Lucia's veggie patch

Lucia has decided to make a vegetable patch in the garden. Her job as an Occupational Therapist at our local Psychiatric hospital includes thinking up activities to get the patients involved in and she decided to make two gardens to grow vegetables in. The patients love to spend their time digging and planting and a bonus is the fine weather we've been having. I mentioned to Mum that Lucia and Aniello were in our garden at 8am this morning preparing the soil for planting the vegetable seeds she bought from our local garden centre. Mum told me a story about her Welsh Grandmother going out into the lane in front of her house whenever horses passed to collect any droppings they left behind. This was during the war when food was scarce and growing your own fruit and veg was common practice. Great Gran used the manure on her rhubarb plants which were grown in upside down buckets. Mum's Uncle Eric used to cycle the 12 miles from Colwyn Bay to Chwefford and back every Sunday to help Great Gran in her garden. I just love these little stories from the past. It puts flesh and blood on the bones of my ancestors and makes Mum happy sharing her memories. I wish Lucia every success in her cultivation and look forward to eating the produce :)

My cousin Julie

At 10am this morning my beautiful cousin Julie passed away. She fought so bravely against the cancer that ravaged her body in such a short space of time. Things like this show us how fragile life really is. Just a few short weeks ago we cousins were all having a laugh on Facebook, being silly and getting close again through social media which allowed us daily to send messages, see each others family photo's and connect again with each other after basically losing contact through living 160 miles away. It was lovely getting to know my cousin all over again but the pain of her passing hurts so much more now. Having said that I wouldn't have missed the opportunity to become close to her once more. 52 is no age but one thing we know is that it comes to us all one day and it's made me realise that I must make the most of every single day. May God bless my family down south going through this most painful time in their lives and R.I.P my lovely, brave and funny cousin Julie. I'll never forget you ♥

January was my last blog entry!

I can't believe it's been 3 months since I last blogged! Time flies and we're almost a third of the way through the year already :/ I'm still trying to get used to my camera settings and have been out and about taking a few photo's. I had an accident with my tripod (broke the windy handle) so am having to hand hold my camera which doesn't make for the best shots. Here are a few from this week anyway and I'm going to try and get back into my blogging at least once a week!

 Canal at Owl Nells where we stopped for lunch

 Two little ducks (quack quack)

 Guy's and Owd Nells. We've been coming here for almost 40 years!

 Nice clouds 

 Can you spot Nutkins?

Our little daily visitor ♥