Pudding Row Posies

It's Wednesday today. My elder brother's birthday, as it happens, but closer to home, it is Flower Day.
A lovely girl - a contemporary of my two sons - has returned to the area and opened a café in the village. It is delightfully called Pudding Row and, although I have not yet sampled any puddings, her bread and jam - both homemade - are dangerously good. We dropped in late one afternoon and she had sold out of cake (and pudding), but offered us some toast instead.

She contacted me several months ago, to ask if I would supply her with little table posies from the garden.
She got, poor girl, short shrift at the time.
'Yes,' I said vaguely. 'No problem', and promptly forgot about it. I was in Dublin, building the show garden for Bloom.

However, when I finally got back home, I did get my act together, and on Wednesday mornings I take little jugs of flowers to adorn her tables.

Because they need to last until Sunday evening, when she closes for two (much needed) days off, I don't pick them them night before.
But most Wednesdays this summer, I have been out picking in the rain, so this morning's sunshine made a welcome change, although I still needed wellies as everything is permanently soaked.

The rain has played wily beguiled with my garden this year. And in my absence, my garden has played puck with me. It is a sorry mess. The weeds are running riot, none of the early perennials have been cut back, and all the worst imaginable seed heads are wafting where they will.
The endless rain means I can rarely get out to call it to order.
The only - small - consolation is that, because it's such a cold, wet summer, lots of plants are still blooming that would generally be over and done with by now, so I haven't missed out as I might have done.

This Year's Weed is the minor rose bay willow herb. Minor is probably not its official title, but I've had enough official titles to last me a good while this year. You have to submit a complete plant list to the judges at Bloom, and, not having given the judging end of Bloom a thought, I planted quite wantonly, so mine ran to six pages. In Latin.
And inevitably, the final list was compiled at midnight the night before submission.
So I'm quite happy to go with any old handle at the moment, and 'minor' will do just fine.

Whatever it calls itself, it is everywhere.

When I was a child, I thought to myself: 'One day I shall have four children, and I will call them Rose, Bay, Willow and Herb.'
Yes, well...
It looks like that has come back to bite me on the bum.
Still, it could be worse. At least they pull out easily. If the sun only shone a bit more often, I might have a chance to get out there to pull them! 

The bees are not happy. Our bee man told me they are starving to death in all this rain, and has had to feed them emergency supplies to keep them going. But happily, my soaking garden is full of birds and frogs. Wherever you move, something leaps.
They are totally invisible in the dense jungle that has taken over, but I hope they are eating morning, noon and night. A rainy summer is a slug's idea of paradise, but a surfeit of slugs is probably an endless cream tea for a frog or a bird.
Yum yum. Pudding Row all round!

Bine's wonderful photo of a frog wallowing in our pond

Pests!

I've been feeling rather sorry for myself.
I think I got bitten by a horsefly. There are gazillions of them around this summer, so that's what probably homed in on my ankle. Whatever it was, it's been so swollen and red and hot and sore that I have been laid up, foot propped up on 25 cushions, for a couple of days.
Well, it felt like 25 cushions.  In fact it felt as it my foot was strung up to the ceiling.
I've stopped now - the resultant backache was threatening to be worse than the ankle!

Cleggs.
Miserable creatures. And poor horses, if that's what they generally bite.

There are gazillions of wasps too, this year.
A few years ago I bought a 'waspinator', and very pleased I was with myself, too.
I'd never heard of one before.

Waspinator

We 'inflated' it with a few plastic bags and hung it in the courtyard.
Result: no wasps.
Not a single one bothered us that summer. Or the next, or even the one after that, which was last year.

But right now, we are wasp-central.
What is that all about? And, I bought a new waspinator this year, as the camouflage-y markings on the old one had washed away (wasped away), so I splashed out. It is identical to the old one, except for the presence of camouflage-y markings, of course.
I didn't throw the old one away, they are both hanging out there.
Maybe that's my mistake. Instead of frightening the allegedly territorial wasps away, two nests in fairly close proximity are sending out a different message: 'Wasp Commune, All Welcome!'

It's either that or the bees. Perhaps our new high rise bees have ousted the wasps from their usual nesting sites.

High-rise bees

Whatever it is, I'd like it to stop. I loathe and detest wasps, especially when they hold massive get-togethers in my kitchen and around the table where we eat outside.
The In-Charge got stung on the inside of his arm while he was mending the gutters.
And he's been bitten by a horsefly too, on his shin.

