Whitebushes in the sunshine

Tesco Water Garden - Year 2

Well, we obviously had a mild enough winter for the water garden to survive, I didn't really do anything else other than occasionally top it up, and it's all sprung back to life (in fact, it actually looks like we have a lot more sprouting up), more pics when we get some blooms... ;)

Surrey wild flowers

Took a little walk around East Surrey Hospital yesterday evening to see if I could see any waiting Paparazzi (Peter Andre is in hospital with meningitis at the moment, poor chap) but got largely distracted by the incredible display of wild flowers just littering the grass banks all over the site -




- oh, I did see one possible clue, no sign of the owner though...must have been hiding in the woods with a zoom lens ;)-

Balfe Street Blooms

Well, the blossom in Balfe Street is out rather early this year, another sign of global warming? It was April 10th last time before it was worth taking a picture...Same as last time though, the street below is *still* in a right state, it's been constant building works for the last two months, seems like every household in the road have decided to get a new bathroom (all at the same time), so there are about 40 builders, countless toilets, baths and sinks in cardboard shielding, a scattering of dangerous power tools littering the road and pavement (of which random bits are opened and closed daily) to have to worry about dodging during my commute...

Anyway, Balfe street aside, happily (if the weather persons can be trusted) we can expect a return to the lovely temperatures we were experiencing at the beginning of March (for a day or two at least), 15 degrees today and 18 tomorrow...excellent... ;)

Whitebushes in spring

Spring flowers in Surrey

The Incredible vanishing train

I know it's all I seem to be going on about at the moment, but the Thameslink mucked up again today, this time in particularly spectacular fashion...Flyingpops has a meeting today (with a large UK Chocolate manufacturer) in Basingstoke, so instead of getting the London Bridge train she hopped on the slightly later Victoria one (with the intention of changing at Clapham Junction). I sat with her for one stop and changed at Redhill. It all looked normal, even the terminally dozy among my fellow commuters seem to have now cottened onto the fact that the train is stopping in a different place nowerdays, so everyone assembled, shuffling newspapers, adjusting scalves, blowing into cupped hands for warmth as the clock marched towards 08:14...then, with no announcement, no fanfare, the train just simply vanished from the display. Thus I found myself on a much later Victoria train than the one I had originally boarded, waiting at East Croydon (pictured above) in the snow, for a connection...

How can they not know that the train isn't running, embarrassed as they may be, if we knew a little earlier that it wasn't going to show up we could have made alternative arrangements? Even if they really didn't notice that it wasn't going to turn up until a minute before it was supposed to do so, shouldn't they have said *something*? There's just no excuse for it...

"Your Journey, Your Choice" speaks the corporate blurb on their home page, well, I think my choice will take me back to travelling in earlier on the London Bridge train (which turns up every day without fail and is never more than 3 minutes late)...

In other news, there was a big event in the Atrium in the office last night and for some reason they have left several extremely expensive looking displays of flowers behind, setting up this nice shot for me, with the canal museum there in the background... ;)

Tesco Water Garden - a bloom!

A beautiful flower has sprung up, and I know why I didn't notice it until now also, it stays tightly scrunched up during the night and slowly opens when the sun shines upon it! ;)

Gardening etc.

Spent most of yesterday in the garden and earned a bit of a sunburned back for my trouble...Got the baby tomato plants into some bigger pots and gave them a good feed, potted up my baby basil plants, topped up the water garden, ate some strawberries, pulled up about a million weeds (all that sort of thing) so it's looking a little bit less wild out there now... ;)

Oh, the rose above (in full bloom) is the one that Rans bought for Flyingpops' birthday...beautiful! ;)

I'm looking forward to the football tonight...but got to get the shopping in first and go out for a run with Flyingpops as the Race for Life is next weekend! Busy busy!

Homebase Garden Umbrella

Got up early today (really early) Flyingpops isn't very well at the moment and she couldn't sleep, so we were in Crawley by 8am (zzz) picking up her new DVD writer from the City Link couriers office (they tried and failed to deliver it to an empty house yesterday), we nipped into McDonalds for a naughty breakfast, then decided on a whim to check out Homebase for special "Bank Holiday" offers and came away with this -

- which really was a good deal (£68 quid down to £44), so we're enjoying the intermittent sun, I've been doing a bit of gentle gardening (just tidying up really) -

- ready (assuming the sun keeps shining) for me to dust off the BBQ, which seems to have survived the winter quite well, later on this afternoon...I've got a load of ribs and some piri piri marinade... ;)


Oh and Unazukin liked her new home btw (here we are enjoying a last beer together yesterday)...and is looking forward to her adventures with Kipperfrog... ;)

The Garden...

...is in full bloom now, mostly spring bulbs -

- but even the tiny sweet basil seedlings have made an early appearance (I didn't have many seeds left, so I spread them pretty far apart, might be able to avoid the "thinning" process completely with a bit of luck) -

- and the mint has made an unexpected return (after dying completely over the winter) -

- need to go and buy some coriander too at some point, I'm wise this year to the need to pinch their flowers off when they start to appear, if you let them get away with it they completely stop producing tasty leaves! ;)

Balfe Street - Blossom out

As promised... ;) I brought the Mavica into work today to shoot the blossom, which started to appear properly last week -

- after I shot this closeup I pulled my head back slightly from the camera to see if I needed to re-frame, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a sleepy looking woman staring down at me from her open upstairs window (just out of shot to the left) I gave her a grin, said a cheeky "Mornin'" and walked on... ;)

- (just a shame that under all that blossom the scene at street level isn't quite up to scratch) -

I like carrying the Mavica in London, holding my tiny, battered point and shoot no-one gives a shit what you are trying to take a picture of, but I've had London commuters politely waiting for me to finish a shot, following my gaze curiously wondering what is so interesting, and once I even had a taxi driver give me the thumbs up and and wait when I was shooting Kings Cross station from the road...I think it's because's it's just sufficiently large enough to look like a *proper* camera... ;)