Before the car decided to give me problems, I was going to go to Aberystwyth to go on Rosie's 1st birthday outing. It clashed with a coach trip run by the Heritage Society to some of Radnorshire's most interesting churches, with lunch at the Visitor Centre in the Elan Valley, and home via Cors y Lyn bog (the one I have visited several times now, with boardwalks). Anyway, now the car's off the road, they were looking to fill the last seats and I got the very last one and friend Pam will give me a lift into town on Saturday.
This morning Pam bought me up my newspaper and we took her rescue dog for a lovely walk along the River Wye, up past Pen-ddol rocks, and up through the woods and back in a loop. It was lovely
I made a big pan of risotto with a gammon steak chopped up, rice, tinned chopped tomatoes, onions, peas and mushrooms. I had some for lunch and there's still two big meals out of it.
I was a bit too achey to do much gardening today, but took myself out to hoik out the ancient and moss-covered lavender bushes in the bed at the top of the garden. I just did one side (two bushes), and dug out all the gnarled root bundles of grass (hooray!), buttercups etc. I will give it a more thorough going over tomorrow. Yesterday I was edging and weeding/weeding/weeding the arc of gravel in front of the rhododendrons, and sweeping up a tree's worth of beech leaves from the lawn and by the back fence panels. I've made good progress in several places in the garden this past few days.
I tried to get back to my Heritage quilt blocks. All I can say is, the instructions are screwed! No way does the block fit together, so I have gone on line and downloaded instructions from someone who DOES know how an Ohio Star block should be cut and pieced and I will start over before I ruin too much fabric. For the straightforward Ohio Star, you have no idea how relieved I was to read all the cut pieces were 5 1/2" when cut out. No 4 7/8", cut in half and pieced etc . . . (and the row above 5 1/4" . . . I know that Morning's Minion had it all worked out, but she's an expert quilt maker (I ain't!!)
I've been watching one of Neil Oliver's excellent talks about Ghosts. It's on Youtube and titled Power Politics, Premonitions and Heartbreak. I really enjoyed watching it, learning about Seers, Premonitions and the like and then he took us to Culloden and what people have experienced there. Very good viewing.
Well, my beautiful petite grand-daughter is a year old today. Happy Birthday Rosie, my gorgeous girl. I wish my car was on the road so I could have visited, but I will see her on Sunday, when they come over and Gabby visits, and we all go out for a Mother's Day lunch at the Seven Stars Inn at Aberedw. I'm looking forward to that.
So, nothing exciting to babble on about but it's so good to have sunshine and birdsong, and to be able to sit outside with my book and a cuppa.
