tends to get hold of a subject, like a terrier with a slipper, and worry it for days. Currently we’re on the subject of floods. Can you get flooded on a hill? Why does the water flood? Where does it go? When will it stop raining? (I wish I flamin’ knew!) Last week there was a flood in the village (about six inches deep and a few feet wide). Did people have to get air-lifted from that flood? Er, no, I replied, (inwardly vowing never to let the child watch Newsround again.)

Another time it was the hot water system. Hannah wanted to know where the hot water came from (easy to show her the tank in the cupboard upstairs). How did it get to the bathroom downstairs (it’s an odd, old house). Easy. See the pipes. How does the water get upstairs? Easy. See the pump by the boiler which heats the water.

Hannah thinks for a nanosecond: “So, the water comes in here in the bathroom, gets pumped upstairs to the cold water tank, back downstairs to the boiler to be heated, back upstairs to the hot water tank, then back downstairs again to the bathroom.”

“Yes, Hannah.”

Pause. “Why?”

I have no berludy idea.

Hannah is queen of the alarming (to parents) statement. For example, one day after school she announced: “Daddy, boys are scared of being kissed on the lips by girls.” How did she find that out? Don’t ask!

Stop raining! I'm going mad!

It is ironic, really, that my last blog was about ways to beat the blues, because for the past fortnight or so I’ve been feeling decidedly gloomy.
Under the weather might be more appropriate. The rain is really getting me down. I’m fighting a losing battle with slugs and weeds in the garden, my children are fighting and my husband always seems to be out at work, or planning socialising with people from work.
Me? I’ve demanded a pay rise and paid holidays. Actually any pay at all and even just one day of holiday would feel like a bonus at the moment, but until the government decides that stay at home mums do actually deserve some kind of recognition for their labours, I’ll just have to rely on the child tax credit.
Oh lawks this is sounding like a moan! But if I can’t moan in my blog, where can I moan?
It can sometimes be a very lonely job being a stay at home mum. All my socialising seems to revolve around what my children want to do, so this week I’ve had a day trip to the local children’s fun farm, which was a good day out, but it was in my role as mum, not as a woman out to have some fun and enjoy herself on her own terms.
Saturday was a birthday party. The bouncy castle sort in the garden of the birthday girl’s home. Lovely party food, a really tastefully done barn conversion set in a nice lawned gardens with lots of the chic sort of touches I hanker for. Great. But it was a fifth birthday party and most of the mums dropped their sprogs off and dashed off to football.
“I could go somewhere,” I thought and suggested it to my offspring. Result? Tears. So I had to stay. Which was fine, except there for a lack of people to talk to. Towards the end of the party other mums turned up and I did have a good time catching up with some I haven’t seen for a while, but then members of the village taffia turned up and started to speak Cymraeg, so I was out in the cold.
Annoyingly I can understand most of what they talk about, but haven’t got the mental elasticity in Welsh to join in. There’s a time lag in working out what they are saying and being able to respond, by which time the conversation has galloped on. And anyway, I don’t think I was intended to be included in the chat. The paranoid side of my nature thinks that they deliberately talk in Welsh to exclude me. The more rational side then points out that this is Wales, they are all native Welsh speakers and they talk in Welsh first because that is what comes naturally to them. But it still makes me feel shut out and lonely.
So, time to apply my own tips on how to clear these blues. This too will pass.

Five ways to beat the blues

I have been tagged by Cait for my five ways to beat the blues and the things I do to make myself feel better.
I haven’t always been 100% successful in beating the blues. I had a bit of post natal depression after both babies, although I didn't realise at the time what was happening to me. I also get mild seasonal depression and the recent prolonged spells of rain are definitely making me grumpy!
So, how do I deal with it?
My motto. This is the most important thing I do. I can’t remember where this one came from, but in times of stress the phrase “This too will pass” pops into my head. It is extremely useful when waiting for medical appointments or other uncomfortable situations, or black moods, even long, arduous car journeys. The ‘too’ is important as it reminds the brain that you have been in a similar situation before and it has passed.

