The Sky Garden - at the top of Number 20 Fenchurch Street - City of London

Look carefully - you can see the Olympic Stadium and also the High Rise at Ilford Broadway!

The Sky Garden at 20 Fenchurch Street is an amazing experience and it is FREE! There are 35 floor - so the lift told me 0 with a cafe and restaurants at the top and a range of plants that defy description. Google Sky Garden, book tickets in advance, take a passport or driving licence - and it is yours for the asking!

Easter Day at St. Peter's Aldborough Hatch

The floral arrangements for Easter Day were as brilliant as ever and speak for themselves, including this year for the first time a cross in the car park garden.

The Passion of Jesus - Trafalgar Square, London, Good Friday, 25th March 2016

The Passion of Jesus, staged by the Wintershall Charitable Trust of Bramley, Guildford, was an inspiring and moving experience on a warm and sunny Spring afternoon. The photographs speak for themsellves - starting on Palm Sunday, through the Last Supper and betrayal to the cruicifixion and the resureaction with Thomas greeting Jesus. Earlier in the Day I experienced a wondertful interpretation of Stainer's Crucifixion at the Savoy Chapel, with a choir of 20 boys and eight adults Brilliant. I arrived at Trafalgar Square for the last hour of the first performance where the Cardinal of Westminster Cathedral spoke, and then found a place standing behind a ballustrade of which I was able to lean for the nexrt three and a half hours! I had an early night! But how fortunate I am to be able to explore all these wonderful things in London - all for free!

Spring at St. Peter's Aldborough Hatch

These shots were taken on Saturday12th March. The 2,500 bulbs were planted last October. B & Q helped with 300 bulbs.

Spring in Aldborough Hatch

Spring in Aldborough Hatch. The first two shots are in the Garden of Remembrance at St. Peter's Church at the plot where Yvonne's ashes are buried. Heather and I planted these bulbs in the grass in October. The other shots are in my front garden.

I will spit the earth and sprinkle the soil (or will I?)

Now I do not wish to look a gift horse in the mouth, as the saying goes, but I am somewhat mystified by the free gift I have received from a well-known supplier of my horticultural needs, namely dahlia and begonia tubers.

Based out in the wilds of the countryside north from here, the company has its roots in Holland. I have been a customer for many years. Indeed, they keep telling me that this is so as they promise to send me massive cheques, but never do so.

I use them perhaps twice a year for their products are excellent; their dahlias and begonias flower all summer long and then dry off in the greenhouse over winter, to flower yet again in the warm weather. They are much admired in my front garden by passers-buy, whilst last summer a young man living next door took photographs of them to send to his mother in Romania.

The free gift is a seven by five plastic bag of Home SEED (their capitals). The colour illustration shows wild flowers in abundance with a single butterfly alighting on the blooms. So I have to assume that the bag contains wild flower seeds in some sort of compost.

But the instructions are written in 13 different languages with English being second down the packet. Here is what I am encouraged to perform – unedited and just as it is wrote:

Culturing the earth:

1. Spit the place for your lawn flowers fully, remove the weeds, possibly mixing with moist peat soil which your seeds are more resistant to drought. Then raking and levelling to a smooth seed bed.

2. Rake the seedbed again slightly, so that the seeds are mixed in the top layer of earth up to about 0.5cm deep. Then sprinkle the soil. The earth has moisture, light and warmth to germinate the seeds. Then ask your flower meadow little more maintenance.

3. After 2 to 3 weeks the seeds germinate.  Spray if necessary. After 6 to 8 weeks, you can expect the first flowering. Your flower meadow can be 4 months gorgeous blooms.

4. Sow to yourselves from March until June on not too cold earth, with a daytime temperature of around 16C/night around 8C.

Right! Now I understand. I will spit the earth and sprinkle the soil, whilst asking my flower meadow if it requires more maintenance and sowing to myself. Luvverly!

Postcard from a 14-year-old son - 29 years ago

I have been clearing papers in my office to make space for my new printer - the rollers have worn out after three years of hard usage! A note for a speech emerged form a pile of paper. Written from Scout Summer Camp on a postcard, the text read::

July 1987

Dear Mum, Dad and Heath,

Thanks for the letters and the newspaper cuttings of the Tour de France.

I'm having a good time. 

The weather has been good.

I have done hiking, canoeing, hiking and wind-surfing.

Yours,

Richard

(By the way, I've got the runs, my mate caught an axe with his hand, and the whole of the Foxes Patrol is ill.)