We’ve had another fairly shitty day today working towards ‘the grand plan’. Although we thought we’d just about finished our work for this stage, the finishing off is taking forever. Both of us feel really gloomy about it and as we set off for our day’s work, we both fall into the DDs (deep depressions).

There is a pattern to this – it starts with half an hour of complete silence between us. The communication doesn’t stop though because the half-hour is usually punctuated by glares and meaningful looks. Then one of us makes a snide remark at the other and it descends into full-scale shouting. Then we realise our shouts are pointless and stupid and that all the fighting is doing is wasting time and delaying the inevitable start to the work.

So, today we were mooching around the house, trying to delay the start of the work. I spent an hour in the greenhouse planting up squashes, courgettes and sweetcorn. There are now loads of tomato seedlings, about ten chillis and one or two sweet peppers popping up from my plantings of a couple of weeks ago. So we started late if truth be told. I think by the time we were absolutely ready to start, it was around mid-day. We’ve just finished work and it’s around five pm so although we can’t complain at working ‘all day’ we certainly worked long enough for us both to feel hard-done-by on a Sunday.

I didn’t have my camera on me while we worked and I’m really cross with myself because there were loads of photo ops that would have made for a good story for today. Ah well, there is a moral of this story – don’t ever think that life will be too dull for a photograph – a surprise may present itself even in the most tedious of circumstances.

When we finished, I grabbed my camera and popped into the garden to see if I could find myself something to shoot and this is one of a number of quite nice pics….I think it’s a berberis although I am not completely sure. It has tiny holly-like evergreen leaves and nasty thorns, which I discovered last night when I innocently stuck out my hand to grab a bit of it to cut for my dinner-table posy. Ouch – you know what they say about looking before you leap, well it’s also true about looking before you grab!!!

I love these tiny flame-like flowers. They are rather gorgeous so this plant can stay! We are still finding each day brings us new surprises in the garden. There are some strange, alien-like flower shoots coming up outside our back door – I can’t wait to see what they are. This garden is full of magic and surprise – I feel very lucky indeed to be its new custodian.

We were on the moor last year.....and I'd inadvertantly upset our lovely neighbours.....tsk tsk