I went to gardening club on Tuesday, I’ve been a member for many years but didn’t go all last year because I funked it. I just didn’t feel ready to go and be smiling and sociable and I’d lost my nerve. Last month, when it reopened after the summer break, I couldn’t go because it was the night before my auction, so I decided I really must just go. After a wet day, I wasn’t really keen on going out, but I’m glad I did.

It’s not a club where you garden, but a sociable thing, with a speaker. Last month’s was about plants for dry gardens, which I really would have liked to go to. This time, it was a talk about pelargoniums. Not the zonal bedding sort, much more interesting than that – the speaker is a great enthusiast and I will visit her nursery next year. She and her business partner specialise in pelargoniums, day lilies, auricula and … oh, can’t remember the other plant.

I had a chance to catch up with a very good friend with whom I’ve slightly lost touch, in that we haven’t seen each other for about three years (lockdown having intervened, of course), though we don’t live far apart. She knows our blog friends Mike and Ann and asked after them. I said, I’d been speaking on the phone to Ann a couple of weeks ago and she’d asked after her. She didn’t know about Mike’s memory loss, so of course was sorry to hear that.

Bearded iris. That’s the fourth speciality.

I’ve had a very peculiar email from a relation-in-law that I’d really like to be able to talk about with someone, but it’s sort of confidential, so I can’t. I wish Wink were here. I’m not sure how to respond. I think I’ll have to print it out and read it more carefully, for a start, but it’s rather upset me and I don’t know what to do about it. I think the person concerned should have written it and then left it a few days before reading it again, then might have decided not to send it. It would have been better not said, I think. But too late for that.