Summer's lease...

...hath all to short a date.

Up to the airport this morning to see our friend off on her flight. Lovely blustery blue sky/fluffy cloud kind of day.... 20 minutes later as we munched bacon rolls in Tescos carpark it was an altogether more black cloud, icy cold, rainy kind of day. So we abandoned all plans for a lovely long walk and headed home to hide in front of the telly. The lovely dvd rental folk had conveniently sent Madagascar 2 - so that was the kids sorted out.

My mum arrived in the afternoon so we left Mr B snoozing off last night's excesses (and a little lunchtime rose*) and headed off to a local 'open garden'. For the uninitiated, these run all through the year and you usually pay a few pounds to a charity and get to look around fancy gardens that are normally private. The pouring rain slightly took the edge off the experience but mum kept us entertained all the way round with tales of all she'd seen on the gardening club trip to "Prince Charles' garden at Highbury". This put me in mind of him working on a patch of waste ground near the old Arsenal ground in London (it's actually Highgrove where he has his lovely garden).

Sheltering in a greenhouse we met a lovely gardener (Fi) who gave mam a bag full of geraniums with the instruction that we had to hide the bag so the owner didn't see it. Mam was, of course, delighted with this: "You'd never get that at Prince Charles' garden". So a victory for Fi over the heir to the throne. I obviously can't name the garden though in case she gets in trouble with the boss...

Problem is, I loathe the smell of geraniums and now the house is full of them until Monday/Tuesday.

The flower's an iris, in case anyone didn't know. With such big floppy petals, it doesn't really suit the rain.

*without the accent that looks like a flower tired him out. I mean the pink wine... You probably guessed that though.

EDIT: backblipped Thursday and Friday too, if you'd like to click back.