Hot.

The day began hazy and cool but very quickly turned into another very hot day.

Today I went out for an exciting trip to the shops. The roads remain fairly clear and everywhere people are out walking as their daily exercise. Sometimes in family groups or often with a dog or two. I was fortunate enough not to have to queue at either Lidl's or Tesco's. It really is a matter of luck as by the time I came out of Lidl's there was quite a long queue of people waiting to go in. Lidl's still have plenty of Easter chocolates at half price so naturally I bought more of the marzipan eggs. (They're not that big.) Also at Lidl's I bought two trailing geraniums. I would have bought more but could only find one white and one red which were the colours I wanted. If I look after them I should be able to take cuttings at the end of the summer. Yesterday after waiting in an on-line queue I'd attempted to order some compost from B&Q. The first one I wanted was not available at all and having chosen another sort when I got to my 'shopping cart' that was unavailable anywhere in Devon. Instead today I drove over to the garden centre in Newport. They'd set up a range of plants and compost outside the store, I think it counted as part of the Farm Shop, and I bought two 60L bags of decent compost. On my way home I tried calling in at B&M, a cheap homeware shop that sells some food and has a garden area, but the length of the queue all round the car park sent me back to the car. It would have been nice to check out their plants and have a general mooch around but I was worried about the food in the car being spoiled by the heat.

There are a lot of seedlings coming up in the tubs by the kitchen window. I'm pretty sure these are the cosmos that I grew last year and the other tub has these and nasturtiums coming up nicely. I also stuck a couple of carrot tops in this tub for fun. 

This morning I threw the support pillow in the washing machine. When the wash was done not only had the inner wadding twisted around but there were still plenty of  marks on the fabric. Undaunted I unpicked the fabric cover, left the wadding out to dry and soaked the cover in some oxy-clean powder. I was pleasantly surprised to nearly all the marks gone when I came home. A quick hand wash and the cover dried in no time on the line. I used our sitting outside time to hand stitch the cover closed once it had dried. It's so nice to see it all nice and clean again.