Bluebell Monday, Paddington, and Winnie the Pooh

Today was a long overdue good day. We had plenty of blue Mondays (and Tuesdays and Wednesdays...) over Christmas and New Year, with my autistic sister being very poorly and aggressive. She came back to London yesterday, and she is much chirpier. I took her to see the Paddington film, and it's the first time in years that she's sat through almost an entire film. Usually she wants to leave after half an hour. (The film is wonderful, by the way - really fun and funny, with a sweet message about diversity.)

We watched The Great British Garden Revival in the evening, and she was transfixed by the footage of bluebell woods. Blue used to be her favourite colour, and although she never asks to go anywhere, she does seem to enjoy being around nature. I often point at things for her to look at, but she doesn't always want to look. I also show her nicely scented flowers to smell, but she doesn't really sniff them. But I am hoping that a bluebell wood will surround her with beautiful blue flowers and a sweet scent, that she will notice and enjoy. So I'm planning to take her to one in the springtime.

I'm also hoping to take her to Ashdown Forest (Winnie the Pooh country) one day, although that will probably be more fun for me than her! I loved A. A. Milne's  stories as a child and even more as a teenager. As well as seeing the polar bears in Canada for my 30th birthday, I also saw the statue of Winnie the bear in Assiniboine Park in Winnipeg: the bear who was smuggled to Britain and who inspired Winnie the Pooh.

As other bluebell lovers chatted on Twitter after today's Garden Revival episode, the lovely Sara Willman of My Flower Patch sent me some bluebell photos she'd taken a few years ago at West Woods in Wiltshire, and I asked her if I could share four of them here. She agrees that it will hopefully be a wonderful sensory experience for my sister to visit a bluebell wood. We can all enjoy Sara's photos until the bluebells make their appearance in a few months!