Busy Sunday

I've just told blipper Wildwood that it was her fault I was scampering to get ready in time for church this morning because I loitered over her back catalogue of blip entries - and it's true, for I did and I was. However, we were there in time for the catch-up with  a few friends that I really only see at church, even though I'd not had time to check if I had enough voice for the Communion song ... 

I did. And afterwards there was the great outburst of conversation that has come to mark our congregation these days, made more ebullient, I am certain, by the rousing Guide me O thou great Redeemer with which we finished. The chaps at the back gave it laldy and everyone sang as if they meant it - great. An hour after the service ended, David the rector put the lights out as if we were in a pub, cries of "Last orders" rose along with "Time!" and we dissipated into the quiet grounds, one view of which is my photo of today, taken when we were almost the last to leave.

Di came in for a quick coffee before we felt it necessary to have lunch, and I was so exhausted with all the chat that I fell sound asleep with an inch of tea left in my mug... 

And then I roused myself, and forced my unwilling body into my gardening jeans (now fashionably more ripped than ever because I caught a toe in the small hole in the knee which is now gaping dramatically) and T shirt and headed out to the front garden to cut back the azaleas which should have been tackled in June. By the time Himself joined me the ground was strewn with branches and leaves as I made my way round the garden snipping. We were too late for taking stuff to the tip, so it's all sitting in bags in the shed waiting to go in the morning.

After that we sat in the sun at the back door for a while, so dinner was late. It was also delicious: Confit duck legs, rosemary potatoes, broccoli with lemon olive oil, Scottish strawberries and yogurt - and the end of a delicious bottle of Italian white wine. Then I had a chat on Messenger with Canadian friends met on an HF holiday in Italy several years ago - and now I'm bug-eyed with exhaustion and whatever it is in the plants that I react to.

Never mind: a good day. And there's a cracking golden half-moon over the sea ...