Walking. Preferably a long walk for an hour or with a talkative friend. This is definitely a mood booster. Nearly as good is taking my dog Mido out for a walk, but he’s not such a great conversationalist!

Escape to the movies. I adore ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and have I and II at my disposal on DVD. Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Jack Davenport in the same movie are guaranteed to lift a gloomy mood. As is ITV’s recent production of ‘Persuasion’ with the delicious Rupert Penry Jones. For a quick fix: Shaun the Sheep.

A cup of tea and a biscuit (or three). Sometimes it’s the simplest things that make the most difference. Or a bucket sized cup of cappuccino and a fabulous chocolate gateau. The unfortunate side effect of this is to make me put on weight, as it has done recently (I blame the rain).

Gardening. I love uninterrupted weeding where you completely lose yourself in the task, then look up to find two hours have sped by and the bed you’ve weeded looks fantastic. Looking at smiling flowers in the borders cheers me up, as do rows of lettuce. I never can grow enough. Perhaps I should swap the tea and biscuit for herbal tea and a lettuce!

There are other ways, such as dancing with my daughters, listening to music, Paul McKenna CDs and fantasy shopping on the internet, but the above five are the ones I use most often.

Rain and a big concert - that reminds me...

It is cold and wet. I’m going to light the wood burning stove later. We were in the mist yesterday – the clouds were so low we were shrouded in them for most of the day. This weather reminds me of when we moved here 22 years ago.

The date was July 12th 1985. The place was a large Victorian house set in 1.75 acres of ground with stables, adjoining woodland in rural Worcestershire. It was sunny and in the near distance I could see the Malvern Hills shimmering in the sunshine.

