Chez moi, again ...

This is getting a tad repetitive, going out into the garden before breakfast and posting pics of flowers - but then all my other photos from today lacked any novelty. It was such a glorious morning that when I did my usual first-thing unlocking of the front door I was tempted down the steps into the garden, very recently tidied up by our gardener who simply turns up every so often and does things. This huge hydrangea is one of the original inhabitants of our garden having been well-established when we bought the  house 47 years ago. It's not a particularly thrilling colour - though the flowers further down the slope have a definite tinge of pink to them - but I rather liked the random red leaves contrasting with these big pale mops.

I spent the best part of the morning writing a sermon for Sunday. The readings are wonderful, but what I've written so far is not: there's at once too much and too little in it, and the main thrust of it isn't particularly clear right now. I shall have another look at it tomorrow. We had our lunch outside, then took ourselves off to Benmore Gardens, vowing that we'd take it very easy in the light of our several ailments. The car park looked busy, but the gardens weren't, though a visiting youth band was playing in the old formal garden, its sound wafting through the tall redwoods to entice us over to take a look. Oddly, my aching back felt the better of coming down off the hill at the end of our walk ... Fingers crossed, and other sub-Christian gestures...

Online Compline, begun during the first lockdown, has become a regular fixture for us when we're at home, and we'd finished dinner in plenty of time for it tonight. Now I'm trying to be in my bed before midnight - better be off!