Cats in the Kitchen, Flora in the Garden

The photograph is explained further down the posting.


The temperature cooled down for a day and then started upwards again, yesterday the heat was tremendous, it didn't even cool at all in the evening, too hot to sleep, I went and sat in the garden at 3.00a.m., there was no breeze just this hot still air and I noticed this morning that no dew seemed to have fallen last night. The garden is taking copious amounts of water, I have had to give up my troughs of nasturtiums on the back wall as a lost cause, they have all been burnt by the sun. Normally, my nasturtiums can cope with our summer heat, but if this is just not a freak summer, and future ones are going to be as hot, all of them will have to be planted in partial sunny spots. The ones in those places this year are thriving, one of my dahlia bushes doesn't like the heat either.

I have had two lovely days though, acquiring lots of vintage items. Yesterday, I travelled to my nearest town. Wow! I thought the heat was high at home, but it seemed to me twice as bad in the town. The schools are off for their long summer holidays and the town was really busy, with children, tourists and everyday shoppers all battling along in the hot sun. I decided to do a quick tour of some charity shops and have a quick root around in them. I found some lovely things. I bought two beautiful wine glasses with lovely blue patterned stems, sort of mock art nouveau, the cutest pottery honey pot shaped as a hive with bees embossed on it, a lovely set of four embroidered linen table napkins from the early 1950's still wrapped in cellophane and in their original display box, three beautiful glass single bloom vases and a lovely pressed glass fruit bowl which I can just see full of trifle in the middle of a table.

I then went on from the town to visit my Mother, I was showing her my purchases and we got on talking about hats, which is another thing I love to collect. She happened to mention she still had her wedding hat, I remember as a child her showing it to me, I thought it had been thrown out, but when she moved house she had boxed it up with other mementoes and put it in the outdoor storeroom, well I was right into that room and I searched until I found it, and I brought it home with me. It is a beautiful navy blue straw, with grosgrain ribbon, all that is missing is the floral bunch that was attached to the ribbon. It needs a bit of renovating but it will look lovely hanging on my bedroom wall with my other hats.

We are losing our next door neighbours, they were living there when we moved to the cottage. They have been really good neighbours and we will miss them all, but on the up side, part of the family is moving further up in the village, so they are not really lost, its just that with the complicated way Rights of Way are organised round our properties [an outhouse of theirs is in our garden and our garden gate goes through their garden etc], it was nice that there was no trouble with this and we always accommodated each other. I now am waiting to see who our neighbours are, they move in at the end of next week. However, the lovely thing is that my neighbour was having a big clearout and brought some boxes round for me to rummage in, to take what I want, and then just dispose of the rest. They are things of her mother's and grandmother's glasses, ornaments etc. I will look through the boxes tomorrow. She also gave me some lovely cotton throws, and two cute hats, one brown cord beatles cap, and a lovely pastel pink angora cloche style hat. Wasn't it kind of her to think of letting me have the boxes? My Mother was telling me, yesterday, that I have always rummaged amongst old things. Apparently, from the age of eight, I used to beg my Grandmother to let me go and root through her attic, and I would come down wearing old hats, clutching old books and toys of my mother and her sister's. So I obviously caught the vintage bug at an early age.



Here are two more of my old family photographs, these two are from my Mother's side of the family. The photograph at the beginning of the posting is the wedding of my Grandparents and this group wedding photograph just above is of my Great Great Aunt Kate's wedding. It's amazing to enlarge it and look at the people in detail. [If I have done this correctly you should be able to click on it and enlarge it.] Kate is the lady with the biggest bouquet. There is a woman at the right hand side near the back that has the most enormous stuffed bird on her hat and there is the man in the top hat and monocle. This is the photo I have framed on my dining room wall, I could look at it for ages. Unfortunately, I don't know who some of the people are and there is no one still alive who might be able to tell me. I just love old photographs and will post some more another time.