A busy time

I will be glad when the AGM on Saturday is over.  Life gets quite hectic in the ten days or so beforehand getting all the memberships up to date on the database as they come in the post.   There is always a flurry of late comers , but will slow down now. 

  

Last  weekend Brian and I went to a large charity shop in a nearby town and I found a small compact tripod at a bargain price.  I snapped it up.  I do have a larger tripod (also a charity shop find), but this one will be so useful for popping into my camera bag.  I even used it, albeit at the very short length on the table, when I went to my U3A photography group.  We were learning to use the timer on our cameras.  I did not think that I would ever use a timer, but on thinking about it I could use it for taking photographs of my pelargoniums to avoid camera shake.

On Tuesday our village garden club had invited Helen Yemm of Thorny Problems in the Telegraph to speak.  Now I love Helen Yemm's column, and if you have not read it, then I urge you to buy a copy of the Telegraph this Saturday and immediately take out the gardening section for a good read.  Helen gives down to earth advice on all manner of gardening problems.  Her talk was about downsizing your garden.  She had moved from a small London garden to a 2 acre garden which, it was obvious, she loved.  She had turned it from a field to a wonderful garden full of colour.   When she suddenly had to leave her precious garden it must have been like a bereavement for her.  However, she found a new house, with a much smaller garden, and began to grow her beautiful plants again.  In a short space of time she has created a wonderful garden  which looks much larger than it probably is. 

And a bonus – I won a prize in the Raffle – a signed copy of Helen Yemm’s RHS book – Grow  Your Own Flowers.  How lucky was that?