The poor cats are in misery as well.
It's that time of the year when the mites in the grass spring to life, sharpen their gnashers and turn into little piranhas.
Hobbes is OK. Nothing seems to disturb his equilibrium, but poor Pushy and Pixie can''t stop scratching and tearing at themselves. They have great, raw patches all over them.
I keep them in as much as I possibly can, but I don't know if it makes any difference.
My sister's cat was prescribed anti-histamines, which made all the difference to her, but when I tried the same pills on Pushy, she reacted strangely to them, so I stopped giving them to her. And trying to get a pill down Pixie's throat twice a day is a purgatory worse, quite frankly, than the initial itch, so I have given that up as a bad job.

So much for summer.
Not such fun when it's all pests!

Pretty little Pushy, in happier times - ie, not summer

Flower Power

I took a day off a couple of weeks ago.
A real, proper, in-the-car-and-out-of-here day off.
Being something of a a rare event, I expect my demeanour was that of a kid going to the seaside.

Last year I heard about a 'Garden Festival' in Claregalway, and as my gorgeous young French friend, Chloe, was visiting, we decided to go and see what it was all about.
We had a fab day.

My gorgeous friend, Chloe

 
It wasn't quite what I'd expected - there weren't show gardens to look at, or anything like that, but we enjoyed the whole expedition thoroughly and came back with lots of delicious additions for the garden.
So this year I made sure to put in on my calendar, and took my friend, the New Yorker, with me.

The restored tower house in Claregalway

Claregalway is a couple of hours drive south, and not somewhere that I'd been to before last year. The festival is held in the field attached to the restored tower house, and although it is mostly about plants and gardeny stuff, there are other things to see and do, too.

In the courtyard beneath the tower they have a band - several bands in fact, over the course of the day, so there's all kinds of music as you mooch around the grounds.

You can sit and have a coffee and listen to the music.
And when you've got your strength back, you can head back into the mêlée.

Last year, there were people re-enacting battles, with someone telling you the interesting and gory bits while you watched.

The gory bits

There was a jester last year who had stepped straight out of the past to cause mischief and botheration. You could tell by the look on his face that he'd done it before - professionally. He was particularly keen on paddling people's backsides when they weren't looking. I could do with one of those sticks.

This year there were two live hobby-horses also causing mischief and botheration and neighing fit to bring the ISPCA out. There was also a poor little chicken called Free Range who laid an egg for me.

 She got very shy when I chatted to her.

Last year it was so hot that the seats in front of the bandstand were full most of the time, but eventually Chloe and I found a gap and collapsed for a breather while we enjoyed the band. We watched small children become entranced with the music, others be overtaken by its rhythm, and were thrilled when one couple got up and just danced. It was perfect.
Romance.

No one danced this year, but the New Yorker and I sat and ate some cheese and charcuterie and wondered if anyone queueing for the loo had noticed who was peering down at them from above.

I fell in love with a heron last July, but sadly he is now living beside another pond, not mine.
Seeing him now makes me wish all over again that he was in my potager.

But I did buy some ingenious little cane toppers which look a gas in the garden and make canes a joy rather than an eyesore. (No pun intended, but I have poked my eye with a cane before now, so..).

I hurried back to buy another quota this year, and was delighted to find the potter, Baurnafea Ceramics, there once again. Even more delighted when the lovely New Yorker bought me a present from his stand - how kind is that!

Presents!

Cane toppers and ceramic orbs for the flower bed - quite episcopalian

We had a delicious lunch, sat and listened to the band, paid many visits to the plant crèche and viewed all that was on offer inside as well as out.
It was a fabulous day, and by the time we left there was barely room in the car for us.

Definitely one for next summer's calendar.

The Scarlet and the Black

We just aren't keeping up - that's all there is to it.
First of all it was the strawberries.
A row by row pick yielded what can only be called a glut (not to mention so many personalities that we had to stop and introduce ourselves as we went along).
First name terms notwithstanding, the jam pan came out immediately, and - of course - the actual strawberry bed went straight out of my head.

