FLOWER FRIDAY

I was quite late going to bed, but when I woke at 10.10 a.m. this morning, I did utter the words, “I don’t believe it!”  How could I have slept for so long?

Many of you in the UK will know the expression, “I don’t believe it!” words spoken by everyone's favourite curmudgeonly old man, Victor Meldrew, so I found this clip from one of his shows, "One Foot In The Grave" and it did make me laugh.  Even Mr. HCB, who was out in the conservatory starting his new jigsaw, could hear it and recognised the show immediately just from hearing the expression and Victor Meldrew's voice.  It’s quite childish humour really, but sometimes it’s good to laugh.

It’s a dull morning, with gentle rain, and I had intended to bring one of our hellebores indoors to photograph for Flower Friday, but when I was wandering around the garden, found this beautiful iris.  It was in one of our “holding beds”, left over from when we took everything out of our large border, but rather than cutting it, I decided to photograph it and then leave it to flower where it was planted - something we need to do in these troubled times.

Rather than bemoaning the fact that we are “stuck - or trapped - indoors” perhaps this is the time when we can get to know our other half or our children or even our pets even better.  Maybe we should be encouraging each other to say we are “safe indoors”, then enjoy doing something like cooking or baking a new dish, reading that book we always intended reading, starting a new hobby or even just relaxing more rather than dashing everywhere like a headless chicken.  

Perhaps we need to have more FaceTime conversations with people - or even just to ring far-flung friends - I had a pre-planned one with a dear friend who lives in Devon yesterday - but don’t see very often - and as we both enjoyed it so much, we wondered afterwards why we had never done it before and it didn’t cost us a penny!

We all realise we are in the middle of a serious situation, one like we have never known before, but there are bonuses and as one of the jokes doing the rounds says, “This pandemic has done something no-one else could do - it’s stopped women going shopping and stopped men going to the pub”!  

I have several cupboards that still need a “spring clean”, haven’t yet got to grips with my new sewing machine and the 20,000+ photographs on my Macbook still need sorting out.  Even with all the time we now seem to have on our hands, there always seems so much else to do - but as it seems as if this is going on for some time, I won’t fret about the things that are still undone but just add them to the long list!

Enjoy your day, whatever you are doing - I found this quote, which at the moment, in our present circumstances is so true:

“When there is time, 
     there is no money... 
and when there is money, 
     there is no time... 
So, if you don't want to have regrets in this life, 
     do it when you have either of them, 
          don't wait for both!” 
Yulia Lipovka