Cold.

I've had a busy day out and about in town. In the morning I met up with three friends for coffee at the Ashford Garden Centre which has now been taken over by St. John's Garden Centre. A definite improvement both in the amount and variety of plants and in the cakes on offer in the café. It was lovely to be with friends sharing our news and hopes for the future.

I've been looking for this kind of pitcher plant for some time so when I found two at Ashford today I lost no time buying one of them. I also had a good look around all their plants and ended up buying a reduced tray of 20 violas in shades of blue. These are now in pots in the back garden.

I was determined to get some cyclamens today and ended up buying some from three different places. Lidl's had these large cyclamen (above), about 12" high which were only £1.79 each. I put them in a spot next to the front garden path. I got two small cyclamen at BJ's which didn't have a great choice of colours and then bought a tray of 4 in Tesco's. I've planted these in groups to add a pop of colour when I look out of the sitting room window. That is most of the gardening done for this year. Just some pruning and sweeping up of leaves as they fall from the acers.

Tonight's sunset was not a spectacular as last night's but was still a blaze  of colour across the sky.