Proper tea in the garden

I have to start by saying this is not how I live my life! I think it's the first and only time ever that I have bothered to make such an effort with a drink, I tend to whizz as quickly as possible from one thing to the next and find it difficult not to be doing something all the time, and the thought of sitting still and doing nothing makes me feel strange and fidgety. And I never bother to set the table for a cup of tea like this when it's just me, or two of us.

But then if I don't make an effort to have space in my day to stop, think and appreciate what I have got then my day is emptier, it just becomes a list of chores to get through.
So I am going to try and do this more often. It was such a beautiful afternoon and we'd had a busy day so it was lovely to stop and pick some flowers from the garden. Can you spot who suddenly came to join me, just for a fleeting moment:

Must love wallflowers as much as I do! The beautiful deep, velvety red is one of my favourites.

The china cup, saucer and milk jug are my latest e-bay purchases.

I have been wanting some proper tea cups for a while but it took me a while to find some I liked - these are apparently from the 50s and are made by Colclough, which I'd never heard of- very pale green and very pretty, and I'm not sure what's come over me really because I'm not a flowery or pretty china person at all. I bought some more today, on e-bay again, and they've got flowers on, so I must be having some kind of a personality change. Once I'd put my tablecloth on the table and laid everything out it felt like being in a cafe for tea!

The garden is at its best right now, it never quite regains this level of promise and colour again.


It's a long thin garden with a veg patch at the end and it gets progressively messier and weedier the further you get from the house. I'm busy sowing some summer-flowering annuals but it really is best in the spring and it was lovely to come down this morning to see the sun shining through the leaves and tulips.