Wednesday 31 August 2022

Improvements

 Well all i can say about today is that  it has brought about improvements.   My gardeners D and J have had a bit of a rough ride which entailed a   few visits to hospital but now at the end of it all the news is good and yesterday they arrived to catch up and today to finish off.   Now, after lunch they have finished and everywhere looks neat and tidy - dead-headed giving time for gallardias and scabious to flower again, and all my numerous herbaceous geraniums (which being cut back to make nice clumps)to promise a good show in Autumn.  In addition the lawns are short and nice and green.  As I sit here at my computer the sun is shining on the garden and it seems to be full of orange-tip butterflies.

In addition the plumber came and put me a new tap on the bathroom wash basin  and that is another plus.   It no longer drips, wasting water.

Also my doctor rang for a chat and to say that after talking it over with another G P in the practice they have decided not to increase my medication at the moment but to see how things go over the next few weeks.   So we shall see.

So it is back to The Miller's Tale and The Knight's Tale and The Prologue in The Canterbury Tales ready for Book Group next week - and how easy it is to read in verse.

RIP Mikhail Gorbachev - that was the era when my first husband and I spent all our holidays in          the last days of the U S S R.   Moscow, Leningrad, The Trans Siberian Express, Alma Ata, Samarkand, Tashkent, Lake Baikal, Irkutsk.   It all seems so long ago now.

Tuesday 30 August 2022

A Pleasant Day

What started out as a possible boring day seeing nobody has turned out quite well because my gardeners arrived at lunch time and as I write this are both beavering away in my back garden - weeding, cutting back, pruning - - both on their knees.   They have just been in for a cup of tea and a toasted tea cake and as I look out of the window they have just started again.

Soon will no doubt be their last big garden job before the winter but now it is just good to admire their handiwork.

It was good to see University  Challenge new series last evening and what a cliff hanger it was too.   It has been running for such a long time and it is always exciting.   My son and I always have a contest to see who can answer the most questions - he always wins- I rarely get to ten and usually get most if it is anything easy like birds or wild flowers

Already my garden is looking so much tidier and given a good rain this week-end when it is forecast and then a couple of weeks of warm weather and - hopefully more flowers will appear.   Until tomorrow dear friends..... 

Monday 29 August 2022

A New Week.

 Yes, a new topic and let's all settle down.   It has been another of those week-ends when I have wished we were all together in my sitting-room, a glass or a cup in hand and could chat about the topic and  'throw' ideas back and forth across the room.   But the whole thing all becomes a bit sterile when all you can do is have your say and that's that.

So what to chat about today?   Well, it is positively Septembral today - cloudy, a slight breeze from the North and no sunshine.   I did a couple of laps of the patio and then, just as I was coming back in the phone rang and it was M from Book Group to ask if she could walk across for a cup of tea.   I was delighted as usual and we have had a lovely, chatty afternoon.

We talked about central heating because of course here the talk is all about whether or not we shall be able to afford to use it through this coming winter.  We could both remember the days before we had central heating; when we had open fires; when we sat as close as we could to the fire and the fronts of our legs were bright red from almost burning and the backs of our legs and heels were so cold we got chilblains.   Ah those were the days!

Hopefully we will have a few more weeks of warm weather to come - fingers crossed.   See you tomorrow.

Sunday 28 August 2022

Pigeons and Cats spring to mind!

 Well, well I have done it again!   Stirring the pot is so good for my ageing mind - so thank-you to all those who contributed to my yesterday's post.   Here is a follow-up after a great deal of thought.

First of all I have had "disagreements" with Derek over the years and he knows he can say what he feels without fear of offending me.   He has said more or less what I expected him to say.

All this "free love" seems to hav e arrived in what is now called "the swinging sixties" along with the advent of the pill and therefore a degree of liberation from the fear (for girls of course) of quite a lot of babies growing up thinking their grannies were their mothers (sitting here I can think of half a dozen in my village).

I predate all that - I married in 1952 and my son was born when I chose to try for a child - 1958.  It is a choice for everyone - nobody is under any obligation to anyone else - or to put it bluntly using Caitlin Moran's language - every girl's morals and  how she treats her  vagina are her choice and hers alone.  But a serious point I was making is that here in the little town where I live many of the children seem to be living with step dads and step-step dads and whether or not that is ideal is open to debate - and I speak here as a teacher.

