Busy Day

First of all, I baked this loaf. It had been rising all through the sleepy-time hours so I gave it a quick knockback, turned the oven on to high, took my coffee back to bed then baked it for thirty minutes exactly.

Sorted out my chickens, showered and went to Belfast.

Then straight to the Ulster Museum to look at the exhibition that wasn't child-friendly, the Francisco Goya 'The Disasters of War'. It was harsh. I also took another look at recent Irish history section, the part that depicts what some call 'The Troubles'. I have a friend, a Republican and Sinn Fein activist, who finds this part of the museum anodyne but I am always affected by it and often tearful. The so-called Troubles were my entire adult life from around fifteen years old until they ended, if they even have ended. Maybe my friend is right. I'm sad and sniffly at the Ulster Museum but in our other city at the Museum of Free Derry  I was in pieces.

As always it was impossible to resist the Palm House which is so close to the museum and the delights of the exotic and wonderful plants within. Just one niggle - why aren't they named. I always feel I don't know a plant unless I have its Latin name. I knew the Dizygotheca elegantissima, Passiflora caerulea, Crassula ovata and Monstera deliciosa because I have or have had those plants at some time but what's this?

Or this?

No doubt I'll find out some day.

It was a good day. I needed to get out on my own and when I got home the people I live in where in very good form (they had enjoyed a Nelly-free day) and the sourdough bread was very delicious indeed. 


Since posting this I had the following message on Facebook from a South African friend.

The yellow flower is a Hibiscus that is a genus of flowering plants in the mallow family Malvaceae. They grow prolifically in SA.