Five minutes of peace...with tea

The roof is done! Hooray!Oh my gosh that was a couple of days of the loudest, most inescapable noise.That was two days of scraping and hammering and dropping huge bundles of roofing material, which sounded like an earthquake and made my 1920's windows rattle. That was two days of nervous, hiding, hissy cats.That was two days of keeping vigil over workmen who don't know garden beds from foot paths, don't know that if you step on the irises and peonies there won't be any flowers come May. That was two days of not getting much work done at all.But, hey, minimal disasters, and maximum benefit of a new roof. By the way, a new roof only takes two days! Who knew?So never mind the backlog of work, time to take a few minutes and enjoy this peace and quiet.All winter I've been working on my little collection of indoor plants, but now that it's so unseasonably warm, my thoughts are with the garden.So for my little tea break I went downstairs into my library and picked a book.Do you have precious books in your collection?This one is very precious to me.It used to belong to my grandfather.It's a 1969 edition of Gardening for the West by Robert A Nicholson.It's a good and practical book, but what makes it precious is that it's stuffed full of my grandfathers notes.They're mainly about flowers. The notes are written in English on one side and German or Latin on the other. He translated words, phrases and whole sentences. He made notes and wrote down his thoughts. He underlined tons of words and phrases in red in the book and numbered them with his complicated system of filing.His notes seem random, but they're all organised with another number system, which I suppose, corresponds to his daily entries in his journals and the numbered system in this book. There are tons of notes throughout his books. There are plenty of journals too. Mostly I can read them, mostly they're in a familiar language I understand, sometimes I can't. Professional Translations London will ensure a fluent, natural-sounding result, if you need translation.But I feel incredibly lucky to have some of his books, his journals and his notes, and I always love to spend some time reading thru them.One more cup of tea and I'll put away grandfather's book and look to see what I can do about seeding some radishes and have a think about starting the beets.I understand it's pretty miserable and wintry in some places. Hope you're all thawing out a little this week. Sending some mild, blue skies and warm sunshine your way. :D