Mainly flowers

It's lilac time again. In our back garden we have a ... can I call it a hedge?... anyway, a row of lilac of various colours which has over the years been colonised by various other shrubs; thus making it, I fondly like to imagine, mixed hedging which is good for bird life. I wouldn't recommend lilac as a hedging plant, since it suckers like mad and generally has an ambition to take over the whole garden, which is not large. So we have to hack it seriously down every few years, which means that the following year there are no blooms. Thus we had none last year but this year there are lots, and I just love the scent.

I love it partly because it's wonderful and anyone would, but partly also because of its associations. There was a lilac in my childhood garden and another line of them at the bottom of the garden of our first married house and the scent is very evocative of those times. There weren't many children living near us when I was a little girl and (in my mind at least) I spent quite a lot of time wandering round the garden and looking at the plants. This sounds more pathetic than it seemed at the time. I feel I was quite happy doing so.

I am a compulsive word-association singer. Someone just has to mention Glasgow and I start carolling "I belong to Glasgow" or buses and I'm off on "The wheels on the bus". The sight of lilacs makes me sing "It's lilac time again, you're going to leave me", which is not a cheery ditty, or I imagine it's not, though this is all I know of the words (which I may have got wrong) though I can finish the verse by la-la-la-ing. I've just Googled it and I can't find it, or not at a cursory glance. I can't think that I made it up. At least it's temporarily removed from my head the part of Mozart's "Requiem" that's been going round and round in it since my second choir's concert on Saturday. The Mozart is a greatly superior piece of music but I imagine that Mr L could do with a change from that particular one page, especially as it's not at all the easiest bit to sing.

It's also amaryllis time. What a colour.

We had a lovely lunch in Lundin Links yesterday to celebrate Mr L's aunt's 90th birthday. This is the view from their sitting room, overlooking their large and lovely garden, the golf course and the sea. I have view envy. His aunt is extremely well-preserved for 90 and plays bridge three times a week, which is very impressive. Unfortunately she's an aunt by marriage, so we don't get any of her genes, but her husband, Mr L's actual uncle, is still pretty good for 88. Mr L's parents died when he was 36 and 43, and this aunt and uncle have been very good to us and the children, especially since then, so it's lovely to see them still flourishing.