On a warm, overcast, morning I repeated yesterday’s promenade matinale. The staccato stabbing of a staple gun applied by a young man working on the ‘massive’ project of Hallmark builders in the grounds of The Spinney, followed me down the lane.
Having been prompted by two WordPress friends, who thought yesterday’s blossom may be apple, I probed further into the hedgerow and came to the conclusion that they were right. There appear to be two espaliered trees. Perhaps there was once an orchard here.
For a while during the 1990s I returned to using negative, as opposed to positive, film. These negatives became jumbled and possibly lost during the move from Lindum House. I therefore used a print from one of my vast collection of photo albums for the VE Day 50th anniversary picture published yesterday. During that May of 1995 we enjoyed particularly fine weather. Today I scanned a batch of prints of photographs taken that month. Our Newark garden was a typical Victorian one, and therefore boasted an orchard.
I wonder whether the flower beds still contain
irises,
lupins, and aquilegias.
Does the stone path laid by Matthew about five years earlier, using material found in the garden, still survive alongside the kitchen wall?. Here Jessica, Michael and Emily stroll along it.
Michael and Heidi’s daughter Emily was my first grandchild. This was the occasion of one of the family’s regular holidays at Lindum House. Oliver and Alice had yet to arrive.
You may be forgiven for thinking that it is my hair that Emily tousles in this shot,
but the locks belonged to her frighteningly realistic doll, which she must have left on the asphalt path when she went wandering.
The swing seat in the top left of this final shot of Emily on the lawn was suspended by Melvin Garret from a lofty branch of the acacia beneath which I was seated in yesterday’s picture. Grandchildren and neighbours’ offspring enjoyed it for fifteen years or so.
This evening we dined on roast chicken breasts marinaded in piri-piri sauce; roasted leeks, mushrooms, and peppers; and boiled potatoes. I drank Campo Vieja rioja 2013, while Jackie drank sparkling water.