Derby Day

Today's 'Word for Today' is 'Give it to God', all about 'Letting go and letting God ...' It includes this quote from Loretta P Burns:
As children bring their broken toys with tears for us to mend,
I brought my broken dreams to God because He is my friend.
But then instead of leaving Him in peace to work alone,
I hung around and tried to help with ways that were my own.
At last I snatched them back and cried, "How can you be so slow?"
"My child," He said, "What could I do ... you never did let go."'

The girls were singing Dave's praises as a host. He'd cooked them a full English breakfast, and washed-up afterwards - yes, he'd make someone a good wife some day, Vic joked. After we dropped the girls off at Guildford railway station, we drove on to Badshot Lea Garden Centre. I was looking for three things: strawberry collars (to stop the berries getting spoiled whilst they're ripening on the plants), parsnip seeds (as the ones I kept from last year and sowed earlier this spring don’t appear to have germinated) and a vivid orange alstroemeria plant. My mother grew alstroemeria, we had them in our previous garden, and now I wanted a patch of them over the allotment to brighten the place up. Our shopping trip was only partially successful – we got the parsnip seeds, but not the other stuff – and it looks like it’s really too late to sow the parsnip seeds. They should have been in much earlier in the spring.

After a very stodgy lunch I spent a couple of hours over the allotment sowing the seeds, cutting the grass and planting out some purple-sprouting broccoli seedlings I’ve been bringing on in the potting shed. Ideal weather: sunny and warm with a pleasant cooling breeze. Despite all that rain earlier in the week, the topsoil is already quite dry and dusty.