Back to school, wisteria, a return to ‘our’ table and a memoir of country life
Here is what I have been up to this week in the sunshine - although as I write this on Friday morning it is a little overcast!
An enticing path on the common edged by cow parsley
On Monday the children went back to school after a refreshing half-term break (including a day-trip on the train to lovely St Leonard’s) and it was exciting to see log seats laid out in a circle under the trees on the school field ready for a first forest school session for the year sixes. There will be lots more of this next academic year at Rusthall St Paul’s and I’m keen to interview forest school teacher Hannah Mackintosh about it to find out more.
I’m thoroughly enjoying the summer flowers I see everywhere I walk, and have become a little bit obsessed with photographing cow parsley! After school we like to walk to the field beyond Nellington Woods and before Farnham Lane, and spot butterflies and different flowers. On Tuesday a lovely lady on Manor Rd saw me and asked me into her back garden to see her stunning white wisteria in full bloom - it was ‘out of this world’ as my gran would have said, and abuzz with hundreds of busy bees.
White wisteria in Rusthall
This week I was also able to make my first visit to Daily Bread with friends to sit back at our ‘old’ table by the window inside. The last time we were there was pre-Covid and we really had no idea what was coming … It was so good to be back, and a little bit emotional too.
The book I’ve been reading this week is Adam Nicolson’s The Smell of Summer Grass, a hypnotic read full of a love of nature and the English countryside, about building a life at Perch Hill in Sussex with his wife Sarah Raven. I’m really enjoying it and it feels like pretty much the perfect thing I could be reading for these warm days of summer.
Over the weekend I’m looking forward to the Found Poetry workshop at the Toad Rock retreat between 12-2pm ahead of the Dressing of the Toad event on 3rd July, and my son wants us to be back in time to watch the football match Wales vs Switzerland in the Euros.
I hope you all have a lovely weekend, whatever you do, and thank you for reading.
Jayne
Flowers in the sloping field over the stile at the end of Nellington Wood.
