Tuesday 16th April

 It's been a very showery day, with a cold breeze from the north. A lazy wind, as they say, that goes through rather than around you. I did get outside for a quarter of an hour after l7nch; even took my knitting and a canvas shopping bag to sit on as the garden seats were wet, but didn't stay out long.

 The radish pot in the veg patch looks as though it is covered with little green butterflies. It's the way the first leaves look, like butterfly wings trembling the fine stalks. You'll have to sow some for yourself to see what I mean. I sowed mine directly into the pot and put a cloche over it, which worked beautifully. 

I still haven't sown the sweet peas. I need a nice, dry, warm hour in the sun to get this done.

The first embellished square is finished. 

The square is a 5 inch charm square from a pack called 'fleamarket' by moda. I haven't done much; lazy daisy and French knots on the flowers, sort of satin stitch on the leaves and back stitch round what looks like a train, bus or perhaps a ferry ticket. Now to choose the n ext square...

I have been dipping in and out of 'Feel Better in 5' recently.  I bought this on kindle in the first year of lockdown as all our plans for the year slid away from our grasp, and I could feel myself slipping into a mood of angry despondency and rage and frustration. 

I don't slavishly follow his 'recipes' for mood-lifting 'snacks', but the ideas are good. No way am I going to ruin the treat of an avocado by mixing it into a smoothie with - let me see, what does it say - milk, kefir, almond or peanut butter, raspberries, cacao powder  (what's that?), cinnamon, turmeric, psyllium seeds (?) and ginger, although the last three are optional. Is that delicious? I'm not convinced. 

But other ideas are much more doable; spend 5 minutes outside, or at the least looking at outside every day, do some simple breathing exercises and so on. Just reading it and looking at the pictures ( I mean flowers and things, not the ones of him doing plank exercises, although maybe those are the ones others might prefer? Who am I to judge!)

So I adopted / adapted his methods, and I find it helps me find an upward path when I need one.

Anyway, I gave bought a copy from World of Books to give to a friend. She can always drop it in to the nearest charity shop if it doesn't suit her.

Reading;

Plot 29 by Allan Jenkins, gardening correspondent at the Guardian newspaper. Hmm. Not exactly a gardening book, but an infinitely sad account of his childhood; dropped off at Dr Banardos, fostered, and then trying to solve the riddle of what happened in his early life, and his parents, siblings, and family. With gardening as well.

The Shell House Murders, a series of three (so far) detective mysteries set in Cornwall, by Emylia Hall. I've read books 1 and 3 and enjoyed them,  and am about to start book 2. It would have been better if I had read them in the right order... clearly something happened in book 2 which I can only guess at...

Wedding Tiers - Trisha Ashley - fast paced frothy rom com. I enjoy them; it's like over indulging on fruit pavlova without the calories. 

Sealed with a Kiss / Sealed with a Christmas Kiss by Rachel Lucas. More rom coms - I had no idea that young women responded to an emotional crisis by spending an evening with a friend sharing 2 bottles of wine, three packets of haribo sweets and another couple of large packets of crisps and doritos, and then unsurprisingly had huge hangovers the next day... educational reading indeed. 

The Shell House, Wedding Tiers and Kiss books were all 99p downloads on kindle. That's my limit for rom-coms and cosy mysteries,  although the Shell House books were worth more.