The prompt from my blog host ( above ) exactly matched the blog I was planning to write. Yesterday tears of Joy/ mirth were shed as we enjoyed a coffee in a bikers cafe with two other bobbers.

It should be said that none of us have any actual experience of motorbikes. Two of us have, as the wall art suggests, shared the ride

Me at only a few days old when I was brought home from the maternity hospital in the sidecar of my dads motorbike. Rather more unusually Gill Bobber rode in a sidecar made of scaffolding poles when she had a biker boyfriend. This proximity to an actual motorbike allowed her to ride out with a motorcycle club. The name of which brought the actual tears of joy yesterday.

Just to prove I haven’t made this up to add pzazz to my blog, here is the map of the area just north of Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire.

The upper part of the road is called Slack Tops . Which has a scintilla of humour for all post-meno women as nature is not kind to older breasts.

Which leads me to the epic tears of joy which we shed yesterday. All four of us have substantial knowledge of 3D human anatomy. Sometimes that leads other people to ask us odd questions. Our friends had been asked by a fitness instructor if they could crochet a soft model of a pelvic floor so the instructor could more easily explain the importance and significance of pelvic floor exercises. Another essential for post-meno women.We puzzled over the problem and actually came up with a half decent design of such a thing. Including working parts. The tears of laughter were shed when we realised how long we had taken to seriously design a crochet pelvic floor and the consideration of making such a thing. Quite a different sort of engineering to the usual nattering in a bikers cafe I am sure.

As a cultural note, Slack Bottom, of Gill’s bikers club in Yorkshire, is just a little north of the grave of Sylvia Plath who wrote the best excuse for blogging that I know.

Everything in life is writable about.

And to finish, me, sitting on an actual motorbike. The only time in my life.

The last of my proposed climbers to be planted in the yard in 2024. I checked on-line and most nurseries were out of stock. I was also checking when to plant. Early autumn while the soil is warm was the advice. So basically the time is now. My long term goal is for all the climbers to mingle. Exactly as in the illustration below.

Clematis Avalanche should head towards Wisteria Amethyst Falls. Hopefully they land safely together. Sprawling elegantly across our garage roof. Turning something fairly ugly into something fragrant and beautiful to herald the arrival of spring.

Being a climbing plant in my yard is like accepting an arranged marriage. The chain of mingling stretches from a very happy free gift from a friends garden, a winter jasmine, in the most exposed part of the yard and travels via a semi subterranean garage to a golden fruit producing passion flower that was a gift from Dan, the man who built our boundary extending trellis in May.

In between there are climbing roses, evergreen honeysuckle, more jasmine and a potato vine.

Just like an interfering busy body I am often out in the yard trying to introduce plant tendrils to one another

Sometimes they get the idea of mingling but other times I need to interfere with hairy garden twine.

This morning I decided not to wait for on-line nurseries to restock and called into a local one on the off chance of them having an evergreen clematis. Just one rather sad looking individual was skulking behind much showier climbers. She came home with me and a new ball of hairy twine. My planting of climbers in  2024 is done. Just the mingling to sort out now.

This Instagram post made me chuckle. Excited one step removed really. My dad loved to store pieces of wood. He even bought wood from a wood merchant that he loved with no actual project in mind. His dad and brother were both avid storers of bits of wood. When my grandad died they would have shared the bounty.

When my dad died my uncle told me not to ‘worry’ about the shed ( or wood store) . I didn’t worry. The random bits of wood were guaranteed a good home even if they never made it to an actual construction. I still love the smell of a well kept wood store. Curiously I never photograph them. So some grotty old pallets will have to do.

My name, Juliet appeared in the middle ages. The feminine form of Julian which itself derives from Julius a Roman name.

I got my name as an accident of birth. My mothers mother met a best friend immediately post- birth in a small maternity unit in the 1930’s. The two women remained friends and their daughters, born in the 50’s subsequently became friends. I am the third generation of this female bonding and am named after another third generation Juliet.

I do wonder if my mum’s friend was OK with her choice of name being used a second time. Sometimes an unusual name is chosen for its uniqueness. The other Juliet is a wonderful person so I have no problem with having a slightly secondhand name. Does sharing a name tighten our bond, I think so.

I’ve been a Juliet all my life, it is a name that has shaped me. I disagree with Shakespeare, my name has worth and meaning to me.

I am not a hugely goal orientated   person. Fixed deliberate outcomes are a little too precise. That is not to say that I have no dreams or aspirations but I have learned that often hitting the goal post or losing the ball into the crowd turns out to be the better outcome. But if a goal must be hit with precision I Plan/Prepare/execute while wearing Personal Protective Equipment. PPE in PPE. I jest a bit of course because life does require quite a lot of goals to be hit, but personally I find the near misses more interesting.

Heavy traffic delivered me to this leafy lane earlier this week. My goal or desire was to get to a local park before the rain arrived but there was a traffic jam in my way and dark clouds were gathering. I took an unknown side street and found an uphill footpath in the top picture.  The path went between some military land and a college and was completely quiet with no one else about. So quiet that a rustling in the bushes caught my attention. A pair of snails having sexy time on a flower.

Copulating Gastropods not at all the goal of the day but fascinating in their own way.

My accidental detour also gifted me  an important message etched onto stone. The significance of  the message lost in time.

But useful if your goal is getting to number 1.

In early June I got heat stroke while swimming in Greece. I learnt that I can no longer cope with really hot temperatures. So my emergency preparedness plan is not to be so daft again.

Today there was a gorgeous cool wind blowing directly up our street. I decided to banish a rather ghastly adobe orange wall in our back lane and turn it white.

The back lane runs parallel to the street, but inexplicably there was no wind. Despite the wind maps arrows.

My emergency preparedness plan, or my newfound common sense made me stop the job not even half done. The back lane was stupidly hot.

A few glasses of water and a cool shower were all I needed to avert a dizzy disaster. But then came the oversharing. Parcels arrived for our neighbours. I felt the need to explain my cold, showered towel-wrapped appearance at 5 pm to the delivery man. Does he care? Of course not he just wants parcels to be received and to no longer to be his responsibility. The irony is that while painting the wall white I missed my own parcel delivery.

Memo to self . No painting of white walls on hot afternoons when everyone in the street including me  is expecting parcels.

No need to explain why I needed a shower.

No over sharing of information.

P.s. I only opened the door because a neighbour had promised me a delivery of some  Saskatchewan Berry Jam later this afternoon. Offers like this are rare in Devon. I think he forgot.

If my blog creates one additional smile in the world then I would consider that a ponder well used as far as the world is concerned .