We were packing, Mum, Dad, my elder sister Jackie and me, then aged 18. The biggest removals van I had ever seen had inched its way backwards up our long, potholed driveway and two young men in sandy brown coats were loading all our possessions into its cavernous depths.
Eventually everything was loaded and the van set off. We put our assortment of goats, six ducks, two cats and three dogs into the horse trailer and Land Rover and Mum set off in the wake of the removals van, for West Wales.
Dad and I waved them off, my sister headed back to Birmingham University where she was training to be a dentist.
Minutes later the telephone rang. It was Mum, in tears. Somehow her beloved mongrel, with the incongruous name of Prince, had leaped from the back of the Land Rover, through the dog guard we had bought specially for the journey, over her shoulder and out of the window. The accident had happened opposite the veterinary surgery and the staff had rushed out to help, but there was nothing they could do. Dad sped off in our blue Rover and came back later with the body.
Mum continued on her way to Wales. Halfway, at Manordeilo, she telephoned, again in tears, to say how the journey was going. She arrived later that afternoon at our new home in the Preseli Hills.
I stayed at what had been our home, now echoingly empty, with our two horses and their luggage. Later that evening the new owners arrived with their most precious items that could not have been trusted to removals men and I annoyed them by helping to carry the items into the house. It was an eclectic mix – a Roman bust, a statue of an elephant, Persian rugs and various peculiar ephemera collected on their world travels.
That night, after Dad and I had buried Prince next to the lavender bush in the front garden, I took my sleeping bag on the floor of my empty bedroom and failed to sleep, lying awake listening to the noise of the empty house and feeling oppressed by the atmosphere of change.
We always said that house was haunted. It was Victorian red brick, and had been extended over the years. In the garden was an old slaughterhouse, complete with cobbled floor with channels for the blood. There was even the old water pump which would still give water if you pumped it for long enough.
The house had big fireplace surrounds with slate mantels, and one day we decided to unscrew the board which was hiding the fireplace in our dining room. Previous owners had boarded over the fireplace and installed an ugly wood burning stove instead. Its chimney fed through the board and up the chimney. We decided to see what was behind and started to remove the board.
As it came away clouds of black soot descended into the room. We wiped our eyes and in front of us was a black old fashioned cooking range, complete with oven. My grandmother was not impressed! She remembered such things from her childhood when her job had included cleaning and black leading such ‘monstrosities’. We were delighted! It was An Original Feature. We cleaned it up and used it instead of the wood burning stove. We cooked on it too. But it was then that we decided we had some sort of ghostly presence. Some mornings we would come downstairs to the smell of cooking – bacon or bread.
When Mum and Dad decided to sell, with the aim of moving to Devon, the house gave us some most unpleasant smells. It treated some of the early viewers to a smelly clammy coldness and they didn’t stay inside the house for long! The eventual buyers were greeted with a lovely warm, friendly smell, so whoever was haunting us obviously approved of them.
So I spent that final night in the house, with terrible mixed feelings of grief for our dog, a sense of finally bidding farewell to my childhood and nerves about the move, mingled with excitement.
The following day, July 13th, saw crowds flocking to Wembley Stadium for Live Aid. I remember desperately trying to tune my radio to hear the concert. I was – still am – a huge fan of U2 and was distraught that I would miss their spot on stage because of the move.
In the morning the horsebox came to take me and my horses, Jamie a 16hh bay thoroughbred and Jojo, a 15hh flea-bitten grey Welsh-Arab cross, to our new home. Loading them was ‘fun’. They were used to a trailer and did not much fancy the steep ramp and dark interior of the lorry. But eventually after much patience and a few rope burns to my palms, they were loaded and we set off.
As we approached West Wales the weather became greyer and wetter. There was no sign of the Preseli Hills; they were shrouded in thick mist. I remember, as we drove through Clynderwen, the driver handed me his business card, he said: “In case you want to go back.”
It did look pretty grim. Grey houses and grey weather. I had never been to the farm, so it was a fairly nervous journey and seemed never ending. We turned off the main road and wound round and around tiny lanes with the tree canopy meeting above to form a dark, damp dripping green tunnel.
Eventually we arrived, headed up the steeply sloping drive and I got my first look at my new home.
I was appalled. It looked awful. The house seemed tiny in comparison to the one we had left. It was damp, it was smelly, it was raining. I was homesick for Worcestershire. With a heavy heart I unloaded the horses and we led them to the nearest field, of the 22 acres we now had available, and opened the gate.
Now, these two horses had been used to Worcestershire clay. In the winter it sucked them in up to their hocks and there was lots of mud, but no grass. In the summer it was as hard as iron, with deep cracks and there was no grass. Apart from a brief period in the autumn when the sky rained cider apples and perry pears, their Worcestershire quarters had left a lot to be desired.
So Jamie and Jojo came tired and blinking out of the hated lorry and looked at their new field. They looked at six acres of rolling, south-facing lush greenness. They looked at each other and their faces lit up. They kicked up their heels and disappeared to the far corner, paused, galloped the perimeter, threw in a few bucks of joy and then put their heads down and started eating.
For days we were unable to catch them, or get anywhere near them. They were afraid that anyone coming into the field might be coming to get them and take them back!
We were too busy with unpacking to have much time for them anyway, but eventually we did manage to catch them and were able to saddle them up for long exploratory hacks around the lanes.
The sun did peek out from time to time that summer. Mum cleaned up the house, redecorated and put in a new kitchen and things didn’t seem so bad after all. We even learned to pronounce the name of the farm and the surrounding villages! This was the 1980s when most of the farms were still inhabited by Welsh people. We were in advance of the English invasion and have watched since as the countryside has gradually changed. I’m not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing. The incomers have brought money and enterprise in many cases. Most have attempted to learn a little Cymraeg. Many have brought children and helped to keep the village school open. But 20 years ago we were comparatively rare, and were sometimes greeted with suspicion and ill concealed hostility. In the main part we received a warm welcome, and our new next door neighbours were English anyway. They invited us round to dinner and gave us a crash course on fitting in with the locals – I sometimes think that should be compulsory for all incomers!
So there we were in our new home. I managed to get a very snowy picture on my little black and white television to catch the end of the Live Aid concert – although I still haven’t seen U2’s famous performance!
Eventually the rain stopped, the mists cleared and the hills came into view. When my sister visited the tallest Preseli Hill always seemed to be under a mist or sea fog and it was years before she believed us that it really did exist.
After our first summer there I went off to college to study equine husbandry, then got a job back in Worcestershire, but it no longer felt like home and I ached to get back to the Preseli Hills. It took a few years, my parents’ divorce, and the death of Mum’s new partner, but I now live here with my family, and it would take a lot to make me leave it again - even if it does rain copiously at times and I haven’t seen the hills for days!