We're on quite familiar name terms with our strawberries

It's not surprising that I forgot about the garden end of things. Jam-making is a time-consuming enterprise.
Pleasant, but there isn't a whole heap of day left over by the time you're done.
I don't know about you, but it's not the actual jam-making as much as the cleaning up afterwards that's the biggest challenge.
It's probably just me. Everything is hunky dory until I've filled the first pot, but then things go a bit pear-shaped, and by the last pot there seems to be as much jam on the baking tray as there is in the jars. (That's why I have my jars on a baking tray.)

It's the same with nail-painting, which is why no one who knows me will ever recall seeing me with painted nails.
Nail one: painstaking care. Ten minutes on the clock. Not a drop spilled, or splashed or over the edge.
Nail two: Reasonable care. Two and a half minutes on the clock. Large splurge of nail polish up side of nail.
Nail three: Exasperated. 30 seconds on the clock. Nail polish on top of finger and down both sides of nail.
Nail four: I think you're getting my drift here...

But I'm digressing, as usual.
Jam cools to an unbelievably sticky mess with incredible osmotic and reproductive properties. Have you ever noticed that? Perhaps jam is actually a type of fungus - turn your back and it just starts appearing everywhere.
So heaving the old jam-pan, the wooden spoons, the pouring-out jug et al into the back sink and filling them with water is such a relief that it's done immediately, but that is about it. I've had enough by then.
Two weeks on and the jars are still sitting on the tray on the kitchen counter. The lids are on all right, but there's not a label in sight, and I've almost managed to forget that they exist. I have discovered that - the jars being all conveniently the same size and height - they make a sort of conveniently higher surface for putting things on close to the cooker, which is very useful.

We have so far eaten two of the jars, given one away and sold another one at the market, so balance is going to become an issue before too long, at which point the In-Charge will rap out a demand that they be re-located immediately.

In the meantime, we have just been so busy. Strawberries and jam are yesterday's news. Since then we've had to toil and titivate, trying to render the garden fit for the open weekend.  Heaven forfend that our box hedges might not be keeping up with the latest trend in footballer's hair cuts.

The In-Look for Summer 2014

And that's just the garden. There have been a million other jobs, not to mention the roof. The In-Charge has almost taken up residence on the roof (but let's not forget there are real boy's toys involved). Down at ground level there's been less exalted work and meetings and poor Wellington, and who knows what.

The In-Charge lives on the roof these days

And as you can see, I'm getting a whole heap of help from some of the other residents in this place.

Hobbes. Exhausted

The Models. Wiped out

 
Even so, I had ticked the strawberries off with a nice, fat, self-satisfied, licked finger.
So it came as something of a surprise to glimpse flashes of scarlet as I passed the strawberry bed a few days ago. The on-going-ness of production had somehow slipped my mind.
'I thought we'd done that', was my knee-jerk reaction, but of course, that was a ten days ago.
Time has moved on.

Climber-boy went out with a bowl.
He came back awhile later for a larger bowl.
Shortly afterwards he reappeared and got the big cake storage box - the Christmas-cake sized one.

'But we used all the jars,' I wailed when he finally staggered in, hidden behind a red mountain.

'There's loads of raspberries too,' he said. 'But luckily I can't get at them.'
I must have looked slightly puzzled.
'There's too many blackcurrants in the way,' he explained.


We now have strawberry compote for breakfast and pudding every day.
With raspberries shaken over the top. 

Strawberry compote - delicious with yoghurt. Delicious with raspberries. Delicious with blackcurrants?

But it doesn't end there.
I've ten pounds of blackcurrants in the fridge, looking at me reproachfully every time I reach for the milk.

Oh joy

We used the Bob Flowerdew method of harvesting for the currants: you cut the branch, retreat to a sunny place, sit and string while chatting in comfort. We only managed to pick the front branches overhanging the paths, but even so, the blackbirds were outraged at our theft. They have eaten so many, they can't actually get off the ground, so they were outraged from ground-level.

In the kitchen, I have rowed up the sugar, lemons, wooden spoon and the spotless jam pan.
But after surveying the hastily convened and sadly inadequate splinter of jars (the official collective), I have now issued a diktat: the rest of the blackcurrants are to be made over to the blackbirds, on a strict  PYO basis.
It is quite a generous gesture, but a necessary one.
Not just for my own sanity and space on the kitchen counter.
Having witnessed the extreme effort required for the even the fittest blackbird to get off the ground, let alone the young, inexperienced novice flyers, I feel it is necessary to keep them supplied with food in situ, until they learn to handle their expanded undercarriages in flight.

