I'm spending the long bank holiday weekend at my mum's, so have temporary access to a complete keyboard, and how kind the weather is being to us!

On Saturday we walked two miles down the hill to enjoy the Canaletto's Venice Revisited exhibition; not just about the paintings and the privileged tradition of "The Grand Tour", but also appropriate concern about the effects of climate change and monster cruise ships on this desperately vulnerable treasure. I see that there is an increasing trend towards animating well-known paintings and this exhibition has one or two of those. It describes how Canaletto frequently uses the prow of a gondola entering the painting to add a sense of activity and movement and to demonstrate this there is an animation of one such vessel cruising forwards into the painting. Having done so it must then reverse back out to repeat the loop and I was tickled to see that when the gondola reverses back out of the painting it's hull is shown dripping onto the museum floor. What a lovely silly touch!

Following a sit down for a coffee to rest our legs we walked the two miles back up the hill again. Both mum and I were incredibly impressed that she'd managed to do all that without any sign of needing to hop on a bus.

After lunch I went up the road to have a word with a neighbour who has taken it upon himself to manage a bit of neglected communal garden. Mum has been hosting a severely pot-bound 3-headed yucca for me ever since my tenants decided they no longer wanted it on the roof terrace and I have been wanting to help the plant without losing the pot ever since I saw what condition it was in. When I arrived this weekend I could see that the poor plant was looking even less happy than ever and so my chat with the neighbour was to see if he would accept the heads for re-planting if I amputated them with as long necks as possible. Yes indeed he would! Gladly! And so about ten minutes later I returned with three freshly beheaded yuccas which he assured me would be in the ground if not later today, then certainly first thing in the morning.

Next task was to extract the root from the pot, which you can see, I managed, although it was a great deal more difficult than this image suggests. During the extraction I found an absolutely tiny embryo yucca making an attempt at life, and so that will return with me to Henley to see if I can't keep the next generation alive as well.