Tidying

We travelled down to Ludlow on Friday afternoon, and then on to a wedding in Dorset (near Shaftesbury) on Saturday. We came back to Ludlow late Saturday night, and stayed with Liz's grandmother until lunchtime today.

The wedding—of two of our college friends—was a wonderful event. We met up with lots of friends (some of whom we've not seen for a year), and everything went really well. There was a monumental buffet which deeply satisfied my inner gourmand (including a really excellent Stilton), and an entertaining ceilidh in the evening. The bride looked lovely, the groom looked delighted, and the guests looked happy: what more could you want?

Having dragged ourselves back to Ludlow, we spent the Sunday and Monday pottering, and did a bit of tidying in the garden. Grandma built a small pond/water-feature with my sister-in-law at her last visit, which is a pleasing addition to the garden. We helped straighten the lining edges, and I re-positioned the pump (along with cleaning and fiddling with it), and it's now looking much neater, and the fountain is more vertical.

She also had a half-metre diameter clump of irises that were getting rather congested, which we dug up and split. We now have about two-fifths, Liz's mum has the same, and we replanted the last fifth in a better spot. I find it quite satisfying, splitting things like irises. They come apart quite well, with a sharp spade cutting them, and it doesn't seem too brutal.

We also took out a rose (brought back for us) which was badly located, and cut back a lot of ivy (growing rampant over a fence) and a bit of eucalyptus. Young eucalyptus is really striking, but the adult leaves are no great thing.

Otherwise, we also put up a mirror, and put new batteries in her smoke alarms. Bizarrely, doing so seemed to set the carbon monoxide detector off, which started claiming that it needed attention. As it's a mains-wired unit, supplied by Fire & Rescue, all I could do was disconnect it. Oddly, it's on the lighting circuit, not the smoke detectors' circuit, but there you go.

Back home, now, and back at work tomorrow!