Well that's my excuse anyway.
And meanwhile, I'd better find another, larger, baking tray.

Indian Summer

October cornflowers

Today, for the first time, there was a real autumn chill and dampness in the air first thing. It was still and grey, and hinted that perhaps our long, lovely summer is drawing to a close.But now I feel as though perhaps I dreamt that. It is warm and sunny again, I've just picked a bunch of cornflowers and paused to admire the pansies and cyclamen in the courtyard bed. And I've been working outside all morning in my shirt sleeves again - gardening, inevitably. Determined to get all my projects finished, my rooted rose cuttings planted, and my bulbs in today, because tomorrow I will be back at Clare's house.

Cyclamen and pansies

I've been helping my friend Clare to create a garden out of the desert of gravel which came with the house. It's great fun, and the hard work has been completely mitigated by the group of like-minded friends who have pitched in with every tool they own and dug, trundled barrows, measured, levelled, painted and heaved alongside me. It's not hugely big, the garden, but it's on a slight incline, so nothing is straightforward, but hey! - after a hard day's work, she has a little patio!
Joy!
But also a lot of stuff lying around.
And piles of mud.
And sand. And gravel.
And a vast heap of trip-hazards - like wooden stakes and trellis.
Hmmm.
Still - I guess it's a start.

I want to get it finished before autumn actually does kick in.
The trouble is, it feels like - what? - late August, early September? Some days feel like July.
It's been one of those blissful summers when time has seemed largely immaterial. The parasol has been up in the courtyard since June, the dogs' sunbathing beds are left out more often than not, and the table outside the backdoor is so much in use, it is covered in clutter.

I haven't caught up with real time yet, but the truth is, we are not far off half-term, and, almost unawares, the Models and I are gently slipping back into our term-time routine. I found myself looking anxiously at the New Girls this morning, trying to gauge how much their infant feathers have grown since yesterday. Not much is the answer, but they are coming - slowly. They will need them soon. I may even have to knit them little pinafores like these dinky ones I saw on Facebook a while ago.

Not my photo or my hens, but a great idea. Thank you, whoever posted it on Facebook

The trouble is, my knitting needles are still full of pole warmer. The one I knitted for Beltra Country Market two years ago has faded to oblivion, turned to a crisp in the teeth of the wind, hail, rain and sun it's been subjected to, and looks decidedly travel-stained from all the passing traffic on the road. However, the new one is nearly finished, and I think there might even be some of the neon orange yarn left over.

The new pole warmer is growing every day

Would the Yah Bird like neon orange, do you think? Jil, our Wwoofer loved it - and looked stunning in her wonderful neon fleece. It was all the rage in Paris too, so you never know. It might be just what the Yah Bird needs to set her up in the world.

Jil and SuperModel at the beach

It's been a great Wwoofing-summer. Apart from the lovely Jil, we had Chloe back for another visit which was wonderful. So lovely to see her again and catch up. She helped knit a bit of the new pole warmer while she was here, and trimmed lots of box hedges, and did a hundred and one other things in the garden. We spent long, lovely, sunny days out there together, chatting, laughing and catching up as we pottered about and weeded the vegetables. We went to a Garden Festival in Galway one glorious Sunday while she was here, and had a great day wandering around Claregalway Castle grounds, surrounded by flowers, food and families enjoying themselves.

Claregalway Garden Festival in July

And there was Marko - and Olivia and Marie Christine. It seems like years ago that they were here, sitting in the Moon Garden knitting, chattering away in Canadian French to each other, interspersed with regular cries of 'Oh-oh! Something weird...' when they'd either dropped a stitch or accidentally created several new ones.

Perhaps it is the end of the summer. It must be or why else would I be looking back over months of memories and sunshine. But it's lovely to have so much to look back on. Paris; several visits to Suffolk to see my parents; the haze of ivory lace and sunshine that was my brother's wedding; the In-Charge's Mega Birthday complete with bunting, balloons and marquees; all the Country Shows we went to, the gardens we visited; our trip to Dublin... Not to mention walks on the beach, the Great Rescue and subsequent Hen Central, SuperModel suddenly starting to grow up, the garden looking the best it's looked for years.

