Reviving

For once, I'm not talking about myself in that title, but rather referring to the astilbes in my back garden which had been beaten down by yesterday's incessant rain - getting down the path was a horribly wet experience as they wrapped their pink fronds round our knees. But after a more or less dry day, despite lingering cloud and suggestions of drizzle, the evening grew increasingly sunny and the plants visibly recovered their equilibrium. I'm glad, because they're so lovely and so very short-lived as flowers go, so it's a shame to have to savage them just because Mr PB prefers not to go out with sodden breeks ...

Working backwards, I went a walk in Benmore with my pal this afternoon. I think we almost have to remind ourselves that meeting physically is a thing we do - she and I have had coffee together virtually throughout lockdown, but real getting together is good. We chatted to a gardener about the wonderful scent from - rather unexpectedly - a late-flowering rhododendron with barely any blooms left but the most perfect fragrance, and enjoyed the fact that although the car park was full and the restaurant area crowded, the hillside that we climbed was empty apart from us.

Working back, I felt an urgent need for a good brisk walk because I made pancakes - the big, flat kind, not Scotch ones - from my surplus sourdough starter and ate two of them for lunch with a bowl of my own soup (cabbage and cumin, with added lentils and bacon). I felt spherical after that lot; clearly I'd overdone things.

My next book arrived, but I'm going to finish the Graham Greene first. Interesting conversation about it with a theologian friend today; I may return to that on another blip. And now it's midnight. How did it get to be so late?