Talking gardens with Isobel – 4 July 2024

Today we were meeting Isobel for coffee in Costa. Not my favourite place, but it suited us today. Just a place for the ladies to have a blether.

The conversation was wide ranging, about family and the difficulty for young folk to find a permanent job, but eventually it all came round to flowers, plants and gardening. Isobel is a really dedicated gardener and I’m sure she and Scamp could spend all day talking about plants and different regimes for planting, feeding and disposing of unwanted plants. She is quite a hard task master with no quarter given. If a plant isn’t performing, it either gets cut down to the ground to force better growth next year, or it gets ripped out and dumped in the bin. There’s usually another plant ready and waiting to fill its place.

When the talking was done Scamp went to get a new cover for her phone and I drove Isobel home, then I went back to pick up Scamp and we drove home. She told me that everyone in the shops wanted to sell her a wallet type cover but she stuck to her guns and got the cover she wanted, not one they wanted rid of. I know where she gets that attitude from, Isobel!

After lunch we walked up to the Polling Station and handed over our bus passes as proof of identity, then put our cross in the correct box. Strangely we used to be quite coy about who we had voted for, but now we were much more open about it and both of us had gone for the same party. Spoiler Alert: It wasn’t a Conservative!

It was a wild day with gusty winds and heavy rain showers, but thankfully we got up to the Polling Station and back again without getting wet. That’s a miracle in itself these days.

I managed a walk in St Mo’s later in the afternoon and although it wasn’t very wet, the cold blustery west wind wasn’t great to walk in and I was glad to get back home with a couple of photos. This time I’d fixed the new lens on to the A6500 where it was a bit overbalanced by the Tamron. It still produced a decent shot of a little wee yellow flower which became PoD. I must look it up to see just exactly what it was. While the lens copes quite well with these almost macro subjects, it’s not really suited to them. It’s more a large landscape lens or a means of isolating a subject from the background. Maybe I need to get out into the wider world to test it properly.

Dinner was Savoury Rice which is basically “What have we got in the fridge?” with some rice cooked in a chicken stock. It was very nice. I had it without any additions, but in retrospect, maybe a dash of Soy Sauce and maybe a splash of Yorkshire Relish would have lifted it.

That was about it for the day, except for Andy & Jamie Murray’s doubles exit from Wimbledon, against a better pairing. I’m not sure if he will continue to the mixed doubles now.

No plans for tomorrow yet, Just waiting with bated breath to find out who wins the poisoned chalice of the house in Downing Street.

 

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