Warm-ish.

I woke this morning hoping for another summer's day but when I saw grey skies I guessed that it wasn't to be. As I was feeling tired and groggy I fed Speedy and then went back to sleep for a couple of hours. By the time I got up, and took the top photo, there was already a hint of blue in the sky and from then on things got quite a lot better. 

As I had rushed off to Cae Hir yesterday morning we had our croissants and Archers breakfast this morning making breakfast was a leisurely affair. My first job after breakfast was to lower the top corner shelf. All by hand as I can't manage using a drill to put in or take out screws. I'm still going to have to shorten the curtains but I think the shelves look better now. 

Next job was to tidy the empty dumpy bags in the garage. I'll keep a couple just 'in case' but the rest can go to the zoo.

And then I got to do more gardening, nearly all the new plants are now in situ and a few more dug up from the  back garden. Just one almost flowering aquilegia which I didn't have the heart to dig up remains in the tomato bed. My last outside job was to sand down and paint black a gatepost in the garden. 

Give the shingle garden a year or two to fill out and it should look quite lovely.

I bought this plant on last year's visit to Cae Hir. There was a reduction if you bought three plants which is why I picked it but I can't remember what it is called. Looks very pretty though.

The fennel is coming on nicely and should help give the neighbours some privacy in their sitting room.

I was having my end of day coffee on the terrace when I spotted the tell-tale splash of a gannet's dive.

Sure enough there were a pair of gannets diving for fish on the far side of the reef. Hopefully if the fish have returned we should be seeing the dolphins again.

A nosey seagull peering at me from the kitchen roof. Luckily the seagulls here are not the thugs you get in some places but I don't welcome them in the garden.

 

Cae Hir Plant Fair.

I got up this morning to find that summer had arrived. The sky was blue, the air was warm and out in the bay the marker buoys had been put out from here to Ynyslas. Inside the buoys there is a speed limit of 8 knots (9mph) though plenty of boats and jet-skis take no notice. (I've just looked it up and jet-skis can go at 40-70mph.) It stayed warm all day and the temperature inland was a comfortable 20C/68F. 

It was perfect weather for my trip to Cae Hir, in fact it has been perfect weather for any of the Bank Holiday events occurring all over the country which makes a lovely change from the usual wet Bank Holiday weather we often get. 

It took about an hour and half to drive there though that did include a stop at a petrol station to buy some menthol sweets as my throat was getting very sore. It's an easy drive there, only four roads and once off the good but busy coast road I was on almost empty roads with far reaching views.

The overflow carpark in the village school playground was already filling up when I got there but everything was well organised. On entering the gardens I was welcomed by a younger member of the family, a lad of about seven years who greeted me most politely (not in that false formulaic way used by some people in hospitality). 

There were about nine different nurseries there selling everything from houseplants to veg and of course a multitude of garden plants. Of my very specific wish list of plants I was able to get some red aubretia and various rockery plants and the best find was rue (Ruta Graveolens)  my namesake plant that is probably found in every Lithuanian garden. Then I went 'off list' and gave into temptation hoping that I had some suitable places for the plants I couldn't resist buying. These included a white currant bush which I was informed is even sweeter than a redcurrant and two more hardy geraniums to add to my collection. On my way home I called at the usual round of shops and bought yet more plants. Then when I went to Home Bargains on the hunt for white storage boxes they just happened to have purple aubretia at £2 each. 

Once I'd taken all my plants back to the car (this is at Cae Hir) I returned to the gardens for a walk around. (The lack of other people in my photos is due to carefully cropping my photos or waiting until people were hidden behind trees or bushes. A bright pink jacket is not what I want in my photos.) Of course that was after I stopped for a cup of coffee and a slice of home made rhubarb and custard cake. The seating area was pretty full so I ended up sitting at a table with another lady and having a pleasant conversation with her.

And then on to the gardens. As ever the acers were impressive.

Hardy geraniums and sedums often featured as ground cover plants. I do like seeing things planted in large swathes though of course you need lots of space to do that. 

I was very tempted to buy some of these tall Camassia but common sense prevailed and instead I bought two pots of a much shorter variety.

Parts of the garden had a formal manicured feel while other parts were much wilder. There was one bed that had wild garlic and bluebells as the ground cover under a pink azalea and it looked fantastic. (My photo didn't do it justice.)

Back home I began planting out all those lovely plants. I haven't decided where some of them are going to go yet. For the moment the shingle garden looks quite odd with tiny plants dotted here and there. But it's either that or end up with everything being overcrowded. By next year I should have a better idea where to plant the silver leaved plants like artemisia that I'm growing from cuttings.

As I drove home I noticed heavy black clouds building up but we only got the edge of them here at the coast with a few drops of rain falling briefly.

 

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.

 

Wet.

It feels like I've spent the whole day stuck in the clouds. Nothing but white to see accompanied by miserable heavy drizzle/ rain. Coming home on the coast road and getting to the crest of the very high hill above the village there was no Snowdonia, no Cor Fochno (the bog) or even the village to be seen. 

This morning I was back to riding Cadno. I got to the stables early in time to do some grooming. Usually he has dried mud all over him from lying down to sleep but today he was as wet as if someone had run a hose over him and all I could do was brush out his mane and tail. In the lesson we worked on 'rein back' (reversing back in a straight line). Cadno is pretty experienced in basic dressage so it wasn't long before I'd corrected his swinging hindquarters which was mainly due to my using uneven pressure from my legs, and we got some tidy steps backwards. Then we had a canter exercise with markers set out on the ground for us to canter round whenever we had enough space. Of course I took every opportunity to canter half circles and generally kept Cadno going and not falling back to trot when he felt like it. All good fun.

