Fire, flowers and breathing garlic

There was great excitement here in town on Saturday morning.  It appears that at the crack of dawn, or thereabouts, a fire started out the back of the chip shop and no less than nine fire engines were called.  Everyone in town seems to be tightly connected by means of Facebook and Twitter, and by the time we happened to turn up the high street was thronging with breathless locals and surplus-to-requirements firemen.  There was even what appeared to be a Fire Station Catering Truck with toilets and Pot Noodles.  Who knew?

The local paper didn't disappoint, and got in quick with some fearless interviewing.  From their pages:

A local resident said, "I went to the bank this morning and they were talking about it in there."

They should have interviewed me.  I went to the stationery shop and they were talking about it in there as well.  Sadly a neighbouring shop and cafe with a lovely garden were damaged.  No-one was hurt though, fortunately.

We dragged ourselves away and I bought a notebook.  I have a feeling that buying a notebook is some sort of stress relief thing for me.  Not about the fire, but when life slips gently out of control I buy a notebook maybe in the subconscious hope that by getting things down on paper it will all be okay.  If it's contained within the pages of a book, then I can close the book and it will all be alright.  That is how it works isn't it?

At the top end of town, the local In Bloom group have outdone themselves with a wonderful drift of flowers, some wild, mostly pollinator friendly.  About a thousand times nicer than municipal bedding plants.  My little camera hasn't done it justice at all, it's glorious.  Hopefully all sorts of little beasties are in there.  If you're a lover of little beasties and hedgerows and other such natural loveliness, do pop over to see Countryside Tales' latest post all about hedgerows and their importance to wildlife of all shapes and sizes.  It's one of my absolute favourite blogs, I never fail to learn things every time I visit, and she's always funny and entertaining too.  Can't recommend her highly enough.

The flowers in the last two photos are from the garden.  Self-seeded cosmos and a second flush of lavender.  The lavender seems to have changed colour a bit from when I bought it.  Is that possible?  I know I had a lovely pale Christmas cactus once, but they'd done something to it to make the flowers really pale.  The next year it reverted to shocking pink.

A few germs have struck here already.  Just a cold or two, nothing dramatic.  But as soon as those classroom doors are closed and the urchins all clustered together in a warm and stuffy fug, the viruses are away.  I gave the littles a clove of raw garlic each tonight, which they love.  It was homegrown and really potent.  The whole house smells garlicky now.  If it doesn't banish the germs it will certainly banish the vampires.  I'm thinking about garlic soup next.  Just need to check we don't have dental appointments or anything.