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We took it easy today. Prompted by today’s post from thebikinggardener I wandered around the garden to see how our Hellebores are doing.
Some way behind Geoff’s, ours are coming through.
Many primulas have so far survived the winter.
The shattered bits of cherub Jackie found in the undergrowth a couple of years ago have gained a fine coating of moss.
The remnants of honesty, hollowing ovals on stems, blends well with the weeping birch bark.
The parent viburnum Bontantense and its two children are blooming well. One joins with a leycesteria in beginning to mask Aaron’s new fencing.
Alongside the winter flowering cherry
and beneath the crab apples, a blackbird dropped down for a change of diet.
This pieris takes my mind off the fact that the grass needs cutting.
A few youthful pink cheeks survive amid those ageing, wrinkly, and skeletal ones of this hydrangea.
Finally, the conundrum. Who has dragged a clutch of eggshells from the compost heap across the New Bed? Well, we did spot a rat, hands and nose pressed to the pane, peering, like Tiny Tim, through our window when we ate our Christmas dinner.
Just before 4.30 p.m., we dashed out to Barton on Sea to watch the sun sink into Christchurch Bay. I did not stage the photograph of the woman kicking it back up into the sky.
A while later we dined at Lal Quilla. My choice was lamb shatkora massala; Jackie’s prawn sallee. We shared an egg paratha, mushroom rice, and sag bahji; and both drank Kingfisher.