Monday

 In the garden ...

... the other new rose, Claire Austin, is putting on a lovely display. I've tried to capture the various stages in these photos.

The next few weeks are going to be much the same which makes for a really dull 'This Weeks' post so I won't be bothering with them for a while. A big chunk of my time will be focused on the decluttering and generally pretending that I know what I'm doing in the garden, and I will be continuing with the online classes, as well as my usual reading, Italian practice, family tree research, and piano practice. However, I also want to make the most of the remainder of the summer, such as it is, so will be out and about as much as possible.

I will be visiting The Newt in Somerset as soon as I sort out membership. It's about 45 minutes drive away so not too far and very do-able in terms of visiting frequently to get the best value from the annual membership fee. I'm especially interested in the aerial walk through the tree tops which should allow for some different sorts of photos and also an opportunity to photograph their deer herd.

It's also time for the Heritage Open Days so I've chosen a couple of places that I'd like to visit - the Eyre Chantry Chapel in Bath which is a privately owned chapel so not usually available to the public, and St Mary's Church in Devizes as it's due to become a community centre for arts and live music so I want to see it before the building is changed forever. Of course it's never straight forward and considering I rarely go out nowadays it seems that both of these clash with a couple of the very few entries already in the diary ... a bit of jiggling of times is required to fit everything in!

The new online choir has the potential to be very good. There were teething problems during the first session which is to be expected but I like the format. It's an hour long session which starts with a brilliant vocal warm up followed by a few minutes of music theory - we will be singing from sheet music so these little theory snippets are to help demystify the notation for those who don't read music. The rest of the session was devoted to learning our first piece - 'Sounds of Silence' but a new arrangement by Joseph, the choir leader. The only thing I didn't like and which I hope he can improve on is that the music is viewed from his shared screen so he had to scroll through the music as we were singing, but it was very jerky and difficult to follow when the line you were reading suddenly jumped to the top of the screen. I ended up with a headache! 

The biggie for this week is getting to see Baby R. I've seen him via doorstep visits and video calls during his first year of life but now that both of his parents are fully vaccinated I can get to meet him in person. 😀

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My September decluttering challenge:

• 1st = 2 stained storage boxes (to be recycled)
• 2nd = a band fleece (only worn once so returning it to the band as I will never wear it again) 
• 3rd = 3 sci-fi books (gifting to L)
• 4th = digital photo frame (never used, sold to H)
• 5th = a measuring jug (to be donated as I never use it)
• 6th = a band tie (returning to the band)