The Summer So Far

(Home grown flowers and a few Cornish memories - the shells that is, not the bananas!)

Finally, finally the summer's returned to Staffordshire. It's been three weeks since we had a sunny break in the Moorlands. The allotment courgettes have turned to marrows, the broccoli's gone to seed and the river at the bottom of the road was just a few ominous inches off the bridge arches and threatening to flood.

To be honest I'd about given this August up for the ghost, just like the previous two, and have already started looking out the autumn curtains. Last week I even bought a couple of Christmas presents (only a couple though, in the sales - I'm nowhere near that organised really!)

So the past few days of blue skies and cotton wool clouds have got me back on track and I thought I'd have a little celebration of our summer so far; whatever the weather has been.

*** Baking brownies on a rainy day

*** Enjoying the rainbows and our view when the skies clear

*** Much birthdaying business has been going on, with another next Sunday for Little A who will be 3 - cripes!

*** Some lovely day-tripping, especially a very wet but exciting visit to an airshow in the Lakes, with a fabulous finale by the Red Arrows.

*** Good old fashioned gluing, painting and sticking sessions

Woody and I have been doing a bit of much needed reorganising and planning too. We're not the most organised of couples and with both of us working almost full-time, the occasional domestic unravelling is pretty par for the course at No.25

It feels amazingly good to take the reins again and impose a bit of order on affairs. The scary bank has been visited and miraculously things were quite a bit rosier than we'd thought, holiday plans for next year have been made (Cornwall again - yippee!), Christmas arrangements discussed and we've even managed to sort the rest of next week off for ourselves.

So a few worrying clouds have been blown away and let me tell you its a good feeling. So next week we'll be treating ourselves to a few day trips, plenty of relaxing with our precious little boys and some time in the garden and allotment. Happy days.