FOR COLIN

Managed to get into the garden this afternoon for a while before the rain came. R did some weeding and tried to reduce the Bindweed menace - alien tentacles insinuating themselves through the soul - and a little like the film - reappearing just when you think it is gone.

I put in some leek seedlings and small cauliflowers - the first lot had been munched - I suspect mice.

Then I barrowed some logs to the shed and trimmed the new growths on then beech hedging as I read that doing so would give a more dense growth.

The first picture is the view from the decking by the Wendy House up the walkway. The candelabra primulas are the beginning of an attempt, in a small way, to emulate the show at Harlow Carr. They are allowed to seed and I have also sown some myself and transplanted the seedlings.

I promised you a photo of Goliath - the oriental poppy - and here it is.

The colours in the poppy bed are just getting going and I need about a dozen more plants. I am also going to move some of the self sown annual opium poppies to this bed for, when the oriental poppies are over they can leave a barren area.

I might also move some yellow welsh poppies or some of the orange ones.

The last picture was taken the other day as

the weather began to change after a sunny afternoon. The fine clouds had produced a rainbow halo effect more like the frost rings one sees around the sun in winter.

Of course the water up in these clouds is frozen.

So to the end of another week and memories of R's uncle Colin who loved his garden, his veg and his fruit trees.

His funeral was yesterday - a celebration of his 95 years - of a musician, a gentle man and a gentleman.