From the stables I called in at the dump to empty more bags into the general compost bay. At Morrisons I had a look around the plants and got very excited when I spotted some Festuca Glauca, a blue grass that is on my current wish list. But when I looked more closely they didn't look at all blue unlike the ones I have in the back garden, just a dark green so I put them back. Instead I bought a curly bronze carex. I checked out the plants in Charlie's too but they are quite pricey so I didn't buy anything there. However I succumbed to a pack of purple Brachyscome at Lidl. I know they are only half-hardy but you never know and they weren't expensive.

Going around the charity shops I've been keeping my eyes open for a sequinned top for aerobics. That's something some people wear for fun and as does our teacher. Today I found a top with red sequins that I should be able to alter. Then two charity shops later I came across exactly the top I'd been searching for, racer back with deep blue sequins all over the front and the rest of the top black. The only problem was that it was a UK size 6 (US size 2). No way would I be able to squeeze into or convert what is basically a child sized garment so a chopping and a sewing I will have to go.

By the time I got home I was feeling quite worn out and didn't do much after we had put the shopping away. My study shelves can wait until tomorrow.

 

Misty.

It was all change with the weather today. Very warm but almost a complete white-out for the whole day. There was a yellow warning in place for thunderstorms. Our friend who lives further north along the coast reported hearing thunder just before class began but it was only when I stood outside with my coffee during the half time break that I heard faint thunder coming from out to sea.

Peter is suffering with a heavy cold and I knew he felt bad when he cancelled going rowing first thing this morning. Fingers crossed that I don't catch his cold. 

After breakfast I went out, mixed up some cement and stuck down two wobbly garden paving slabs, one in the main steps and a smaller one leading onto the shingle. Don't want to be having an accident on the steps. I also had time to plant some Corsican mint (the tiny one), between some of the stepping stones of the path through the shingle. 

All to soon it was time for our Welsh lesson. It was a good lesson and I was feeling quite confident until our tutor dropped the bombshell that not only do prepositions trigger mutations in the following word but they also have different forms according to who or what they refer to. That's a whole new layer of words to learn.

After class I had time to paint the upper surfaces of the shelves and then move some hyacinths from their temporary home in the back garden down to the front garden. Then it was time to get ready for disco aerobics. Because the community hall was being used as a voting station for the election of a new police commissioner we couldn't have aerobics there but our teacher had arranged to use the Great Hall in the Arts Centre. I wouldn't normally choose to drive to town in the evening but since our teacher had made the effort to find an alternative venue I thought I should. At least when I got to the university I found that the visitors' car park is free after 5.00. It was interesting being in the Great Hall which is the main concert hall in the Arts Centre and the whole place has a lively atmosphere.

Lots of bird photos today. - This morning there was something going on between the female blackbird and the wood pigeon. Wherever the blackbird went so did the wood pigeon, first to the birdbath, then down to the dish of birdseed, next to the sundial and finally the fence. Later on the blackbird had the bath to herself and had a good splash about sending drops of water everywhere.

Oystercatchers over the sea.

I'm surprised the female blackbird could see where she was going with the dry hydrangea head in her beak. Eventually she disappeared into the hedge where presumably she is building or replenishing a nest.

 

Market Day.

After a very sunny start to the day the clouds gathered giving us an overcast but thankfully still dry day.

For a change we held our Welsh practice session on  Wednesday rather than a Monday to fit in with everybody's commitments. 

This had the advantage of being in Mach for the weekly market the earliest record of which is in 1291. Peter even got up extra early so that I could have time to wander round the market first as by the time we finish in the library the market is packing up.

The market is a lot bigger during the summer months but I enjoyed looking at the different stalls. There were some plant stalls, mostly bedding and hanging basket plants and the one perennial I might have bought was already in somebody's hands. I did get batteries put in two of my Swatch watches as the market stall is cheaper than going to the jewellers for replacement batteries.

Naturally I also checked out the charity shops and found a couple of items for my glass collection. I've got quite choosy now but the crystal decanter stopper (£1.50) and the chunky tea light holder (£2) caught my eye. After our usual rowdy session in the library I called in at the Royal House coffee shop to buy some of their lovely treats for us to enjoy over the next few days. These were; a custard slice, spicy crumbed chicken fillets and two kinds of lasagne one with mozzarella and one with mushrooms. Their portions are so filling I find that half of one is quite enough at a time. Especially if followed by half of the custard slice though today I just had one piece of chicken with a slice of a lentil, carrot and cheese bake I'd made earlier in the week.

As soon as we got home I went and painted the undersides of the shelves with white gloss and then went out to do some gardening in the back garden. Last year I foolishly left a small patch of three cornered leek and now there were clumps of seedlings nearby. It's such an invasive plant it's illegal to dispose of it in the wild. I've got rid of all the plants (I hope), large and small and even threw out some of the Michaelmas daisy only replanting the bits I could get to a bare root stage. My final gardening job was digging over the bed where the tomatoes will go when they are ready to go out. 

My day finished with an evening of singing with the choir. It was raining again when we came out to go home.

And now for the latest flowers in the house and garden. 

Aquilegias have self seeded all over the garden creating a lovely cottage garden feel in the borders and raised beds. Many of them are a deep purple which I think is nicer than the washed out pink they seemed to revert to at Dingles. 

I leave a few of the red valerian as it's such a pretty plant and good for butterflies and other wildlife.

The Love-in-a-mist looks pretty even before the flowers open.

Clematis in the back garden.