Hens are family, not food. Hens are family, not food. Hens are family... Hens are family...but very tasty NOT food

Actually it will be nice to have a rainy day or two, so that I can sit down and catch up with everything. Look at all the photographs I took and perhaps even record a few of them on these pages for posterity.
But don't get me wrong - I'm not wishing for rain - heaven forbid!
I've still got too much do get done outdoors for that.
I've to finish clearing the bank and planting.
And Clare's garden isn't nearly ready yet. There's a raised bed to raise, an archway to put up, stones to be removed, compost to be hauled, trees to be planted, roses to be put in, bulbs to be bulbed, plants to be positioned, a shed to be painted....

Better scrub that line about a nice rainy day or two.
I am NOT even thinking about rain.

En Fête - 120 Glorious Years!

A brilliant present

The In-Charge and my friend DodoWoman, (Lord Dodo's Chief Archivist and Dodoodler) have, almost simultaneously, reached a Momentous Birthday.
Occasions such as this are mercifully rare deserve to be duly noted, so of course I instantly consulted with Lord Dodo himself, in the hope of securing the infamous peer's marvellous residence for the festivities.
Alas, it was not to be. Dodo Towers had already been reserved by a troupe of Transylvanian transvestites and his Lordship felt bound to honour the booking, so I gamely volunteered to hold the celebration here instead.

We can't, of course, compete with Dodo Towers in terms of either space or grandeur, but we did our best.
With the help of my Wwoofers Jil and Marco, the preparations began. For days we spat and we polished, we pruned and planted, we unearthed and unpacked; we washed and dried; we begged and borrowed, we sorted and swept, until finally things started to take shape.

We planted - or, in some cases, just polished our toe nails

In truly indodispensable fashion, Lord Dodo himself helped dodecide the menu and dodelegated his chef to produce various dodelicious dishes for the event. Lots of lovely guests also offered to bring edible gifts to the feast, which was wonderful, so after a relatively unstressful blitz in the kitchen, we were able to devote time to far more important things like putting up marquees, making cupcakes and bunting and blowing up balloons.
(Some of us merely spent the extra time looking out our party frocks collars.)

A quick nap before the party begins

But at last everything was ready.

Lord Dodo's chef and assistants

Contrary to all our expectations, the north west coast of Ireland has not recently basked under constantly blue skies. Our earlier good fortune this summer has left us full of optimism, but this isn't Nice, after all.
I had given up hope of actual sunshine. My nightly request, on prayer-flattened knees, had been that it just wouldn't rain.
Sunday dawned, as a friend of mine would say, 'middlin' blowy', ie with winds gusting up to 45km. But it wasn't wet, and there is nothing like a breeze to make the balloons dance, the bunting sing - and the marquee take off and pirouette out to sea.
Happily the In-Charge had weighted the marquee down with old window-sash leads, and DodoWoman had sent out a Meteorological Dress Code Warning the night before, so everyone arrived with their summer best suitably over-wrapped in snuggily jackets and body-warmers.
And after a few glasses of Pimms in the garden, some wonderful fritters and a good natter with an old chum or two, who cares about the weather?

The party takes off - but mercifully the gazebo doesn't

Later the party moved into the marquees in the courtyard.

I want the courtyard to look like this every day

   
It had taken a good bit of head-scratching and pencil-sucking to work out how 65 or 70 people could all sit down together now that we weren't, after all, dining at Dodo Towers; but then my American friend told me that the best hostess she knows in New York always says: 'Put the tables close together, and pack 'em in tight.'
So we did.
From 18 months to 95 years old, they all squashed in and it was fab.

Overflow tables, and even wheelchair access!

The morning after

Lots of people said lots of nice things, and DodoWoman and the In-Charge were given cards, gifts, flowers and good wishes by kind people. I was even given flowers myself by a charming old gentleman.
Someone said it was a perfect way to end the season, another that it was the party of the summer, but I think the most memorable comment came from one of our youngest guests.
Ten-year old Ezekiel looked around critically before uttering his verdict.

'Great venue', he said, nodding sagely.

It may not be Dodo Towers, but what a compliment.

The Teen Queen checking that there definitely aren't any more sausages left over

Days We Will Remember

I went to a wedding recently.
It was a small, intimate affair. Home-made in the very best sense of that two-edged phrase, a wedding that, without flouting any rules, adjusted to be what the bride and groom wanted. For one thing, the whole day had been transported several hundred miles south of the bride's home parish to enable the groom's elderly parents to attend, a gesture that was greatly appreciated.
(No easy task that, re-locating a wedding.)