And to put Derek straight (he often puts me straight don't you Derek?!) and to enlarge on the Caitlin Moran theme without going into the 'sex at the pop  festival detail' there are more ways of enjoying sex without 'going the whole hog' and after having one happy marriage of 39 years I can vouch for that.   My second marriage of 23 years - just as happy although totally different - was of course totally different - no fear of pregnancy at that age for a start.

There we are - got that off my chest.

Lovely Autumn day here = blue sky, no breeze.   Time I went out and watered my tubs.   We have a hosepipe ban here now so nothing for it to take Priscilla round the tubs.   See you tomorrow.  Enjoy your Sunday.

Saturday 27 August 2022

How times have changed.

 I had a smile to myself on reading Caitlin Moran in today's Times.   She is writing about teenage years. I never had a daughter and of course it is a long time since I was a teenager - she writes about having 'sex with a stranger at a festival 30 years ago' (when she was 17).   I looked back to when I was 17 were there festivals then?   And if there were then I most certainly would not have been permitted to go.  Those were the days when I had to see the end of the film before the beginning in order to catch the 10.15pm bus home and my father would be waiting at the gate to see me get off the bus.

There was no pill in those days and like most of my friends and most of the girls in the village I suspect, I went to the altar a virgin.   Goodness me, I  don't think many girls can say that these days.   Does that make things better or worse?   Does it matter?  In this small town where I live now it seems that many young people change partners quite a few times and have very complicated family lives.   As Caitlin says - you have to let your young people turn from being a caterpillar into a butterfly at their own pace,  she says there's time to get excited about things like "the Lakeland Catalogue" once their "vagina has atrophied and they need to wear special shoes".   Goodness me - my dear mother will be turning in her grave.

How do you feel about the whole thing?

Friday 26 August 2022

What day is it?

Indeed I have to ask myself what day it is.   Friday indeed which means Gardeners' World this evening - I can relax, put my feet up and watch.   And what a  strange gardening year it has been here in the UK.

I wish I had the energy to push Priscilla round the Wensleydale Show tomorrow, particularly round the Produce Tents to see the Marrows, the Bramley Cooking Apples, the Home-Grown Tomatoes, the Home-made Jams and Pickles, the Swiss Rolls, the Victoria Sandwich Cakes.   How seriously the local ladies take it all.   My dear Farmer's mother used to enter and win not just here at the local show but also at The Great Yorkshire Show.

Speaking of such things makes me wonder whether my dear friends S and T are entering their honey.   They always bring me some to have on my morning toast.   In today's Times Ann Treneman talks of bees and going to a "Bee Day" with her grandson and watching as a wasp accidentally gets into a beehive whereupon the bees block its exit and literally pull it limb from limb.

And in her column she gets on to her word for the week - a word from our American friends:  "buttinski" - as she says - exactly what that intruder wasp could be called - pretty self-explanatory too - shall try and remember to use it.

See you tomorrow.....

Thursday 25 August 2022

Thursday

As the day has progressed today so the weather has improved.   Now, at tea-time, the sky is blue, the sky has puffy white clouds and it is very warm - a lovely end to the day.   I think everyone is now hoping the weather is set fair for Saturday and a good day for The Wensleydale Show.   Looking at the weather map it seems as though at long last - the South East-has had a long, heavy fall of rain - Derek's corner of the country might have made up a bit of lost ground.

I woke up this morning to a wet morning - a necklace of raindrops on the washing-line and a wet patio - so we had a good rain overnight.   Since then the day here has got steadily better.

I believe A Level results are out now.   It is so good to see photographs of A Level students heading for Oxford on the front of our local paper - all those years of hard study have paid off.   Such wonderful opportunities these days for our young people providing they are willing to work hard.

And for those not destined for University  there are interesting jobs in our little town for young people willing to work hard.   Those were the days I think, viewed from the other end of the spectrum.

Enjoy these last few lazy, hazydays of Summer while they last - they are fast drawing in and Autumn - in the shape of September - arrives next week.   See you tomorrow, 

Wednesday 24 August 2022

Wednesday

 I waited in all day today because my doctor had said he would ring me after discussing things with another doctor.   But he hasn't rung so really I have had no exercise other than walking up and down in the house.   But D, who cleans through for me once a month, came this morning for a couple of hours so that means three hours with somebody here to chat to which was nice.   And now, as evening is drawing in, here I am thinking what have I got to say today.

Well first of all of course there is the tragic story of the nine year old girl shot and killed in her own home by a seemingly unknown gunman.   I am sure we are all more concerned tonight with keeping all our doors firmly locked.  We all hope that incidents like this keep firmly away from our area.  How can one ever hope to explain this sort of happening to a child of that age as they go back to school next week and a classmate has gone?

