DERELICT SUNDAY

On the first Sunday of the New Year, we had a great service at Church that included Communion, some great songs and a brilliant sermon.  Many churches have a “Verse for the Year” and the one for our Church for 2019 is, “The joy of the Lord is your strength” from Nehemiah 8:10 - and Susan’s sermon “unpacked” that for us. 

After helping with the refreshments, and although it was a grey and dull day, Mr. HCB and I went off for our usual drive in search of, not dereliction, but snowdrops.  Sadly, however, we didn’t find any - and when I looked back at  my Blips for last year, it was in early February that we found lots, so I think we were just too early.

While we were looking, near Membury, we came across the house that I thought I had blipped last year, but in fact, it was two years ago, on 17th February 2017.  

As we drove past the garden, we saw someone on his knees, digging a hole.  Mr. HCB stopped the car so I got out and walked over to the man and asked him if he was the “Doctor Gardener” to which he replied “Or the Gardener Doctor - whichever you prefer!”  You will need to read my previous Blip to understand this!  

It was the same man we had seen two years ago and he said he remembered us!  He told us that he was digging the holes to plant four cordon pear trees on the edge of the pathway, to try and stop people from driving over the grass - just hope they won’t drive into the trees!

Whilst we were chatting, and by this time, Mr. HCB had joined me, I was telling the man that I remembered and had recounted the tale he had told us about his son’s emu, and how they had had to make a higher fence to keep the emu in, after having found it out on the road and then had to march it back to his son’s garden with the emu’s head under his arm - and we laughed about this again.  He then told us that he had bought another emu on Ebay - “As you do,” said Mr. HCB, and he was hopeful that the two would mate and would provide them with some baby emus.  Maybe we ought to try and find him one Saturday and ask if he has any emu babies I could photograph for the Silly Saturday challenge!

We took our leave and carried on up the road where we found some dereliction, but sadly no snowdrops, so here for Marlieske, who is hosting the DS challenge, is a derelict building that may not be there for much longer, as we saw that the land it stands on that was "For Sale" is now “Under Offer”.  I had put my hands through the sturdy iron fence and then had a job to get them out again, which Mr. HCB seemed to find very amusing, so plenty of time for the CCTV cameras to take a photograph of me!  Ah well, hopefully they didn’t get the registration number of our car, so I should be safe for a while.

A lovely day despite not finding any snowdrops - hope you all have a great week.

“The true meaning of life
     is to plant trees
          under whose shade
               you do not expect to sit.”
Nelson Henderson