It was a warm summer's afternoon. A perfect time to get married, and the perfect sort of day for a wedding. A lazy August afternoon, warm and still. The village was sleepy as we walked the hundred yards or so to the medieval church of St Mary Magdalene, and standing beneath the short, square bell-tower looking out over the ancient gravestones, the world seemed to me a timeless place and all of us just part of a continuum.

The bridegroom and best man arrive

The groom and his best man - his son. arriving on bicycles that probably predated their combined years, had their trousers tucked into their socks, their jackets flying. A few people had gathered on the street outside and, at the couple's request, all the guests were waiting by the ancient church porch, so an enthusiastic cheer went up as they swept through the gate.

The bridal car had paused half-way up the church laneway, so everyone inside also witnessed the groom's arrival, and as the bride emerged from the car, helped by her daughter, the groom stood and watched, his face a picture of contentment. It was just as they both had wanted.

I paused to take a few photographs as the guests made their way into the church.

Then the bride and groom walked down the aisle together, hand in hand.
Beautiful as they both looked, Jane Austen might have said that neither them were in 'the first flush of youth', but the bridesmaids certainly were, and sitting behind them in the church, I felt as if they had stepped straight out of one of her novels.

During the service, it was impossible not to feel how happy the bride and groom were to be there, making a lasting commitment to each other on a summer's afternoon. Impossible not to share that happiness.
Just what weddings are all about, really, but somehow more poignant for those not in 'the first flush of youth', those who have instead arrived at this place after long, hard and separate roads.

Weddings are usually lovely, and when they are small, intimate and hands-on, perhaps they are even more so. The groom's sister had found the bicycles, plundered her kitchen cupboards to supply their chef, lent wonderful old jugs and vases for the church, ferried guests to and fro and hosted a garden buffet lunch; his brother performed at the ceremony reading a poem and, later, the 23rd Psalm; and his other sister arranged armfuls of flowers - supplied by his mother - into the aforementioned jugs and vases. His son was the best man - a role he carried off with aplomb; his three daughters were bridesmaids alongside their new step-sister, and his nephew wielded his nifty camera to record every moment of the day.

The groom's mother

With the church bells pealing out to celebrate another new marriage, everyone laughed, threw confetti and took more photos. Champagne was produced from a lovely old trunk in the Rolls Royce and the couple toasted each other and - bedecked with coloured paper and roses - kissed again.

Later everyone repaired to the lovely Edwardian house they had rented for the week, to relax on the terrace or by the pool with glasses of bubbly and smoked salmon canapes before sitting down to the 5-course feast that had been prepared.

Nothing ever goes according to plan. In fact, to quote the groom's eldest daughter, it would be less memorable if it did. Needless to say, the chef got roaring drunk, but not before he'd cooked most of the evening's wonderful menu. Someone else stepped in to cook the fillets of lamb at the last minute, but it didn't spoil anyone's enjoyment, and well-timed, funny speeches from the groom and his best man kept everyone amused during the hiccup, while the rainbow of fruit on the beautifully original wedding cake brought forth oohs and aahs of appreciation. As the menu said: 'After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations' (Oscar Wilde).
The evening ended everyone sitting on the stairs while the bride's best friend played the piano and sang.
I don't think there was a dry eye in the house.

Later, on my way to bed, I paused to look up at the cloudless sky. The Milky Way was stirred through the darkness like a wisp of foam, and amongst the millions of stars I saw one plummet through the sky like a diamond in freefall. I hoped the bride and groom had seen it too, and made a wish.

I expect they had. It was basically encapsulated in the poem they'd included in their wedding service. 

I cannot promise you a life of sunshine;
I cannot promise riches, wealth, or gold;
I cannot promise you an easy pathway
That leads away from change or growing old.

But...

 I can promise all my heart’s devotion;
A smile to chase away your tears of sorrow;
A love that's ever true and ever growing;
A hand to hold in yours through each tomorrow.

Two loving arms to shelter and protect you,

The knowledge that I need you more than ever,

And all the happiness that love can give you

As, hand in hand, we walk through life together.

I made a wish for them anyway, just in case.