Excellent Weekend

This post is dotted with pictures of flowers, read on and you’ll understand. If not, just look at the pretty pictures. This weekend we were visiting Leon’s parents. We had not seen them since our Florida holiday, so it was really nice to go down there. Friday night was a quiz, we didn’t win though. We did have some nice wine and some nice chilli on potato. Yum.
One of the rounds was to name all of the administrative regions (counties) in France. We did get a map. I was quite pleased with knowing Normandy (both of them) and Brittany. I often end up feeling like I don’t know anything at all at many of these quizzes, especially when everyone else seems to know stuff.

On the Saturday morning, Leon took his dad to fetch a new car, so I managed to get a little knitting done. We’ve decided that the colours in the scarf probably wouldn’t suit Leon’s Grandma, so I'm rethinking that one. The scarf will now probably be mine. [part of me is rather chuffed about that, it’s a lovely colour and so soft as it’s 70% angora bunny fur. Lovely]

After that, Leon and I went into town. The main aim of this was for Leon to get a haircut. We also had a look in some shops, but didn’t buy anything. I tried to buy [item censored] for my secret pal, but couldn’t find any. I’ll look in York.

On the way back from town we bumped into some of Leon’s friends, so we organised to go out with them in the evening. We planned to go for spicy chicken at Nando’s but the queue was huge (apparently, I never saw) so we had a curry instead.
After the curry we went to the pub for a quick drink. It was generally a pretty good night. I was a bit cold though, I need a bigger coat.

We got up a bit later than planned on Sunday, but we still had time to fit in all we wanted to. We started off in a local garden centre. They had some small animals there, varying from some giant snails to parrots to big bunnies to Robrovski hamsters. I enjoyed watching the rabbits (there were normal rabbits and lops, and also a lion’s mane rabbit) and I loved the guinea pigs. There was one especially scruffy one who was adorable! One of the rabbits had escaped, which was fun. I’m really looking forwards to one day having a garden big enough to have a rabbit/guinea pig run in it. I think that I’d prefer to keep them outdoors when possible, with a nice indoor space too. You do have to watch for the bunnies burrowing though.
Of course, when I have room for bunnies and the like, there will probably be room for a dog, and I can’t miss that opportunity! I’d love a really big dog, but perhaps something a bit smaller than a Great Dane might be an idea to begin with! We will almost certainly rescue whatever it is that we get. I suspect that it will depend on how much exercise time we can spare, after all going for a long walk every night is quite a commitment.

After the garden centre, we headed off to Anglesey Abbey for the rest of our day out. There was a Dahlia display in one of the gardens (hence the pictures) which were so beautiful that I couldn’t resist taking some pictures. There are actually more on my Flickr Page
There was a formal garden with Dahlia bushes as well as the Dahlia garden which was very pretty. We also walked around the winter walk, though it’s not quite sorted yet – many of the plants have beautiful stems of one sort or another (coloured or nice texture) and so until they have lost their leaves it’s not quite as pretty. We did see a really nice plant which I call “pink grass” but I didn’t take a photo of that.

We headed off and had some lovely dinner before we loaded all of our stuff into the car and set off back home. I drove as far as Peterborough were we stopped at the services. Then Leon drove the rest. I’ve still not got my confidence back since driving in the US. I’m sure I will though. I might drive us to Pilates this evening.