Grasping the (non) Nettle, IKEA and Hospital

As usual, woke to grey skies and rain, although not as much as  recently. Taking Bella out, I decided I had to grasp the nettle (or not-nettle). This is a nettle with flowers on…

This is the plant I have been calling nettle, with quite different flowers.

The two plants have very similar leaves, and grow alongside each other. The purple flowered one has the larger leaves on the left of this picture, while definite nettles have the smaller leaves, as on the right. Being very brave, I touched the fine hairs on the underside of the larger leaves and … no stings at all! So, these mystery plants are not stinging nettles!

The dog roses are still looking good.

I was taken by the back of this clematis flower.

I liked it more than the front.

I really liked the raindrops on these leaves.

After breakfast, we went into Bristol, going through Fishponds to take advantage of some cheap diesel for the van. Sitting up that bit higher in the van, we also appreciated that there is some really quite nice housing in parts of Fishponds. Our joy was further unbounded when we reached our destination in search of the makings of our kitchen upgrade.

After such excitement, we had to come home and calm down :-).  I had a hospital appointment about my sinuses this afternoon - the best part of the whole thing was seeing this sinusoidal sculpture from one of the corridor windows.

Su came home, and found a small baby frog on the doorstep - managed to get a fuzzy long distance photo of it on our woodchip at the front of the house.

After having the grey clouds through the day, the skies have just cleared and we now have a beautiful sunny evening. If only it would last...

This day a year ago, we took advantage of the last sunny day forecast for a few days and went off to Quenington in deepest Chipping-Norton-set land to take in the sculpture exhibition "Fresh Air 2001". Had a lovely day out, taking Bella for a stroll in Westonbirt on the way back home