I’m sitting here thinking, and drinking tea and wondering. I can’t decide how candid to be on here. It was initially supposed to be about vintage fabric and what I make etc but I don’t seem to be able to stick to just that at all.
I love taking photos of flowers ( I was a florist for 10 years) and all sorts of things and I want to be able to blog about slightly more personal things too but I need to be careful, very careful.
I’m a very open person and could easily let this blog become a den of intrigue, love, hate, death, divorce, depression, betrayal and debauchery !! (no debauchery really, I made that up). But I won’t. I mustn’t.  I’d regret it. Maybe I should have another blog too but it would need to be under a made up name.  It’s tempting I tell you.
That still doesn’t help me to decide what to do about this post. I’ve nothing to hide but……right, I’ve decided to keep it very vague, for now. It feels right…..I couldn’t choose between these two duck pics as I liked them both.
Suffice to say that for the past 9 years at the beginning of every May,  we go with friends to Golders Green Crematorium in North London to ‘see’ two very close relatives, one of whom died very prematurely of breast cancer.
It’s an amazing place. A sort of  huge well kept park full of trees and plants with thousands of little name plaques in the ground by the trees and shrubs that have been planted/paid for by the relatives. I’ve never been to another crem so I don’t know what others are like in comparison.
It’s a beautiful place with lots of history, my grandfather’s somewhere there as are lots of famous people such as Spike Milligan, Marc Bolan and so many more. I went there the day after Marc Bolan was cremated to see the flowers and there was a huge white swan (after his album) all made of flowers and lots of Gothy fans. I was a fan too. Loved him.
I wanted to stay longer and take more photos of the more poignant plaques etc but it didn’t seem appropriate and would have meant the others waiting for me. Maybe I’ll go by myself sometime and do it. Maybe in the Summer, I never go in the Summer.
We amble along slowly, chatting, laughing. Although it’s sad it’s far from morbid and the trees and flowers are so breathtaking that our sad/bad memories are readily distracted.  My friend remarked how it’s now quite a long time since we lost our “person”. For me that makes it much worse. While her passing was still quite recent I felt she was still close, still near, could hear us chatting and I sometimes imagined her uncouth and irreverent  responses to us which made me smile. Now that eight years have unbelievably gone by she seems much further away, left far behind, truly gone. I’ve got to stop this now as I’m shedding quiet tears and my kids have just come in. I’d love to go on though. S**t. Oh well.
At the far end is a little pond where we sit on benches or on the grass and eat biscuits and strawberries and feed the birds and squirrels which are very tame. It’s paradise actually like a secret garden. I love ponds so I’m in my element. There are MASSIVE fish which we feed too.
The gold and white ones are fine but the huge brown ones which lurk in the shadows are quite eerie, (there’s one underneath this gold one) and I automatically get the creepy “Jaws” music in my head. They normally fight for our food but they weren’t impressed with my hastily grabbed stale rice crackers this year. Don’t blame them.
It’s the sort of place where you could happily spend hours on a nice day, sitting, reading, thinking thoughts you wouldn’t normally make time to think, with your face in the sun and ducks at your feet. There’s a tiny cafe in the car park which hasn’t changed since time began and is very dated. It has kit kats and iced buns I think.  Should have gone there, don’t know why we didn’t.  
So after a while we start heading back and we always say we should go more often to see the trees and flowers at different times of year, but we never do.
My next blog post will be chirpy as chirpy can be :):):) xxx
Every year at the middle of May, my garden turns blue.
The Solanum which I planted about 5 years ago is very happy and has grown over the swing hammock so we can’t sit on it yet ! I’m a very lazy gardener and shouldn’t have let that happen but I don’t mind.
There are lots and lots of bluebells which have now spread and are growing against the ugly old wall that I painted in blue emulsion when we moved here.
The Ceanothus which was a tiny little thing is now 7 feet tall
and the Wisteria is apparently over 100 years old and is now on borrowed time as it relies on a very tall, brittle, dead plum tree for support.
A friend once gave me a very small old enamel bath that she no longer wanted. She said it was from an old ship. I put it behind the back door and planted a little lilac shrub in it which has got huge and smells divine in the morning sun.
The forget me knots spread more and more every year and I love them so much.
I’ve been cutting bits off very few days to have inside and they last surprisingly long as cut flowers.
It all flowers together for about 3 weeks and it’s a very special time in my garden.
It inspired me to make blue and purple floral garlands which I’ve put in my etsy shop.
Nicky Grace Vintage Fabric & Gorgeous Things 