I have a lot to be thankful for.  Today especially, I am grateful for

1. R’s safe return from a five day working trip away from home.
2. The fact that E has started to look forward with hope instead of with fear.
3. Mum having a lift to her church this Sunday so that I can go to mine with R.

Mum got a phone call the other day from a friend at church who asked if she was going to provide a Simnel Cake as usual on Mothering Sunday.  A Simnel Cake can be made either for Easter or Mothering Sunday (which is this Sunday coming).  It is a fruit cake with not only a marzipan top but a layer of marzipan baked in the middle.  The top is decorated with eleven marzipan balls representing the eleven faithful apostles.  Mum said she would be providing it if she could have a lift to church and, of course, she will be getting her lift.  Hooray!  I am very grateful for this as I wanted to invite Mum to lunch and if I had to take her to church I would not have the time to cook lunch for her as well.  I am doubly grateful for this as not only will Mum’s church be holding the Mothering Sunday service but there will be a Baptism and a First Communion too!  I am mighty glad to get out of that!   I can now go to a service in my own benefice and see all my friends, be a wife and mother and sideline the daughter bit for an hour or two and get home in time to cook a decent lunch for the family.

I belong to The Woodland Trust –  a charitable organisation which is trying to conserve our rapidly depleting woodland.  It also works to educate people about trees and woodland and among other things, is trying to find ways of combatting all the diseases attacking our native trees.  I received its quarterly magazine today and was looking through it while R and I were drinking a cup of tea when he got home.  I was disappointed to see that, like most organisations, it has decided to ‘dumb down’ its magazine.  It is now aimed at the weekend environmentalist – the better-off, liberal, middle-class urban dweller wanting something to do on holiday.  Lots of pictures and lots of bite-size snippets of information instead of informed articles written by and for reasonably intelligent people.

There was an article about a writer and environmentalist who has spent a whole year climbing trees across Europe.  He has tried to climb one tree a day and often persuaded other people, often complete strangers to join him.  There was a short interview with Elton John who has planted many trees on his estate near Windsor.  There was an article about geocaching – ‘a global phenomenon’ that The Woodland Trust has decided to join in with.  It’s a game of hide and seek using GPS technology where items are hidden in remote spots and people scamper about moors, mountains and woodlands trying to find little prizes in cache boxes.  I read out the instructions to R and we had a laugh when we found we had to ‘winkle out the trove’ from among roots and branches.  R said it sounded like a cue for a Rambling Sid Rumpole song.  People of a certain age from Britain will probably remember Rambling Sid and his ‘folk songs’ and if you don’t, Radio 4 Extra repeats all the ‘Round the Horne’ programmes regularly which featured him.

I will end my post with a photo of the misty sunset yesterday evening.

The line under the sun is an electricity cable and the sun appears to be balanced on it.