Friday - Rest Day - bit of shopping.

Another 'record shot' to show the Erysium 'Bowles Mauve' which has had some colour on it throughout the winter. The flower heads are actually last years; the new are lower down and still to come. Such a 'good natured' plant. Reliable and very easy to root new cuttings, and its best to take some each year because the plant will thrive for say 3 years, and then suddenly keel over. Where this is growing, nearly at the bottom of the rear lawn, is the wettest most saturated spot in the whole garden but the plant is very happy there. And apart from dead-heading it regularly, Yvonne tends to leave it to it's own devices.

The weather seems to be in '3 forward 2 back' mode and with our little jaunt to Holbeach coming up shortly we are hoping for a little sun at least. The bulb-fields at Spalding will be interesting and I couldn't hazard a guess as to 'how far forward or back' things will be.

We needed to vegetable shop at Lidl. Not particularly because of the spectacularly low prices but more due to the quality. Supermarkets get some well deserved 'stick' over fresh fruit and veg., but at Lidl, for instance, they sell bunches of carrots and radishes etc., still with their fresh green tops on. And I don't think you can fake that. Can you? Deciding to make an adventure of it we didn't go to our local branch but hunted down their new store in Carrington. It was almost identical to ours but in reverse so to speak. Their meat also, is surprisingly good, for a supermarket, and Y spotted some beef that looked well marbled so we decided to give it a whirl for the weekend. I think that is a quite long enough commercial for Lidl. So I'll stop.

Bob sent me a better picture of his 'dovecote map' and it really is a super piece of work. I hope it receives the recognition it deserves. It beats me how he has managed it but all the names (and there are hundreds) are down the sides of the Nottinghamshire Map and lines, equidistantly spaced, link to each site. I told him it has overtones of Beck's London Underground Map which was a design classic and, of course, still basically in use today. He demurred, of course, but it is good. Bob is a retired Architect so I suppose it was within his skill range. Still impressive though.

When I booted up my laptop this afternoon I found I still have problems. Getting an internet connection was more than difficult and I had to shut-down, unplug everything, and then reconnect and reboot. Three times - before I finally made contact. I used NTL's Broadband Medic which purported to tell me all the problems I had and suggested I contact their service engineers by 'phone. But I've done that once! And have no wish to repeat the experience. Anyway, I sorted it myself - to some degree at least. I guess the thing to do is to post a question on WUforums. But it would be difficult to phrase.

"It is when I labour to be brief that I become obscure" .... Horace 45BC

I shall answer emails, google talk, WUposts etc., before daring to shutdown again or even work on pictures. Whenever I have worked on some images either in Windows, PaintShopPro, or Picasa, and I disconnect the Camera the whole system goes into standby. Yvonne always tells me I can't use 'either' when there's more than one alternative. She's probably right. But so long as the meaning is clear I'm no purist.

Complete rest-day planned for tomorrow. Yvonne's back is playing up and she is sitting with the heated-pad on it watching TV. A full day's 'grannying' at Burton Joyce on Thursday's does tire her and lifting babies and carrying them about etc., but she loves it so and is quite right to carry on doing it until she feels she can't.