An emotional day...

Yesterday was a very emotional day, it was my friends funeral. The service was beautiful and mirrored her wedding day, which she loved and was so excited about. We sang the song, had the reading and the first dance song from her wedding and they had a few presentations showing different photos. She loved sharks and her coffin had sharks on it. There must have been at least 300 people in the church, which shows how much she meant to people and there were lots of people I hadn't seen for a while. Afterwards everyone went to a local pub but I didn't stay too long. I had one of those pressure headaches and felt completely drained by the time I left.

There hasn't been much else going on this week and I haven't taken any photos. I'm not doing anything interesting this weekend so I won't do a 'Something for the weekend' post this week.

I thought I would just share this photo of a lovely rockery, it's at Wroxham Barns where we went on holiday in Norfolk.

SeagullSuzie from Beautiful Brixham blog commented that I haven't told you what my new camera is. Well, it's a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS40.

 

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Bird watching

I haven't really spent any time this year watching the birds, except when I did the Big Garden Birdwatch in January. From the bedroom I can watch birds on the bird feeders in the back garden. So, I spent about 15 minutes on Thursday, after 8pm, not expecting to see any birds but I did! A male and female house sparrow, great tit, male chaffinch, greenfinch and two wood pigeons. I also saw about 16 Red Kites over the garden on Thursday afternoon. The RSBP website is good for identifying birds.

This goldfinch was on the telephone wire then it went down to the garden, I got a few pictures but none of them are very good. Here is the best one!

Goldfinch

These flowers were waiting for me when I got back from holiday and they are still going strong!

I have been doing quite a bit of crocheting the last couple of days, although I'm still making slow progress! I'm on the seventh colour now but I have realised that I've been doing the end of the second row of colour wrong! Instead of going into the top of the chain three, I've been going between the last treble and chain three. It's looks fine to me though and I wasn't going to undo it all!

This has been a bit of a mixed post so sorry if it hasn't made good reading!

 

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Hickling holiday, Norfolk Part 2

I felt a bit better on Wednesday and we went out on the boat. We were supposed to pick the boat up at 9am but we had gone to the wrong boat yard as there are two with the same postcode! We finally got on at about 9.30am, we went along Heigham Sound and up to Hickling Broad. At the end of Hickling Broad we stopped at The Pleasure Boat Inn (where we had been on Sunday). We stopped there for a bit then made our way back along Hickling Broad and tried to make a cup of tea but the gas had run out! The boat owner said to come back up to The Pleasure Boat Inn to get another gas bottle but unfortunately he didn't have the right one! So, he let us have the boat for two hours extra, which meant we didn't have to rush back. Again, we went back along Hickling Broad and into Horsey Mere and up to Horsey Windpump. We didn't go into the mill but bought drinks and ice creams from the shop, the mill is owned by The National Trust. After we had finished our drinks we went back along Horsey Mere and Heigham Sound to the boatyard. In all, we had about six hours on the boat, it was a good day and I enjoyed it! We didn't really see that much wildlife and some of the photos came out quite blurred. You can find out about the Norfolk Broads here.

Because I took a lot of photos I thought it would be easier to make a collage of some of them. I have noticed that the collages sometimes look blurred but if you click on them they come into focus.

On Thursday, although the weather wasn't great, we finally got to the beach, we went to Sea Palling and we found 'A trust you car park', basically they trust you to put the money in the box and it all goes to charity. The tide was quite high when we got there and we spent some time looking in the rock pools, we found a few bits including a starfish, lots of sea gooseberries and quite a few dead crabs. We went for lunch at Sandy Hills Snack Bar as we could take the dogs in too and then played in the amusements for a bit. Back on the beach the tide had gone out quite far and we walked out to have a look and I found, what I think, is sea glass! I'm not an expert so maybe someone can tell me if it is sea glass. I loved the beach but we didn't have as long there as I would have liked.

Our beach finds

Sea glass?

On Friday we went to Wroxham Barns, which has some shops, a pottery place, a small farm and a soft play area. It wasn't really my sort of thing, I'm not really into shopping for hours but the others wanted to go. On Saturday I stayed at the cottage while some of the others went into Great Yarmouth to do some shopping. In the afternoon there was a Strawberry Fair just along the lane so we went to that. It was in someone's garden and was really nice, they had a BBQ, beer tent, tombolas, hoopla, stalls and a children's play area. On Sunday we packed and tidied up and made our way home.

The end of the holiday was tinged with sadness as we received a phone call on Saturday evening to say that a friend, who is only 31, had had a heart attack and probably wouldn't pull through and I have just had a phone call to say she passed away this evening.

 

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Hickling holiday, Norfolk Part 1

We are staying at a friends cottage in Hickling, Norfolk. They don't rent it out but let friends and family stay and just ask for a contribution towards the electric bill.

We arrived here quite late on Friday and had sausage and chips from the chip van, just down the road. On Saturday we went to Great Yarmouth, to the market but the weather was quite cold. Sunday was a bit nicer and we had a day in the cottage, playing games in the the garden and then went down to The Pleasure Boat Inn about 3.30pm before having a roast dinner. On Monday we went to Roys of Wroxham, which is a big shopping place selling all sorts of things. Last night I felt really unwell and went to bed early after taking strong painkillers but I didn't sleep very well. I had a temperature, ached all over and had a headache so I stayed in bed for a while this morning. I still don't feel too good and haven't eaten so will have another early night and will hopefully feel better tomorrow as we are going out on a boat early in the morning.

I haven't taken many photos so far but here are a few of the ones I have taken.

Flowers in the garden.

Outside The Pleasure Boat Inn.

Walking back from The Pleasure Boat Inn.

 

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Crocheting and flowers

Even though I haven't been doing much crocheting, my granny stripe blanket is now taking shape. I'm pleased with how it's coming on and I'm excited to see how it will look once its finished, that might be a long way off though!

Here is my progress so far.

The pink lupin in the rockery is flowering now and looks lovely.

I don't know what has happened to the red lupin though! It went a bit funny after I bought it but it seems to be perking up a little bit now.

The foxglove isn't flowering yet but seems to be doing well.

I haven't seen any ladybirds yet this year, which is unusual. Last year it was about April when I first saw them and we had quite a few around the garden. I guess it's the late Spring making them later. I haven't seen many butterflies either, just the Large Whites.

I have been busy uploading my mums photos to Flickr now that you get 1 terabyte of storage and unlimited uploads, it's nice to look through the old photos. I will be packing tomorrow to go on holiday on Friday, hopefully I will get to do some posts while I'm away.

Hope you all have a great week!

 

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Woodland walk

Today we went on a short woodland walk to a small area nearby, it's just across the road and is quite overgrown so you can't walk far. Someone has built a den and there was a frying pan on a sort of makeshift BBQ, I didn't take any photos of it though. There was a lot of Cow Parsley but the photos I took were blurred.

I really like this photo, looking up to the treetops with the sun peeking through.

I think these are Wood Forget-me-nots.

I'm not sure what these are, there were a couple of similar looking ones in my book.

And finally, I wasn't sure what these were but my dad said they are White Bluebells. My book says they are rare but they do look like Bluebells. Has anyone else seen them?

I love that everything is looking so green and colourful now that we are having some warmer weather and it looks set to stay for this week, at least.

 

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