And going back to school after the long Summer holiday - that brings back such memories.   There was a time - a lifetime ago - when I so looked forward to returning to school and seeing all the staff and all the pupils again.    Now (I retired in 1983) it seems another life altogether and pupils I taught will some of them be  retiring .   The march of time - becomes very real as 90 looms.

Tuesday 23 August 2022

Weather

 No sooner do I say it is Autumnal than the next day is very warm indeed.   But somehow it still feels like the tail end of Summer.   I should have gone to the doctor's yesterday for a report  on my short spell in hospital but something went wrong with the plans and I went today instead.   The doctor is going to ring me in the morning for a chat.   He was a charming young man, all six feet four inches of him, and very reassuring about my recent 'episodes'.

Back home to find that my lawn has been cut - the first time in at least three if not four weeks.   In that time we have been lucky enough to have quite a lot of sharp, heavy showers and now my lawn is beautifully green and lush (sorry Derek).  My green bin is full to the brim and tomorrow is green bin day so it couldn't have all fitted in better.

See you all in the morning:::::

Monday 22 August 2022

Autumnal

 Say what you will, there is a nip in the air and it will not go away.   We might get the odd warm spell - we often get one or two lovely days even as late as October, but those really unbearably hot days won't be back (I may live to eat my words).

My gardeners have just rung the door bell to say they really will be here shortly to do a really good 'going-over' of my lawns and gardens - they have not been for three weeks.   The front lawn is fine but the one up the side of the bungalow which is in the shade for a large part of the day -wow -the grass is a good six inches high.

My friends T and S called yesterday with a large tub of blackberries they had picked.   Then this morning they called with two large green cooking apples.   I have cooked them in the microwave and they smell delicious.   I shall have a large bowl of them with some ice cream for my lunch tomorrow - another smell and taste of Autumn.

I seem to have had a very hectic day today so I shall now go and have a nice quiet evening.   Nothing much  to suit my viewing on the TV this evening so I shall have a quiet hour or so doing a Sudoku if I can get my brain in gear.  See you tomorrow.

Sunday 21 August 2022

Sunday

 Friends have just called - T and S with a lovely tub of wild blackberries - they have plenty of apples so next time they are passing they are going to call in with a couple of cooking apples.   I already have a couple of jars of their honey so that sees me set up for delicious puds this week.    They are such good friends.

Just one week to go before there is a hose pipe ban here and we will not be able to water our tubs outside with the hosepipe.   Then I think I shall have to a sk my gardener to empty all but two of my tubs and move those two on to the front door step for a few weeks.   Sad to face up to I know but there comes a time to face up to the fact that Winter watering has to stop.

Next week-end will be the Wensleydale Show which takes place at the bottom of my garden - just over my dry stone wall is the Car Park and beyond that the Show Field.   There there will be tents (they are going up as I write) with  Shows for flowers, Cakes, Handicrafts - all manner of things - all kinds of garden produce.   People take it all very seriously up here.   In the middle the Show Ring and at the far end tents and enclosures for cattle and sheep and heavy horses.   It  was one of the highlights of my dear farmer's farming year and when I was a bit more mobile I used to enjoy going with him and going into our Feed Merchant's tent for 'goodies' - always the same - a little pork pie, two sandwiches and a fairycake.   And lots of good old Yorkshire tea of course.

That's it for today.    Back tomorrow friends.  ' Til then.....


Saturday 20 August 2022

Nearly back to normal.

But not quite - I am still left with a slight feeling of disorientation.   Maybe in a couple more days that feeling will have gone too - I certainly hope so.   It is usual I understand to feel like this.

My son has been round and watered my tubs for me (he turned the outside tap off too tight and I couldn't turn it on this morning.)

I must say it is looking, and feeling, very Autumnal here.   The poor gardens have suffered so much that I doubt they will  recover this year however much rain we might get now - it is too late.

I have not heard a News Bulletin since last Sunday .  I have read today's Times avidly and it seems the same old stuff.   Ukraine seems to be fading from the news - isn't it always the same?   For a few weeks after a conflict breaks out somewhere it is headline news and then it seems to fade as though it has gone away. Which I am sure it hasn't.

As I hopefully get back into the swim I shall have more to say .  As to whether I can continue to live alone time will tell.   I have my carer, my son only lives a mile away and Lifeline are on the end of a button - is that enough?   We shall see.   Fingers crossed.   See you tomorrow.

