The Nicest Gift

A bunch of daffodils

no extravagant gestures required !

Elizabeth Taylor 1932 - 2011

Strange I hadn't thought about her in years, but upon hearing of her death childhood memories of Elizabeth Taylor came rushing back.

People used to say that my Mother looked like Elizabeth, she certainly had the dark hair and blue eyes, though I believe Elizabeth's eyes were described as violet.

I remember that the on off love affair with Richard Burton was much discussed in the girl's cloakroom at school, school girls gossiping, usually repeating what their parents had said.

And the diamonds, oh yes we girls talked about the diamonds quite a lot really.

And the films, the old ones were often shown on a Sunday afternoon. Films like Elephant Walk, Giant, National Velvet, Little Women, Father of the Bride, Cleopatra and Ivanhoe gave us plenty to talk about on a Monday morning.

Most of my friends were allowed to watch the Lassie films, I however was banned as my family could,'t cope with the sobs!

But of course some Taylor films were considered entirely unsuitable for such young minds and films like Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof were shown after our bedtimes.

I still love the National Velvet film it's one of my favourite old movies, I think I'd like to watch it now...

Catkins

Corkscrew hazel

Didn't we have glorious weather yesterday? Well we did here, bright blue skies and brilliant sunshine. Hope that some of it reached your part of the world. And the moon, did you see the full moon last night? It was just enormous, apparently we haven't had a full moon this close to earth since 1992.

Willow

The garden is really coming to life now, I don't think I've ever seen so many catkins on our corkscrew hazel as there are this year. The catkins on our willow aren't quite so impressive but still lovely.

I love catkins, a real sign of Spring.

Wish we had a pussy willow.....

The Farm Shop

Weekends wouldn't be the same without a visit to our local farm shop for fresh seasonal vegetables. Everything is locally grown, there is a wonderful selection of different apple

varieties all of which are actually grown in the orchard behind the shop.

The eggs are free range, delicious and one quite often finds double yolkers. Jams and chutneys are homemade by local ladies from produce grown in the orchard. The plum jam is devine and I'm totally addicted to the chilli jelly, so much so that I persauded the nice people who run the shop to get me the recipe.

There is even a section devoted to the birds with a wide variety of resonably priced wild bird seeds.

All so much nicer than the supermarket especially as my shopping is carried to the car.

An arranged marriage

If you've visited my Little Pet Pigs blog you'll know that we have a pet Kune Kune pig called Hugo. For sometime now we've been hoping to find Hugo a wife but although there are a lot of Kune Kune pigs for sale it wasn't an easy task.

We saw turkeys,

Alpacas with attitude,

little climbing goats

and rams with ginormous horns before we found the perfect girl (gilt) for our boy.

Here she is.

Want to know if it was love at first sight?

You can find out here

Madelines birthday and can I ask a favour please?

This weekend Madeline reached the age of 9, she had lots of birthday carrots and apples which of course she shared with the other horses (but don't tell her that!)
Now I have a very special favour to ask of you all, my youngest son has started his own blog and I wondered if you would possibly spare a moment to take a look? Leave a comment? Maybe even follow?
Its at

http://myequestrianworld.blogspot.com

Thankyou ever so much.

Spring Flowers and Vintage Books

 So now we're into Spring and we'll soon be seeing these gorgeous Spring flowers for real not just in the wonderful illustrations by B. E. Nicholson found in The Illustrated Book Of Garden Flowers published

 in 1979 by Peerage Books, London.

But I'm thinking that we'll still have to wrap up warm and snuggly like the young lady above from the 1920's

Lucky Girl's Budget published by Blackie & Son Ltd.

Though hopefully we'll pass on the snow!