Aquilegias and kittens

Where a few Aquilegia seeds may have been strewn last year.  I have plenty cast around up on the bank too, but for the moment, we just have the lovely and HUGE wild ones, which came through after the hedge was hoiked out. (Photo below).

Now that the doors are left open, the challenge for Pippi to be the other side of one has diminished! They love it up on the bank and come and go as they please now.  Lulu still not as adventurous as little sis though.

This is I think a wildling Aquilegia - I certainly never planted it - and it is half the size of the wild one beside it in the bottom triangle.  I will get seeds - the colour is the darkest I have seen, such a deep purple-almost-black.

More of the ones I bought with me - I am delighted that the pink and yellow one survived and indeed has flourished.  I love the striped petals this year - a first again for me.

A naturalized Foxglove by the French windows, very creamy and slowly deepening to pink.

I've never had Azaleas in any of my gardens until here.  This was swamped by the variegated Holly behind it last year, so I gave that a good pruning and have been rewarded this year.  There are some gaps in the new bed I made last year - winter took no prisoners.  But I can look forward to some shopping trips to fill the gaps :)

Well, I am poorly as a poorly thing here today.  Keith woke me around 5.30, pottering around in the bathroom.  I thought he was getting up, so I dragged myself out of bed and got dressed - only to find he'd gone BACK to bed!  Anyway, I couldn't do anything before I'd had painkillers (Ibuprofen is the only thing to help) and believe me, I knew the moment they were wearing off and was counting the minutes until I could have some more.  No gardening today - everything hurt SO much this morning, all the muscles I'd used when gardening just a bit yesterday.  So a resting day with a book.  I began the day by watching most of Far From the Madding Crowd which I recorded the other evening.  It's not Keith's sort of film, so I settled down to enjoy it.  They changed the story line a bit - Bathsheba is shown tending the grave of poor Fanny Robbins and her child - in the book, the mention of the grave was that it was under a gargoyle, which poured rainwater down onto it . . .  I had a lovely think back on our Dorset days, and going to Thomas Hardy's cottage where, would you believe, some of my Ynyswen Aquilegias are growing.  I fell into conversation with one of the Guides there (at the time I was hoping we would move back to Dorset, and I could become a Guide too).  Anyway,  seeing there were Aquilegias growing in the lovely garden, I offered to and sent seeds.  I love that I have a connection with his childhood home.

Another weekendwhen Keith is struggling too - low BP, infection not really responding to AB's, medication not really working because of him being ill.  He sat in the sun by the French window for a bit and then it was difficult trying to get him off the chair, and to turn in tiny stuttering steps, to go back across the room with his stroller.  We are back to that again -a real retrograde step . . .

Have a lovely weekend all. Hopefully will feel a bit brighter tomorrow and can finally get around to the photos of the church (St Edmund's I think) at Crickhowell.