More floral beauty

Sunshine after the rain, and the flowers look more beautiful than ever, the raindrops like jewels reflecting the light on the luscious peony and rhododendron.

The Wisteria looks pretty too.

Blue skies, sunshine, blossom: beautiful!

The warmth of this April has brought an early peony into bloom in the garden.

Swan on the River Thames

'What is this life if, full of care,

we have no time to stand and stare?'

'No time to see, in broad daylight,

streams full of stars, like skies at night'

Excerpted from 'Leisure' by W. H. Davies

Pleasant days, pretty night

The weather has been delightful recently and I've been making the most of it over the allotment, sowing seeds, planting out seedlings, doing the weeding and pulling some rhubarb. Rather a lot of rhubarb, as it happens. So much that, having made a rhubarb crumble, I bundled the rest of the sticks into small packages and gave them away after Church on Sunday.

Today a friend came over for lunch and then we walked into town for an amble round the shops. It was interesting to note that neither of us was particularly thinking of buying anything for ourselves, but we would look at things and think of other people. I looked at a lovely picture of an African elephant with two baby elephants in the foreground, their trunks intertwined, and thought how much Vicky would like it. My friend looked at an abstract picture of chickens and decided to buy it for another friend. I saw an attractive silver butterfly necklace and bought it for Vicky. My friend saw some wooden ornaments and bought them for her grand-daughter. It was a very pleasant shopping trip, with the added delight of anticipating the pleasure our purchases would bring to their recipients.

In the cookshop there was an apron with a message printed boldly on the bib: 'I kiss better than I cook'. It seemed an odd motto to choose to wear on an apron considering the possible consequences: would readers take it as an invitation to sample the wearer's kisses? Would that distraction at a critical moment make it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Alternatively if the reader had his/her own judgment on how good a kisser the wearer was, might it put him/her off sampling the cooking? What do you think? (This is not a rhetorical question - I'm curious to read your answer. For example, are there any circumstances you can think of that would call for someone to wear an apron saying I kiss better than I cook? Or what motto would you prefer to wear on an apron? There's a comments facility below).

Tonight another friend phoned and had been chatting for some time when I glanced out of the window and realised how stunning the night sky looked with the moon peeping into the garden through the clouds and the branches of the trees. When I came off the phone, I went out into the garden and tried to capture it with the digital camera. The scene doesn't look quite as beautiful in the photos as in real life, but the camera didn't do too badly, all things considered.