Present from the past

You know that infuriating example of sod's law, where you finally dispose of something you never use then the day after it's irretrievably gone you need it? Well, I had the opposite experience today. Almost all my possessions have been in storage for 15 months (which sometimes maddens me and sometimes makes me wonder what on earth I ever needed that stuff for) but the day before yesterday I uncovered a basket containing things that I didn't bother to put into storage because they needed binning: a parasol with holes and rust stains (that could be mended), a bag of marbles (that a child might like), two children's hairbrushes (wood and bristle, almost unused, a shame to throw them away), some rather overpowering squirt-on eau-de-cologne perfume I was given 45 years ago that hasn't biodegraded in all that time (no excuse), three sun-visors I bought for the children to watch the eclipse safely in 1999... 

Hang on, wasn't there something in the news about a partial eclipse this morning? There was. Through a 22-year-old sun visor I saw the moon blocking out part of the sun! There's something rather awesomely timeless about that.

I couldn't persuade the camera to see it though.

As for what the camera did see, I transplanted these peonies from my old house last September and hoped for one success. All fourteen of the plants survived and most have flowered. That's what comes of reading up on when and how to do it, it seems. My only previous attempt, under the 'if it wants to live it will' system, flowered only once in six years and that was when I was abroad. Probably in revenge for how I'd treated it.