22nd June 2025

 

           Dear All,

 

Esther & Emma came for lunch last Sunday to mark Father’s Day and kindly came armed with gifts from all our offspring which will put my diet back a week or two!

 

 

Father’s Day offerings

 

After swimming on Monday Kate harvested strawberries, raspberries pink currants, broad beans, peas and Mange Tout. I sowed Fennel and 3^rd batch of Sweet Corn while continuing to water on a daily basis. I also picked the first tomatoes and courgettes this week. On Tuesday. evening I attended the Local History meeting which covered the story of Over Rectory. It was originally built as an out of town house for the Master of Trinity College called Richard Bentley, who was a very clever academic who managed to fall out with most of his contemporaries but was friends with Isaac Newton. The house was not given to the church until 1840. On Wednesday, we attended the funeral of Peter Rickard at Chatteris. I knew him well from work as he was director of Arthur Rickwood EHF and we did several early carrot trials together. In the evening the Over Gardening Club meeting was a garden tour of three member’s gardens. All had large gardens and it was interesting to see their various approaches.

 

 

Garden 1

 

 

Garden 2

 

 

Red Hazel Nuts

 

 

Garden 3

 

Thursday we were down to lead the U3A walk from Over Community Centre. It was a hybrid walk of short and long walkers as 45 members were on an HF holiday in the Brecon Beacons and we were leading the rest. It was a tough walk as the temperature was 32C and the route across the river to Barleycroft Lake was 9 miles. There were a number of birds on the lake and just a few bee orchids.

 

 

River Ouse at Brownshill Staunch

 

 

Break

 

 

Barleycroft Lake

 

 

Bee Orchid

 

On Friday we were invited to a reception at Scotsdales Garden Centre for leading a U3A course. It was a very exotic buffet with a thank you speech from the U3A Chairman. In the evening we attended the first meeting at Willingham Baptist chapel celebrating 150 years. It was a magic and comedy evening with Tom Elliott. We did not go with high expectations but in fact he was very good.

 

 

The celebrations continued on Saturday with an International Food afternoon followed by a talk on the History of Churches in Willingham. We attended the talk and it was very interesting, at one time there were 3 Baptist churches, 2 Congregational, the Anglican and the Salvation Army. One of the Baptist churches had attendances of 700 for 3 services on a Sunday! On Saturday harvesting continued with the highlight being the red currants at the allotment which were nearly as big as grapes!

 

 

Red Currants

Ben is off to the Sao and Principe islands off the west coast of Africa this weekend. He is running in a marathon next Sunday and as the islands are on the Equator and the course profile is described as “Extreme” I hope he knows what he is doing!

 

Best wishes

Mike & Kate