Heart's Ease

Hearts Ease

Our lawn is covered with wildflowers at the minute ... 

My favourite is Heart's Ease.   Isn't that a gorgeous name for a flower?  It's a type of tiny pansy .... And according to Wikepedia it has several names - I love "Come-and-cuddle-me" - that'll do lol

Viola tricolor, known as heartsease, heart's ease, heart's delight, tickle-my-fancy, Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me, come-and-cuddle-me, three faces in a hood, or love-in-idleness, 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_tricolor

There's an old song that mentions Hearts Ease
It's part of the Sam Henry collection collected back in the 1800s.  I sang it for a wee while ..

The song is The Apron of Flowers

I loved a young man, I loved him well
I loved him better than tongue can tell
I loved him better than he loved me
For he did not care for my companie

Now I tell you the reason why
Because he had more gold than I
But the gold will melt and the silver fly
And perhaps he'll just be as poor as I.

There is an alehouse all in this town
Where he goes in, and there sits down
And he takes a strange girl on his knee
And he tells to her what he once told me.

But there's a flower grows in this place
And some does call it the heart's ease,
And if I could but this flower find,
I would ease my heart and my troubled mind

Unto the green meadows there I'll go
And watch the flowers all as they grow
And every flower I will pull
Until I have my apron full.

The lawn really needs to be cut ... but these flowers in the grass are so pretty

We're also tortured with these ...... sycamore seedlings.    There are millions of them ... through the lawn, on the paths, in the hedges... And if you don't get the root of them out, in no time at all there's a wee tree well settled in for the duration... Little rotters... Sunshine at the minute is sycamore weeding.

Anyway, it was great to be outside for a couple of hours.

So after a lovely week out of routine, everything's back to normal again here tomorrow.   We've spent today in the studio fixing a few things from the guitar sessions last weekend and are now ready for the next bunch of musicians to come in and add their magic - hopefully the bass will be recorded on Wednesday.

And we have our next performance of the Emigrant Woman's Tale on Tuesday night in Belfast.   Looking forward to that.   Rehearsals tomorrow to refresh our memories. We got such an excellent response to our debut in Rostrevor a few weeks back.   It'll be interesting to see the differences between a city and a village audience.   I'll put a few tracks up from it to let you hear what Csilla's voice sounds like reading her lovely poems and to let you hear one or two of the songs.

Have a lovely week whatever you're doing.

5 minutes counts

Five minutes before I took these photos, the sun was shining in all its brilliance.  I was inside with a young student and the minute she went out the door I grabbed my coat and camera and headed for outside....

By the time I got out, it looked like this.   Humph.  

 Well at least I went out .... I need to play tricks on myself to make myself go out the door.  It's not agoraphobia, it's just getting absorbed in something else.  And once outside, it's fine.

The flowering currant is holding its own in the wind.   I love this plant.  Such a shame you can't bring it inside.  It smells of tomcat spray ... not nice.  So we have to go to it :)  Clever plant.

Indoors, my "Christmas" cacti are a bit confused.
Look at the bloom on this one - isn't it beautiful?   I put it up on top of a cupboard months ago and the poor thing hardly ever gets watered and look what it's done.

And the second one has dozens of buds... It'll be in full bloom for Easter.
I guess pink is dominant at the minute.

The community choir had a performance today - for the senior citizens luncheon club - all the pensioners joined in with some of our rounds and it sounded lovely.  Everyone went home smiling.  Well proud of all my singers.

If you're taking part in the A to Z challenge have lots of fun :)

If not, how's your week shaping up?

Messing with filters

This new camera is a thing of wonder!!! :)   I've always loved photos that pick out one colour and leave everything else black and white - you see it a lot in adverts.  But I thought it was some hifalutin trick in a TV studio editing suite ... But lo and behold I can do it on my camera ... whoop ...

I haven't the heart to cut the fuchsia yet although I can hardly see out ..

but I'm not sure I like it ... it's a very cold effect.  Still, it may come in useful sometime.   All you wonderful photographists out there can maybe give me some tips?  Pretty please?

Cotoneaster in full berry

Have you tried out anything new this week?  Do write and tell me.

This blog is Day 5 linking in to Sarah Allen's 30 day blog challenge

Yellow and going to miss Y'all

Day 25 of the A to Z Challenge = Y 

A Y song .... Touch of Your Hand 

Without a doubt my favourite colour is Yellow ... It cheers me up and brings sunshine into the house ... Many years ago I lived in a house with a yellow front door and it cheered me up no end coming home to that house.   

cowslips in the lawn

Right now the garden is full of yellow, 

although blue is starting to take over as the bluebells come into their own.  

Buttercups

Do you remember putting buttercups up to your chin 

to see if you liked butter?  lol

I read somewhere in the past few days to leave dandelions as long as you can in the lawn as it's great food for the bees and butterflies and as it turns to seed the birds get much needed sustenance too...  Sounds like a great excuse to not mow the lawn for a couple of weeks :) 

primroses just starting to go off 

As we near the end of this A to Z challenge I'm going to miss y'all - (sorry for borrowing an Americanism there...) It's been a real challenge, but also a real pleasure to read so much good information, meet so many interesting people and visit so many new places.