Church - and tulips

I went to visit one of my favourite ever little churches last week to see about decorating it for a wedding in June. It is tiny, 12th century, in the Black Moutains, in the middle of a field. I was early so I could take the dogs for a walk first, but instead spent most of the time trying to rescue a lamb who had fallen down inside a cattle grid. Country life!

Tulips are still flowering their socks off far too efficiently here, thousands in bloom, it looks like Holland - Alex Ramsay brilliant photographer came on Monday to marvel at the regiments and will no doubt have some fab pictures, I just have more snaps. The tulips do make me smile although I know that's not quite the point as they should all be SOLD. Great friends, who I have been encouraging to start growing cut flowers for years, have finally got going this year in Gloucestershire, and I confess to a certain touch of brief jealousy when I discover they have sold every tulip they produced as they are on a fairly busy road so just put tables out front - I briefly even considered taking a vanful over there but then got sane and realise I'm actually quite happy working the way we do. And occasionally the seasons bugger things up. It has been ever thus..... The cottage decorations look quite elegant at tulip time!

I have had another half acre ploughed up this week. Hurrah! And tomorrow a mountain of muck is being moved, then a mountain of soil is being shifted, it's all terribly exciting. (For me, probably not for you). I'm going in for some major roses and shrubs grown through plastic on the new bit, but I'm not planting until next autumn or even next spring so it's all slowly slowly.

A lovely thing happened today. A friend has a rather autistic brother who has never lived independently in his life but their mother died recently and their father moved so he has now moved to this area to live locally in his own house. He has only been there three weeks but is doing brilliantly and today he came up here to spend half a day doing the first "job" he has ever done in his life. He loved it, we loved having him, and he is coming back.