Today I went to the city for the first time in weeks. Weeks! It felt odd walking to the bus – everything’s growing and changing.

The honesty barrel at the new self-pick flower field. There’s no moving that thing in a hurry!

What’s growing and how much they cost

Orderly rows. I don’t feel an affinity with it like the old flower field

It was a social day – I had lunch with Leonie and then Claudia invited me to dessert for her birthday. It’s such a strange custom in Switzerland and Germany, and maybe in other places too. When it’s YOUR birthday, you invite people and YOU pay, and YOU take the cake to work for the celebrations. In Australia, if it’s your birthday, YOU’RE invited out, someone else brings the cake and you DON’T pay. Do you live in a country where the birthday person is responsible for bringing the cake and paying the bill too? I’d love to hear more!

I felt strange watching Claudia pay for our treats but it was lovely to spend the afternoon with her. (I was good and had a bowl of fresh strawberries – high in natural sugar but a lot less than the yummy desserts I passed on! It was so darn tempting! Willpower!) We haven’t seen each other for a month. Afterwards, we went window shopping and strolled around the city.

Claudia, the birthday girl, with her hot berry and ice cream dessert

My 30-Day Challenge (learning three to four new plant names each day) needs your help! There’s a small crop of black and white flowering plants growing near our house, which I saw for the first time today. I’ve searched the internet but come up with a blank.

Do you know what this tall crop/plant with black and white flowers is called?

While I’m asking questions, do you know what this one is too? It’s in my garden under the hydrangea (which is getting flowers – it didn’t flower at all last year so I’m pretty darn excited to see what colour it will be!)

Tiny purple perennial. Any ideas?

The third new plant is Dianthus amurensis ‘Siberian Blues’ (it’s more a purple than blue to me!) and the fourth (yes, today there’s a fourth!) is Lithodora diffusa ‘Grace Ward’. Both are growing in my garden. I love the blue colour of the latter and five-petalled flowers are a signature thing for me. I used to draw them non-stop.

The I Quit Sugar 8-Week Program is going along nicely. Leo liked the dinner tonight, so that’s good. I had a mixture of buffet salads for lunch with Leonia, without dressing, and the strawberries with Claudia. It was a bit of a shock to realise I was ‘under pressure’ to find alternative options to the program menu after only two days. You’re not ‘allowed’ to eat fruit in the middle part of this program, so I figured some berries on day two wasn’t too bad an idea for a celebration. Fruit is re-introduced into the plan slowly in the final few weeks, to see how fructose affects you too.

Here are some other photos from today. It was nice to be out and about. Time for a run again soon, I think!

Wishing you a wonderful day.

A flash of poppies, wheat and my favourite farmhouse in the distance

Corn, doing its thing

I started the 30-Day Challenge with one campunala in bloom. It’s going great guns now

A cold and windy day today in our ‘hood