a lovely weekend

Flowers are a BFD in this country. Everyone can identify the different kinds, and they talk about how daffodils are so much more appealing than tulips, etc. I've never understood the interest, but I tried to learn by going to Anglesey Abbey, a National Trust house near Cambridge that's famous for its "snowdrops", an early spring flower. None of my loser friends wanted to go (to be fair, it was raining), so I put on my waterproofs and cycled over. (The map says it's 7 miles, but I added some "scenic" extra miles thanks to a few wrong turns.) It was Saturday, the second-to-last day of "snowdrop season", so I was just in time.
Snowdrops! In a muddy, rainsodden layer of dead leaves. And most of the garden's snowdrops were wilting or dead. I was not impressed.
The white dots under this tree are all snowdrops! That was kind of pretty.
The garden mostly looked like this - dead stuff with some tiny shoots of green stuff. Barren and wet and kind of sad, but with a glimmer of hope for spring!
Everyone else was super excited to see snowdrops. I got there 15 minutes after the place opened, on a Saturday morning, and there was a queue to get it! And it was raining!
The Brits love their flowers. That's why they turned up in droves to Anglesey Abbey this weekend, with their wellies, macs, and brolies in tow.
Don't you love the road symbol that means "Cambridge"? A castle?! What a fun sign to follow home! Unfortunately my arm was just not long enough to photograph the sign AND me, so I just captured the important part - the sign.

So on Sunday (today), after I had finally gotten dry and warm after yesterday's rainy cycle ride and bleak garden walk (although I did actually have a really good time and plan to take people there soon, when there is less dead stuff to see), I gave up on the flowers and went for good old muddy field-walking. But first...
After a yoga class with my friend (where I did more yawning than stretching, I think), we went to Susannah's for pancakes! These were British "pancakes", of course, which are what we'd call crepes - thin and not sweet (unlike American pancakes). Susannah had us wrap the pancakes around bacon and pour maple syrup ("from Canada!", she said proudly - it's rare here!) on them... bacon is not my typical pancake topping of choice, but it was fun to see how excited she and her friends were about it. Then Susannah and I went for a walk. As we walked out the door, the rain started. Great. Susannah grabbed two umbrellas and off we went. Through muddy fields and over fences (and through one! thank you, yoga, for making me limber enough to fit through horizontal metal slats...), we tramped the three miles to Coton, the town west of Cambridge. We marveled at their cute thatched houses and one pub, then spent AN HOUR at their humongus garden store! It had everything - a farm shop, a garden shop, a kitchenware shop, a how-to-take-care-of-your-pond-and-fish shop... it was amazing. Then we walked home, skipping the WWII cemetery that had been our original destination because we were wet and tired from the excitement of the garden store. We had tea and cake in her kitchen, then I tromped home across the dusky fens, admiring the mud and the barren trees and the just-starting-to-grow green stuff.
What a wonder. Spring is on the way! And all this rain is good for it, right? :)