Shelves and a Plant Sale.

The weather was much the same this morning, grey and wet though the ground level clouds had lifted and 'proper' rain was falling.

Then some time in the afternoon it was all change as the sun came out and the temperature soared.

At choir on Wednesday I spotted a poster advertising a plant sale in the main hall. Of course I wasn't going to miss seeing what fellow gardeners had to spare. I even took along some rooted pieces of the white Christmas (May Bank Holiday?) cactus and some cuttings of a trailing houseplant I'd potted up when I needed to give it a trim. The sale was in aid of the village 'big field' where they hold events including an agricultural show in the summer. Some of the plants had prices on but on the whole you just gathered up the plants you wanted and a nice lady said how much to pay.

I paid £8 for my 10 plants; two different varieties of tomato plant suitable to grow outside to add to the ones I'm already growing, a yellow squash and various flowering plants. Nobody knew for certain if the crocosmia wasn't montbretia and the general consensus was to grow them in a pot for the first year to be certain. 

I took my camera with me but was too busy looking at plants and chatting to take photos so I stopped on the way home instead. 

I travel along this road every week on my way to and from choir observing how the oaks change over the seasons. At least now it's not quite dark on the return journey.

Back home from Talybont I spent the afternoon putting up the corner shelves in my study. Despite having all the tools I needed it was a long and fiddly job. To begin with the brackets for the bottom shelf had to go over the skirting board which meant finding some wood to put behind the brackets. It took a lot of messing about with both the long and the short spirit levels to get all the brackets up and level. It was at that point I really envied our builder who has a laser level. You set it up in the middle of the room and it sends a level line across whichever surface you want. I had to make do with carefully drawing lines on the wall and making frequent checks. Then I got to the last shelf and found I was short one bracket. I kept looking to see if we had something suitable, decided I would have to fix a batten to the wall but sensibly took a break at that point. Before starting on the batten I took yet another look in the empty box, as if an extra bracket would magically appear and went to look in the garage for a last time. And there, amongst the mess of tools I found, not exactly the same bracket but a similar one. I fixed that bracket to the wall and continued on with the job until all the shelves were up, the extra holes in the wall were filled and the new wood painted. All that needs doing now is to buy lots of white plastic boxes so that I can put stuff on the shelves in an organised fashion and shorten the curtains which will take some doing.

After all that I had a well deserved rest out on the terrace and for the first time this year dried my hair in the sun. Out in the water a paddleboarder and some kayakers bobbed up and down on the undulating waves and a group of serious swimmers with brightly coloured swim hats and an orange float made their way out to the reefs.