Orchids and books

 In February we were given an Orchid as part of a thank you present.  I wrote about it at the time - here.

About three weeks ago the last of the flowers died off so we freed the plant from its wire support and let it grow as it wanted.  Soon more flower buds appeared and now we have more flowers on the first of the two stems and buds enlarging on the second.  I'm hoping we can keep it going for a while longer.

In my last post I promised recent reading and more wallabies.

I've been reading quite a few books that had been reserved at the library over the last couple of months and as often happens they were ready for collection almost at the same time.

I enjoyed reading Gill Hornby's novel The Elopement, just as much as I did her first two Miss Austen and Godmersham Park.  All three feature the Austen and Knight families and are well researched and easy to read.  The fourth novel from the Reverend Richard Coles A Death on Location is just as gently amusing and entertaining as the the first three.

The Red Shore by William Shaw introduces a new detective called Eden Driscoll.  I've read all of William Shaw's DS Alexandra Cupidi novels which are set in Dungeness.  The new setting for this novel is Teignmouth in Devon.  I have many happy childhood memories of Teignmouth as we spent a couple of weeks there each summer over a number of years.  We stayed at the same guest house and always had a beach hut belonging to them on the back beach where the ferry crosses the Teign estury to Shaldon.  The setting for the book is in the area where we had the beach hut. I hope there are more books in this new series as I really enjoyed this one.

Above me and my cousin John on one of those holidays.  I'm not sure how old we were, perhaps nine or ten.  John was just two weeks older than me.  He would have been seventy five this coming Friday.

Death in Blitz City by David Young is set in Hull and has quite a convoluted storyline with several different elements shooting off at tangents until all is revealed.  It took a while to get into but I did finish reading it.

Another book I read on e-books Cloud Library  was Death at the White Heart by Chris Chibnall.  (I forgot to take a photo of the cover.) I hope this is the start of a series as I enjoyed it. 

I have three more books reserved but I suspect they will be longer getting around to my turn.  They are The Black Wolf by Louise Penny, Deadly Remains by Kate Ellis and The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith.

Two more Wallabies spotted over the last few days.

Wobbly painted by the Rachael and Phillippa Corcutt Collective in collaboration with Borderland Voices.  He's at the Manifold Valley Visitor Centre at Hulme End near Hartington.

We treated ourselves to a coffee at The Tea Junction tea rooms.

The Wallaby above is Bere painted by Nellie Shepherd and Briony Eyre from the Bullclough School of Art in collaboration with Beresford Memorial First School.  This one is outside the Peak Wildlife Park.

All for now.