One thing leads to another

Firstly thank you for my birthday wishes. My week off didn't go quite to plan and I was laid low with this dreadful cold! Most of the things I had planned for the week didn't happen, but I did manage to catch up with both of the children, which was lovely.

Magnolia branch bought in from the garden - the buds have slowly opened .

Flowers from the garden

A change of plan gave me other opportunities instead - I enjoyed  looking through some of my books. My sister in law gave me the autobiography of Edith Holden for Christmas.  Many of you will know her as she wrote and illustrated the Edwardian Country Diary. I have always enjoyed looking at her diary with the wonderful words and illustrations and I inherited it from my Mother when she died.  It was fascinating reading about her story - Edith mainly lived  in the countryside around Birmingham,  but also spent lots of time in Scotland and Dartmoor.  Tragically she drowned while trying to reach some horse chesnut buds.

Do you read books electronically? After much deliberation I bought myself a Kindle towards the end of last year. I love books and always enjoy holding a book in my hand and visiting the library every few weeks. However, I always find it difficult to part with books and magazines. The Kindle, for me, was a good way to reduce the clutter in the house and be used alongside my usual reading.  Our the last few years we have digitalised our photographs too, saving them to the computer with a back up copy on a cloud drive. An unexpected benefit of the Kindle has been the easy access to enjoy all these photos again.




I was looking for a book to read on the train and came across this title. Has anyone read it or any other of Elizabeth's books? It was the picture that enticed me and the thought of escaping (if only though the story) to an Italian castle with a garden full of flowers. This a short description from the book.

"The wisteria was tumbling over itself in its excess of life, it's prodiatry of flowering: and where the pergola ended the sun blazed on scarlet geraniums, bushes of them, and nasturtiums in great heaps, and marigolds so brillant they seemed to be burning, and red and pink snapdragons, all outdoing each other in bright fierce colour. The ground behind these flaming things dropped in terraces to the sea,each terrace a little orchard, where among the olives grew vines on trellis, and fig trees, and peach trees and cherry trees."

Italy

In recent years Eliabeth von Arnim work has regain a resurgence of interest since one of her books was given to the servant Anna in Downton Abbey while Bates was in prison. Elizabeth was a hugely popular Edwardian author and wrote 21 books. I for one will definitely be reading more of them!

Italy

Having read this book it was wonderful to  pop over to visit Olympia from things and thoughts in Greece and see discover images of the beautiful spring flowers growing in her garden.

So we start another week luckily so far the storm forecast has not materialised today. There have been more landslips in the last week along the coast and when we visited the sea front at Exmouth it felt as if we were driving along the beach as so much sand had been blown on to the road!

At least the sun was shining!

Wishing you a good week.

Sarah x