Hello Lake Worth from England…….where the weather is glorious and we have just X days until we move into Summertime and all that it brings in terms of flowers and trees, fruit and vegetables, blossom and hopefully wall to wall sunshine. During the last couple of weeks we have had a huge amount of rain, great for the gardens after what was a record March, April and May with the sun being out more than usual. Then we get rain which in a few days was greater than usual in all 3 months put together!!! We can not control the weather and it is never boring here in England weather wise. It has been a good week which has seen our lockdown being eased even further, we can now meet up with friends or family, up to six people in the open. We made use of that and immediately made plans to visit friends in their garden, it was lovely and just like old times except that we sat 2 metres apart from each other and did not greet each other with a hug……we ordered food from a local company called ‘Lucy Love Leaves’…she supplies the most amazing vegan (not that anyone in the party is  vegan) food. The presentation as you can see from the photos is amazing and she presents each box with as much care as if it were a gift. Always adorned with a sprig of fresh flowers and herbs and tied with hessian string which gives it all a very rustic look. The food is to die for with tastes and textures that delight and surprise with each mouthful…….home made cake of course, no afternoon tea is complete without cake, we drank red wine and gin, not together, and it was a perfect afternoon.

It has been great to get out in the garden and bring it all back to life although we try to incorporate plants and flowers that give us colour all year, even when it is cold!!! English gardens are in general, well looked after and people are always to be seen in the front gardens digging and mowing, in fact next week I will show you a selection of the gardens around and about in our neighbourhood. I was so happy after Yoga this morning to discover that our tomato plants are starting to bear fruit, I was getting worried that they would never flower, we will have tomatoes in abundance, along with lettuce and peppers and cucumbers……..salad days here we come!I love to watch the fruit grow, at this time of the year it almost gets bigger as you look at it. At the moment, it is good to grow as much of your own food that you can as it saves trips to the shops. It was funny with my first attempt at cucumbers, I nurtured it carefully watching it grow bigger and bigger, it turned out to be a marrow!! I had to foster it out with my sister who has an allotment and my new cucumber is most definitely a cucumber….

Speaking of shops, today the High Street will be slowly coming back to life with the non-essential shops opening again. It will be different of course, but we will get used to it and it will soon become the new normal to follow arrows and signs around rather than meander through the various departments at will. How ever we have all done without clothes shops I have no idea but it will be interesting to see how it works out. I think I will leave my first trip to the High Street later in the week as I have a feeling it will be crowded today…..not sure about you but I am not spending as much money as I normally would, no nail salon, no hairdressers, no facials or waxes!!!!! Can you imagine the rush when they all open as we try to make appointments to get ourselves beautified.

I have been delivering masks to various community organisations here as everyone needs them as from today….you must wear a mask when you are in public places. The team that are making these are amazing and so dedicated, they keep going on and on as we need more and more as requests come in. I had a little meeting in the garden of one of the ladies and tried to show thanks for all they do, it was lovely.

Zooms are carrying on and we are becoming more and more inventive with our on line entertainment…bingo, quizzes by the score and lots of tv programmes that have been adapted for tv, all good fun.

Not sure about USA but we are having interesting conversations here about becoming a cashless society sooner rather than later, most of our shops are only accepting card payments for obvious reasons and this has brought the conversation to the fore again. I think I might relish the change but am acutely aware of people without credit cards and who are not good with technology. In fact, we got caught out with this very thing last year when we travelled  to Copenhagen and took a trip to Sweden for the day only to find no one took actual cash. We had even changed money into Swedish Krona as well to avoid having our credit  cards on us……  we could not buy a cup of coffee or snack ….we were so hungry when we arrived back in Copenhagen, a valuable lesson learned.

My daily thought for the day board is still going outside, I will go to 100 days and then put it out every other day or weekends……the board has suffered for being out in all weathers and is now in two halves, makes it easier for me actually as I can have one out and the other completed earlier ready to go out the next day, at the moment it doesn’t come in until 6ish and I have to redo it in the evening….happy days!!!

I am hoping in the next couple of weeks to have more exciting blogs coming your way as life gets back and freedom allows us to travel……meanwhile, take care and stay happy, always stay happy!!