Houses and snails

Very exciting time last weekend: Daughter 1, her new husband and I went to see a house on Sunday and they bought it on Monday! It's by far the nicest one they've looked at and it was a fixed price, which is quite unusual here (or at least, there tends to be something a bit less desirable about fixed price property - it's usually been at an offers-over price and hasn't sold). Anyway, they liked it; they went back later to look at it again with my husband; they offered for it on Monday; and their offer was accepted. It's really lovely: a living room, kitchen/diner, little utility room and loo downstairs, and three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Small but south-facing back garden and a paved front garden with a run-in for the car they don't possess. Only four years old, so it just needs a freshen-up of its paintwork.

I'm so pleased for them, though I don't think I've quite taken in that they're actually going to move into it and not come home again. I mean, I know this in my head. But not really in my subconscious. She's been away before: a few months' au pairing when she left school; three years at Oxford University with a year in the middle in France; a year doing a Master's in Stratford. But she always came back. I think I kind of feel that this is something the same.

It's good, though. And they won't be far away. She said firmly.

It's been yet another far too busy week. Now the gardening season is in full swing, I really want to be outside most of the time. Unfortunately I have to be at work. I took some digital pictures of my garden on Thursday before breakfast, and once Daughter 1 shows me how, I shall put them in this blog. It's not that they're fantastic photos, or that my garden is big and impressive. But I love it all the same! Every day, it's just slightly different: some flowers are just beginning to fade while others are that bit further open.

And every day, the snails nibble just a few more holes in the leaves of my hostas.

I have a friend - a very nice person - who collects snails from her garden and cuts their heads off! That's telling them. But I'm not nearly that strong-minded. Sometimes, however, I take them out into our street and leave them in the middle of the road. This isn't as conclusive as you might think, because we live in a cul-de-sac with only five houses in it, one of which is occupied only at weekends. So the traffic isn't exactly whizzing along. I reckon that the snails have a sporting chance of making it into a garden, and there's always the possibility that this garden might not be mine...

Once I did this, an hour or so before Son came home in the car. I was still in the front garden. He stopped the car before reaching our drive and he got out.

"What are you doing?" I called.

"There's a snail in the middle of the road," he called back. "I'm just moving it to safety."

That's what you get for bringing up your children to be kind to their fellow creatures.