my stitching and other journeys: May 2021

Saturday, 15 May 2021

April in May

or at least that's how it feels; we are having all the rain we missed out on last month.

At last the night frosts have stopped, and everything in the garden is getting greener

and buds are ready to burst open.

Our golden birch tree we planted last year is in leaf and looking so pretty.

I love the beautiful leaves and delicate flower of epimidiums:

A trip to the garden centre -

I planted out boxes for some summer colour by the kitchen door.

Steady progress on Barn Dance quilt too:

I have made enough 6" border blocks for two sides of the quilt.

So, 20 more leaf blocks to make,

but just for some change I am now making 4 corner blocks.

I hope you are enjoying your weekend! Wet one here 😒

Here in UK we are looking forward to more relaxed rules from Monday,

when we will be able to meet indoors and we should be able to give our grandchildren a HUG!

But, BUT - the new Covid Indian variant is rapidly spreading in the country (faster than any previous ones), which could seriously undermine government's Roadmap for easing most of restrictions in June.

I am angry with our authorities for not stopping travelling to and from India sooner;

we also know that many people returning from India, in order to avoid quarantine on their return to UK, travelled back via and breaking their journey in Turkey, which at that time wasn't on UK's Red list.

We know this because these people boasted about it on the social media, how they beat the system.

Why is is that there is always a section of a society, which thinks that the rules do not apply to them?

I am angry, because we all worked very hard for the past year to keep ourselves and everyone around us safe. There are thousands of families around the world which haven't seen each other for over a year, doing the right thing.

I apologize for going on about this, but it does get to me, when making post Brexit trade deals become more important than the health of the country, because that is what we are talking about here.

I have always tried hard to keep politics out of my blog, because that is not what my blog is for; but sometimes I feel I have to say something.

I am afraid for those under 50 who have not yet been vaccinated. Also it is not clear at this point if vaccinations we had will be able to stop the Indian variant.

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Tuesday, 11 May 2021

this is what I call Spring Day!

My regular followers know how we like to visit National Trust gardens, but like most things even that has been rather complicated. All the historical houses have been closed, to protect visitors and volunteers who work there. But they tried to keep the gardens open as much as possible, for people to visit when it was allowed - so good for mental health.

The nature has been rather unkind this year and spring has come very late; it was dry and cold all April and only now there is some hint of spring.

Visits still have to be pre-booked to keep numbers of visitors down to allow for social distancing.

Luckily for us, this morning's pre-booked visit to Lytes Cary Manor (NT) was a great success - the sun

was shining when we woke up. Armed with a flask of coffee and some lunch (no restaurants open yet),

we enjoyed a very quiet garden. The house itself will possibly be open later this month, and being midweek, it seems that few people bothered to come.