Manic Monday

My husband has taken today through Wednesday off as tomorrow is his birthday and our 19th wedding anniversary. We are all really looking forward to celebrating. Yesterday we celebrated with my husband’s parents. I took a nice roast of beef and all the trimmings and cooked it at their house, as well as taking a birthday cake. I made the cake from one of my Great Auntie Margaret’s recipes, as part of my Family Food History and Recipe project. It was delicious, and I’m looking forward to blogging more about it later in the week.

Although we had planned to have a day out today, we couldn’t because there was just too much going on. The work on our gates that I blogged about on Thursday didn’t get done to schedule, so they were coming back today to finish off. That meant we could really only go out in the morning, so we drove through the countryside to our favourite local garden centre and chose a few plants for the garden. I’ve got a really big L-shaped garden, with so much space to fill the plants I chose today will hardly make a dent, but I’m very pleased with them.

I’ve also got a two new raised beds as a kitchen/herb garden. I found a beautiful rosemary plant, but as it is the first plant I’ve chosen for this part of the garden it looks like it might be a bit lonely at first :)



We chose some three evergreen clematis to grow up the trellis that will screen the kitchen garden from the rest of the garden. Here’s one of them. They all have white flowers, so I’m hoping it will be really pretty. I’m planning to grow some sweet peas up the trellis as well.



I think my favourite of the plants we chose today were these two gorgeous Hellabores. They are also called Lenten Roses because in England they bloom during Lent. I think Lenten Rose sounds so much prettier than Hellebore!



I need to go and wrap presents and bake a birthday cake now - I’m really behind in my preparations for tomorrow!

I have posted a Recipe of the Week today after three weeks without one. I’m sorry it’s been such a big gap, but it’s been a busy time. Anyway, I hope you like this week’s recipe - it’s easy and quick, but also just a little bit special!