Rose early

No. I didn't rise early at all. I slept through the sunrise on my face, through Himself's getting up and shutting a couple of curtains because the sun had wakened him too early, slept until he brought me tea around 8am. I suspect this was because I'd taken two Ibuprofens last night - since we came home I've had a hideously painful back/side/hip with the alarming side-order of randomly numb patches which seem to suggest some kind of interference with a nerve. I have a feeling I perhaps spent too much time sitting on upright chairs (all that eating out!) or in the car coming home - anyway, I slept like the dead and rose, frankly, rather late for all I had planned.

At least I managed to do another two loads of laundry and hang it out to dry, which means the laundry basket is now empty - or will be till today's besmirched garments find their way into it. It was when I was out in the garden with the first lot that I noticed how much the golden rose whose first flush blooms were so attractive has sprouted since I fed it - the one I've taken the photo of is one of 8 buds. I was also pleased to see that the elderly Josephine Bruce, whose flowers I've blipped in the past, has produced some 6 inches of new growth since last week, one of which has a smallish bud. I thought maybe the shock of moving from a bed to a pot had finished her off, just like the old lady she is ...

I was at my art class in the later part of the morning; I'm starting to paint a small, very beautiful little African model of a mother and two daughters, a very different subject from the landscape of my first effort. And in the afternoon I was up at the church watering a tomato plant before visiting the hardware store for some old-fashioned garden twine - we might have bought more, but their internet was down and they could only take cash. Cash? (Himself had some. Usefully anachronistic, my husband.)

I made one of my random prawn-based pasta dishes for dinner, which was pretty enough to use as a blip had I not felt sure I'd done it before. After it I watched the end of the England-Sweden football - it was quite exciting, but I didn't feel it merited quite such a dramatic place in the ten o'clock news - they don't half go on about English triumphs.

On a different track: I'm glad to see the outcry among progressive churches in the Anglican Communion over the very recently shared agenda which invited the bishops to disown equal marriage has had an effect and changed the nature of the voting system. Small mercies ...