Jubilee celebrations

A perfectly mulched vegetable garden. Now that’s a great 50th birthday gift.

The day started with a pot of tea and a song and it was full on fun.  Lovely messages from friends far and wide on Facebook, and calls from family.

The weather didn’t quite behave. I started out doing a spot of chipping branches for the shade garden.

But I only managed three sacks of lovely mulch before it started raining and slightly snowing.

Is it official to have slight snow? The sort of stuff that feels like rain but when you look up into the sky you realise it isn’t cherry blossoms dropping around you but white stuff.

But it didn’t last, but it put me off.

So I nipped into the beautifully warm potting shed to see if Artur was in the birthday mood.

I had hoped he would be putting the finishing touches to the birthday banner at least. But no. He had already taken to his favourite fleece lined box and wasn’t going anywhere.

The wretched cat didn’t even bother to climb out and come and sit on my lap. He purred and drooled and looked fetching, but he didn’t leave his box all day.

Never mind. At least he was happy and snug and snoozing. And it was drizzling.

Instead of moping we went to town to buy the essential purchases: compost mulch for the potager and 26 thyme plants for the shade garden. And a new pair of gauntlet gloves.  My last pair are held together with gaffer tape.

And I had a birthday chocolate eclair.

But the fun didn’t stop there. Out came the lawn mower in the late afternoon when the sun came out and I had a birthday mow.  The orchard doesn’t look its best at 630pm but it’s so neat and orderly now.  My first curves of the year.

Tomorrow I will come down with a crash and have to return to Real Life as a fifty year old. So that will mean finishing the vineyard then. Weeds wait for no one. Not even birthday girls.