Friday 19 August 2022

Home again!

 Well I am home again after a spell in hospital again.   I seem to have developed Epilepsy.   I had a spell about eighteen years ago when when I had quite a severe fit and was in hospital for a few days.  Since then nothing until about six weeks ago when I had a fit which put me in hospital for two days  and now another one on Monday morning.   I came home from hospital at tea time yesterday.    I am very stiff from the inactivity but gradually slackening off as the day progresses today and I am moving about a bit more.

In Institutions one tends to quickly become institutionalised and I feel a bit like that today   But  as I stagger about with one or other of my trollerys normality is gradually returning - I hope.During the four days I have been away there doesn't seem to have been a lot  of rain and we look to be in real need of a heavy downpour.

I will try and do a proper informative post tomorrow.   Until then take care,   I have missed you all.

Monday 15 August 2022

Ominous

 We are desperate for rain here.   But for a good rain - even a downpour.   But nothing torrential so we are keeping our fingers crossed.  We have two rivers - the Swale running through Swaledale and the Ure running through Wensleydale.  Both can rise twenty feet in an hour if the water runs off the fells as it does if the ground is very dry so there is always a period after  a long dry spell when everyone is a bit apprehensive.   There have been a couple of catastrophic floods in the time that I have lived here.

I have  probably got a new addition to the family - still  taking my time thinking about it but am almost sure the answer is "yes please."   A neighbour and a friend of T and S, my friends, has offered to lend me (and if I like it sell me ) her mother's Shoprider invalid carriage.   Yesterday T brought it up and put it on charge.   After a coffee I got in it and I loved it.   I expected to be scared but not a bit of it.  S walked with me to the end of the road and back and we left it on charge.  Now they have promised to walk with me into town and back.   At present it is just a matter of which button is for which operation,

So here is a job for you.   Priscilla will have a gentleman-friend.   What shall I call him?   Any ideas?

I am waiting with baited breath for the arrival of Roger to live at John's with Dorothy, Mary and Albert.  She should have arrived by now.   I hope the gang have taken her under their collective wing and she is feeling at home don't you?

Saturday 13 August 2022

Too hot to think

 My brain seems to have totally shut down bit by bit over the last few days so that I can   really not think straight.   A light breeze has 'broken out' as the afternoon has worn on and there  appears to be a subtle change somewhere - oh I do hope so because I find this  weather quite distressing.   There appear to be a few sun-worshippers around considering the number of folk 'of a certain age' passing by in knee-length shorts ;and a variety of sun hats have cropped up.some of which I guess have not seen the light of day for a fair number of years.

I love watching them pass by.   My father had an expression - 'when to the age of forty they come, men go to belly and women to bum'.   There is a  section of the very fit, who pass at a rate of knots, wearing the shortest of shorts, light vests and trainers or 'safe' sandals and all I would guess under forty.  Then  the belly v bum begins to slide into the scene and on the whole gets worse with age.  And of course there are the folk who have always looked after their bodies and continue to do so.   I wish I fell into the latter category.   My weight stays more or less the same and my dress size too but there do seem to be bits of me which have sunk south.

My carer's salad for my lunch today was absolutely delicious - it was a salad of sliced pre-cooked sausage (chorizo would have been equally good), cubed new potatoes  boiled and then crisped up. cubed cucumber, cocktail tomatoes, halved green grapes, sweet corn, an eating apple (red-skinned for colour) diced, and diced blue stilton.   I dressed it with yoghourt with mint dressing.   I could eat it every day in this weather.

A new programme begins this evening on Channel Four of Griff Rees-Jones travelling across Canada..  The farmer and I did just that over the years for our annual holiday -the only one left we intended to do was up the coast to Alaska - but it was not to be.   It should bring back some happy memories even though they will be tinged with sadness...

See you tomorrow.

Friday 12 August 2022

The heat, the heat!!

 So long  as I sit decoratively in the shade (or indoors) and do absolutely nothing I am fine.   Any 'risk' of movement of any kind and I am immediately a trembling heap.   I was never designed to endure this weather.

I look at (mostly) men and women in the Middle east in their flowing white djellabas, somehow cleverly designed not to flap open or fly above one's head in a desert storm and (rather like Scotsmen and kilts) wonder what one would wear underneath.   In Summer surely the answer would be very little.   Here folk of a certain age ( mine) might leave off a layer, or not bother with a cardi but that is about it.

