Friday 15th July

A slow start this morning – could it have been the wine last night?? We walked to Hilliers Garden Centre which is almost next to the canal and bought some geraniums for the roof as the petunias are more or less over and looking a bit of a mess. We then walked into town for a mooch and I got some new cropped trousers and a Tshirt. Banbury is a riot of colour with their wonderful plants. The colour theme is red and yellow and they have just about every bedding plant that you can think of that come in those colours. Kaydee appeared just as we were getting ready to leave so we had a quick chat, a quick cup of coffee and we were off. It was a lovely afternoon but we knew that rain was threatened :-) We got water at Cropredy Wharf then went up through the lock to the moorings and tied up. I planted the new plants though I had bought one too many geraniums – I didn’t realise the trough was that small! But I had bought a new pot to put the chives in so the extra geranium went into that. We sat on the towpath and decided what plants we will have next year! I’ve done vanilla marigolds which I grew from seed but I am rather disappointed with them as the heads are rather small. There are also some ageratum in the troughs but they are now dwarfed by all the greenery from the marigolds. I tried to be clever and keep the flowers to the colours of the boat – I wont do that next year.