Picture a Wedding

Tomorrow it is our fifth wedding anniversary. Five years already! The weather promises to be the same as it was five years ago i.e very hot and sunny, only tomorrow I shan't be swanning about in a big sod-off wedding dress with a twinkly tiara. Not that I wouldn't like to, you understand. I've still got my wedding dress. I can't bear to part with it. It is a reminder of the most magical day of my life, of a day I thought I would never have the privilege to own. People who came to our wedding still remark about what a fab day it was.

IT WAS GREAT!!!!

I am looking at the big group photo taken of everyone before we had our wedding feast. Set in rolling countryside, surrounded by trees, a mix of people ranging in age from their eighties down to a fit to burst pregnancy bump. There have been many changes since that picture was taken. Sadly, there have been two deaths, two people called to Heaven well before their time. There have also been 3 splits of long-term marriages and relationships.

However, there have been 10 babies born. 10!!!! 9 girls and 1 boy. Including a set of twins! The babies in the photo are now starting school, the little girls who swarmed around my son are now young teens. My son is to be a father.

There has also been a transgender re-alignment (I think that's what it is called although it does make it sound like something you find in a car engine). There have been more two weddings. And no doubt many, many more life changing happenings in the lives of our guests that we know little or nothing about.

And tomorrow, we are off to River Cottage, to have a meal chez Hugh F-W, our hero! At the allotment this morning I picked a massive sack of french and runner beans, most of which are shortly to find their way into our freezer as there is no way we are going to be able to eat them all in the next week. Well, not without the cry of 'Oh, no. Not beans AGAIN!' going up as we start turning green. I thought, I wonder if Hugh has enough beans. I could take him some, as an offering to his self-sufficiency greatness. And then I thought, no, he can grow his own bloomin' beans, because these beauties are going to provide us with a taste of summer through the winter.

Oh yes, and there is now officially a pumpkin as big as my head! In fact, there are 5 pumpkins as big as my head. I have no idea where the other 4 sprang from as they were the size of marbles last week. I have no idea what I am going to do with them. I feel they are part of the courgette revenge plot. I'm keeping up with the courgettes - but now the pumpkins and squashes are taking up the surplus crop baton. Luckily, Auntie Pollie and Mum both requested a pumpkin as they have pumpkin recipes they want to try out.

Mrs Poo is also looking perkier. This morning she made a bee-line for the raised bed and savaged a lettuce. And she bit me when I offered her some sunflower seeds. And then I caught her in the greenhouse eyeing up my cucumber plant which currently sports 7 cucumbers in various stages of length and girth.

'You can take your beady eye off those,' I said.
'What are they?' asked Poo.
'Cucumbers.'
'Oh I can't eat those,' she said. 'They repeat on me something chronic.'

And I have got Andy a cunning anniversary present, connected to the theme of wood. And I didn't have to resort to buying him a stick, either. I can't say what it is, in case Andy reads this and it spoils the surprise. But I was quite pleased with my lateral thinking and Andy had better brace himself for more than one suspect pun tomorrow!