A Merry Christmas to all my blogger friends. I have been absent for 6 months - it felt like my last post about spending an eternal June with my mother said it all and I had nothing left to say. So apologies, especially to Suzanne who I have only seen today had been concerned about myself and Kate
It hasnt been a good year, early on finding out a dear beloved cousin had terminal cancer which made me feel completely helpless and hopeless. Thank God (or whatever being I actually pray to, probably Mother Earth) she is still here, hopefully celebrating a wonderful Christmas today with her family thanks to a drug trial. Then in October my dear friend and neighbour Gill was taken seriously ill and again thank goodness is slowly recovering. On the good side my daughter Kate has found a wonderful new love in Luke and they have been together for 7 months or so and although Kate now uses a walking stick always she is very happy which makes me very happy. We had changed solicitors (regarding her accident 7 years ago when a car ploughed into the bus shelter where she was sitting on her way to school) which was a very hard thing to do as the old solicitor had just put the case to court, but our new solicitor is very lovely who deals in brain injury and hopefully will get Kate better care for her future
Well I had better start on Christmas food preparations. Cooking is the one thing that has bought me some joy this year. During the first snow and not being able to buy any bread around where I live, I decided to buy a breadmaker and it is now a wonderful constant in my life! Freshly baked bread every morning is heavenly and unfortunately the focaccia I have been baking everyday is too yummy for words (Kate and I will have to reform ourselves in the New Year as too much focaccia definitely expands the waistline!) Below was my first attempt with sun dried tomatoes on top and it didnt last very long after this photo was taken!

 I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June - a quote from Lucy Maud Montgomery who wrote Anne of Green Gables, and I think my heaven would be eternal June, smelling the roses with my mum.

It has been extremely hot here in my little corner of Kent, a bit too hot and humid, but next week is going to be a little cooler in the early 20 degrees with a little rain towards the end. June means roses, and old roses which are my love.


Rose of the week in my garden must be Souvenir du Docteur Jamain a climbing hybrid perpetual bred by Lacharme in 1865, parentage Charles Lefebvre x unknown. The roses are a delicious velvety plummy claret(best colour rose for a West Ham fan!), much darker than the photos suggest, and the scent is gorgeous. I moved it last year to an open position over an arch in full sun which should not be the best position for a dark red rose, but it is doing beautifully and climbing upwards with speed. You can just see it climbing up the arch in front of my summerhouse in the first photo.
This photo on the left shows the colour better, it really is a dark rose.




















Another lovely rose, although not open yet, is Common Pink Moss with her amazing mossy buds growing fatter by the day.  
Old Pink Moss is a sport of Centifolia and has been around for at least 300 years. The moss is quite brown in colour and when rubbed smells of balsam. The scent of this moss rose is the same as the orignal rosa Centifolia. Daughter Kate took some amazing close ups of the garden this week for me.
 close up of Constance Spry bud
 One of Max, our German Shepherds, tennis balls lying in the grass - which reminds me, Andy Murray is defending his Queens Title this week and is also playing doubles with his brother Jamie, so good luck boys!

Well today is the 2nd of June and it is a beautiful day here in southern England. Yesterday wasnt so good, rain the whole day long, but the garden needed it(but not the slugs and snails it bought out!)Snails have left alone my lettuce and devastated instead my lovely poppy somniferum Swansdown which I loved so much in the garden last year. The snow and cold earlier in the year killed off the self sown seedlings which would have been blooming now,and snails have just adored their succulent leaves and have eaten the one patch that I wanted to be blooming soon behind my roses Madame Hardy,Heritage and Fantin Latour. But obviously the snails know this and so have eaten them all, and their replacements I put in pots covered with gravel....Amazingly 15 feet away they have left all the sowings, so I have potted on some of these, put in the greenhouse and will plant out when large enough not to be eaten! I dont use chemicals in my garden, and water in the morning rather than at night, and the snails seem worse this year than ever before. I am going to try a few remedies I have found on the internet - human hair and dry porridge oats and as snails dont like copper, I thought about putting all my spare pennies and 2p around the poppies and see if this will work!
The garden is beginning to come alive and blooming the week beginning 1st of June 2010 are:-
Roses Constance Spry,Desprez a Fleur Jaune,several Iceberg,The New Dawn,Pink Perpete,Zephrine Drouhin,Reine des Violettes,Gertrude Jekyll,Madame Gregoire Stachelin, with lots more roses about to burst into bloom.
lychnis alpina, iberis
various aquilegias,white,mauve and yellow flag iris
euphorbia,honesty,geranium phaeum,pink geranium macrorrhizum,geranium Johnsons blue, geranium wargrave pink, centaura montana, bleeding hearts, calendular,bluebells,lily of the valley,various clematis, veronica gentianodes, french lavender,feverfew,cerastium tomentosum(snow in summer),polemonium caeruleum(jacobs ladder) Hesperis matronalis (sweet rocket)
pink and white oxalis rosemary,black viola,violets, various allium, foxgloves,love in a mist,
shrubs and climbers various clematis, wisteria ,kerria,viburnum tinus, and fremontedendrom 


the lovely Desprez a Fleur Jaune en masse
details of  this lovely climbing tea noisette here


















and close up

,A year later, 1955 pointing at grandads chickens








































1957 or 8








































Mums 30th birthday  1959, with me and my younger brother Bill 

My lovely friend and neighbour Gill sent this to me tonight which was lovely of her, thanks Gill, a lovely thoughtful friend  xxx
If I could catch a rainbow
I would do it just for you
And share with you its beauty
On the days you're feeling blue.

If I could build a mountain
You could call your very own;
A place to find serenity,
A place to be alone.

If I could take your troubles
I would toss them in the sea,
But all these things I'm finding
Are impossible for me.

I cannot build a mountain
Or catch a rainbow fair,
But let me be what I know best,
A friend who's always there. 

Today is the third anniversary of my dear mother Betsy Cooper Golding passing away. People say it gets easier but I think it gets harder. Been in the garden all day where mum loved to be, and where I feel her near me.
Love you and miss you mum xxx