Blooms, Birds, Blessings and Blue Pottery

Well, after all the excitement of hospital trips and pain-filled nights earlier in the week, things are finally settling down! Son 2's antibiotics and painkillers are finally up to the job of keeping him asleep at night and fit for school in the day, and the nurse came to our house yesterday to change his bandages - I think both boys instantly fell in love with her! Thanks so much for all your kind comments for me and the poor injured boy. Either you're going to look at the picture above and notice the pretty flowers, or you're going to notice that I need to weed! Cup half full, or half empty? I planted the bulbs right next to my washing line, so that I would see early blooms when hanging out the washing. Sadly the washing has been sitting on the line in the rain for the last 18 hours - I got caught out yesterday, and decided to risk leaving it there in the hopes that today will be a better day. I'm not sure, though...Now, in advance of Son 2 damaging himself, I had a smashing time myself last weekend, breaking a small coffee pot, a glass and one of our last good-sized serving dishes.

It was time for some shopping, and fast - Ben was threatening to go out and buy a whole new set of serving dishes! New??? A SET????? Shock horror. Action was needed to keep up my thrifty-eco-eclectic image.

Thankfully, the troc shop came up trumps. I was looking for a theme that would fit what little is left in our collection (mostly white or with small blue flowers) and I came back, delighted, with this lovely tagine-style casserole, the Crown Derby 'modern' casserole you see above and two hand-painted plates.

There's a lot of north African pottery in France, of course, given its colonial history.

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Each piece I've bought is different but is hopefully united by the blue and white and the hand painting. I'm looking forward to finding some more pieces to add to the collection now!

So things are looking up. Son 2 and I have caught up on enough sleep to see the bright side of life again. Son 1 and Ben can look forward to having a bit of attention again! And the holidays start on Saturday, and my dad seems likely to be well enough to leave hospital and get home before we are due to vist him. I am very grateful for all these blessings, the big ones and the blue plates too.

And a final blessing is this regular visitor to Son 2's birdfeeder - a blackcap. It's either one very hungry one or several, taking it in turns. They are wonderfully elegant little birds and very welcome!