And here's Brad Pitt (who else?) arriving at his latest film wearing a brown linen jacket and matching skirt.   Will it catch on?   I sincerely hope not.   Certainly amongst my aquaintances I can-t think of anyone who would be seen dead in a skirt but then that is not a very wide sample,   Bit by bit the sexes have grown nearer - jeans have even made it as a garment for everyone; tattoos are widespread these days.

Wardrobe Liberation?  We shall see,   Anybody out there brave enough to start the trend?   If so publish a photograph.   But don't expect me to let on that I know you.

 

Thursday 11 August 2022

Horses for courses.'Could he cal

 Priscilla has been unwell.   So much so that I had to stop using her.   She would not cooperate at all   I live at the top of quite a steep drive and I need her brakes to work perfectly, which they weren't doing.  Various friends have had her out at the top of the drive and looked wisely at her, twiddled a few  wheels and said  there was nothing to be done - she needed to go back for repair.   So yesterday I rang the Rollator Repair Doctor.   I spoke to his Receptionist who listened carefully and then remarked that she needed a Home Visit.   Could he call this morning?

Could he call this morning?   I'll say! I immediately cancelled my hair appointment.   I steeled myself for the worst possible news - she would have to go away for an operation.

He turned up on time, twiddled a few wires and handed her over to me.   'Here you are - try her now' (I had told him her name was Priscilla) - Perfect.   What had he done?  ' Adjusted her brakes'- 'happens to them all as they get older' he said. (Doesn't it happen to us all?)   How would he know to do that?   "I used to be a car mechanic"!!

Priscilla's chest swelled with pride.   She always knew she was special but 'a Car'?  Not sure I dare take her out again.


Wednesday 10 August 2022

When we are not around

 I wrote after Matthew Parris's comment in last week's Times about the dog and the urban fox meeting and communicating in the night in the urban churchyard.   I was reminded of it this morningwhen H, my neighbour, came round.

Yesterday she had taken the netting off the  pond and when she had finished gardening she had forgotten to put it back on.   When she went to the pond today  there was a dead fieldmouse at the bottom of the pond and as she fished it out she saw there was also a  half-grown hedgehog drowned in the pond too.  Two little creatures needlessly gone - what a shame.

But I had always thought that because of the steps in my garden it would be impossible for me to have hedgehogs but obviously not - our gardens are equally steep and inaccessible.  So now I am wondering what wanders around in my garden when I am asleep.

And there has been a strange squawking noise - very loud and very invasive, over the garden wall so to speak.  We think we have solved the mystery of that too, this morning.   There are two two half grown pigeons in the hedge.   They are making enough noise  for  twenty two.

See you on another hot day tomorrow

Monday 8 August 2022

Heat

 It is very hot - up in the high twenties and destined to hit the low thirties tomorrow.   I am pretty useless in this kind of weather - always have been.   I watered my tubs and will do it again after tea but other than that my Chiropodist has been and for a day or two I shall feel I am walking on air.

The Commonwealth Games are over; it is the closing ceremony tonight then the City of Birmingham will return to normal and life will go on.   But it has been good to see the Stadium almost full every day and to see the encouragement the crowd had given to the athletes.

My tubs will all be thirsty again by now.   M, my neighbour, kindly watered my tub nearest to her this morning which helped me a lot.

Nothing more to tell today, too hot to think.   What I would do if I lived permanently in a very hot climate I can't imagine!!   See you tomorrow.

Sunday 7 August 2022

A Good Philosophy!

 My friend T has a philosophy very much like that of both of my husbands;  it consists of one line, "Never throw anything away; it might come in useful"!

Of course it does help if you have more or less unlimited space.   With my farmer this was of course true.   With M, my first husband, it was not so true but he still tried to stand by it.This did mean that on occasions he came unstuck like the famous time when friends called to see my husband's instruments he made (he made early musical instruments) and when the friend asked to see in his shed he opened the door and my ironing board fell out.

But to return to friend T.   I have a drawer in my bedroom which has been irritating me because the bottom has been falling out of it.  As you know I have been tidying and  reviewing my files and had only one drawer left to do.   This I could not do so this morning, when friends T and S called, I asked T for his opinion on the drawer.   After close inspection he said something to the effect that, "I might have a piece of wood that might fit that - and after coffee off they went home."

He has just returned having found "just the piece" which has now been fitted in the bottom of the drawer, strengthened and all put together again perfectly.   Everything is back in the drawer, done, dusted and back to normal and when I tried to thank T he said that it was just the kind of thing he liked to spend his time doing.   That's the kind of friend one loves isn't it?   So thank you dear friend!!!