Goodbye and hello

I have both sad and happy news to impart today. I had better get the sad bit over with. My Uncle Ben died this afternoon ‘down under’ in Perth, Australia. He was in his nineties and had a stroke on Monday. Once in hospital they found he had pneumonia and from then on it was just administer morphine and wait until the inevitable happened.

My uncle was one of the original ‘Poms’ who moved with his family to Australia in the 1960s. He visited us in the UK every two years or so and I remember long childhood summer holidays when Uncle Ben and Auntie Vi visited and took my sister and I everywhere with them while Mum and Dad were at work.

His last visit was a few years ago when he was in his late eighties. He was fit and vigorous, a regular golf player, who loved walking his beloved boxer dog. We marvelled at photographs of his garden, complete with lemon trees and flocks of budgerigars. When he left he hugged me hard. We both knew that it was probably the last time we would see each other and I was very choked at the time.

I never found the time or money or courage to fly that far, so I never visited him in Australia. As Mum said when she came in with the news of her brother’s death, “It feels like the end of an era”. But, oddly, nothing will change really. He is no more distant, wherever he is now, than he was when he was ‘down under’. I just have to remember not to send his birthday and Christmas cards now, which is sad.

The happy news is the arrival of our six little ducklings. They are tucked up safe and warm in the old chicken coop while the duck quarters are rebuilt. They spent their first day out in the chicken run, but when dusk fell the little blighters nipped out through a hole in the side of the pen and went to roost in a pile of old sticks. The sticks are waist deep in nettles, so muggins had to wade in, getting stung to billy-o.

I yelped for help and Mum came heroically to the rescue and immediately caught four of them. Luckily they don’t struggle when captured; once you have got so much as a baby feather, you’ve got the whole duckling. The other two were much further jammed into the sticks and dusk was falling, so Mum went off to fetch Marigold gloves and a torch.

Meanwhile I remained peering through the thicket of nettles into the sticks, bending over with my hands resting on the floor. The next thing I knew one of the two remaining fugitives backed quietly out of the sticks and into my hands. Number six was unearthed moments later by torchlight and put to bed. With chickens this exercise would have been noisy with cackling, screeching and swearing from all parties. With ducklings it was just fun. They don’t struggle, they don’t screech, they haven’t learned to quack yet, so there was much gentle “peeping”, and once you’ve got them they don’t flap or peck. They are pure delight.

Yesterday they had a spell in a much stronger pen, but Brian found he couldn’t reach in to get them out at night, so the little duckies were deftly, but rather unceremoniously, netted with a crab fishing net and popped into bed.

Last Saturday’s garden open day was reasonably successful. The sun shone and we had a steady stream of visitors. Our hosts were able to play Lord and Lady of the Manor and greet the visitors and guide them around their lovely garden. I remained in the kitchen (my rightful place!) with the chairman of the Cylch serving tea and Welsh cakes. We made a grand total of £281.50 which is not bad for an afternoon’s work.

Last night we had book club, but only three were able to attend. A month ago we had a rush of blood to the head and plumped for “How to Look Good Naked” by Gok Wan. Not the most literary of choices, but sometimes a bit of light relief is what is needed. It certainly made for some lively discussion! This month we’re going to read “Diary of an Ordinary Woman” by Margaret Forster. Now, I wonder where I got the idea for that one from...?