Saturday 6 August 2022

Watering tubs.

I read an article in The Times at 'Tub Planting Time'suggesting we branched out a bit and took a wider view rather than planting the same old things like pelargoniums, alyssum. lobelia and the like.   So I did just that, adding just a few Pelargoniums, grey leaved foliage plants - the same old things I put in every year.  Now, as they begin to go into August , if I do a serious survey I have to admit (and this is   a suggestion remember) as they are coming to the end of their tub planting time that the old favourites are doing far, far better than my new suggested ones.   Yes, I know that the Summer has been exceptional, I know I am a year older and watering is not so easy to do, but the tubs  planted with grey foliage and Pelargoniums are a beautiful sight whereas those planted with dahlias (not too bad) and various bedding plants and frequently dead headed are telling me each time I dead head them that they have 'had it'.

Although my road was not built as a road for retired people, many of the inhabitants have lived here for  thirty or more years and so it is now most people well retired (several in their nineties) and only a very few bother with tubs - (too much watering and it will be even worse if a hosepipe ban comes in)

Off now to put today's lunch (minced beef pie with a variety of vegetables and good gravy) in the microwave and watch The Commonwealth Games.  See you tomorrow. 

P S    Good that John got to Sitges this time isn't it? 

Friday 5 August 2022

Hello

Lovely evening here.   There has been a lot of cloud all day  but now in the evening there is sunshine and the wind has dropped a lot so it is pleasant.   I have been tired all day - it is always the same if I have a jolly day with a lot going on I  am tired for a day or two afterwards.

Still nothing special to do over the next day or two so I can relax.   There will still be tubs to water.   Sad but I shall not do them again after this year - it is getting too much for me to do  especially if we get a hosepipe ban and I have to carry cans of water.   When P and D came over the Pennines yesterday they remarked on how the rivers were fairly full and we had already noticed our local river, The Ure was nowhere near empty so maybe we shall escape the worst of it.

It is a sad situation really because yes, the reservoirs are quite low but the Water Companies are guilty of wasting a huge amount of water through water leakage so it is hard to know where to lay the blame isn;t it?   What do you think?

That;s it for today friends - almost time for my    Pinup (Monty Don of course).  An hour of him and I am sure I shall feel quite perky again and my tiredness will have faded into insignificance.

Goodnight dear friends.

Thursday 4 August 2022

A busy day

Yes, a busy day but such an enjoyable one.  When you have led a busy and interesting life old age can be frustrating but one really has to try and make the best of things and get on with it.

My friends from Grange over Sands arrived at half past eleven (it is about   a two hour journey through beautiful countryside across The Pennines and it has been a glorious   day so  the journey would be lovely.)

We had to meet friend W at the restaurant for twelve so it was ten minutes sit down and then on the ten minute journey to Middlemoor.  Lovely gardens, brilliant disabled access, nice wide spaces between tables  and very welcoming staff -perfect for a Summer's day.

Friend D says I must not repeat the menu as it is boring and I am sure he is right.   So sufficient to say we had a super meal - lovely food, nice company, excellent service.    When I explained to the young man waiting at our table that I couldn't hold my coffee cup because of my shake, he  went away and returned with my coffee in a lovely mug with hens on it.

There was also a gift shop and I was able to top up with super cards for all purposes.   No matter how many cards I buy when I am out and about there always comes a time when I have a birthday (or in this case a silver wedding) coming up and no suitable card to send.   And I always think cards are too personal a thing to get someone else to buy.

Now, at half past nine, I am more than ready for  an early night so shall sign off.   This day of doing something different - whilst it has been very tiring= it has done me a huge boost and when I get up in the morning I shall be greeted by a vase of golden sunflowers - another boost.


 

Wednesday 3 August 2022

Visitors tomorrow.

Friends coming tomorrow four of us are going out to lunch - not far - only as far as Middlemoor, a couple of miles from home but with lovely food, so no effort on my part.   Then my dear Carer is making me one of her splendid salads for tea and this will just be a case of adding things like mashed avocado, green olives   with feta, cheeses, chorizo,   pate and Danish Pastries; that won't take a lot of effort either.

I have just been out into the garden to do a bit of dead-heading where I can reach and to water my tubs.   In spite of quite a lot of rain this week the tubs were desperate for a drink.  Now at a quarter to nine in the evening it is already feeling Autumnal - breezy and needing a cardigan.   How quickly Autumn has come round this year.

I am still feeling lacking in News but at least tomorrow I shall be able to tell you what we all had to eat.   See you then.