Monday 24th April 2023: A gloomy start to the week but it’s not raining…..yet 😝 It very much looks like it will at any minute. I have plenty to do indoors though as we get ready to go away for the week. Shelley will move in and take over with her family but still there is plenty to prepare beforehand and todays task will be washing and ironing and making sure I have everything ready to pack and paperwork all in order. That will leave the rest of the week to get the house cleaned and keep an eye on seedlings, potting them on if necessary, constant weeding at the minute so they don’t get out of hand while I am away and honing the instruction list for Shelley to be able to follow 😁
This morning I have already got the first lot of washing on, taken out the rubbish, fed the cats and dogs, had a shower, got something out for dinner later and handed over an ordered bunch of flowers to a customer and all before 8.15.
I think I have lost my asparagus in the cold winter ☹️ to be honest I should have bought new crowns a couple of years ago in preparation. The crowns I have are around 8/10 years old I think and you can tell as the growth gets further and further away from the centre point each year. The problem is that after you have planted them you can’t harvest them fully for a couple of years (until they are well established) This rule applies to three things that I can think of, rhubarb, asparagus and peonies if you want to use them as cut flowers. I am sure there are probably many more but as yet I have not needed to know about those lol. Lots of people love asparagus and I do but I prefer to eat it raw as I am working in the garden, garden snacks are the best and I often eat my fruit and veg this way 🥰
Apart from an hour or so interlude when Charlie arrived with Oscar I spent the day sorting out packing lol, what to pack if it’s hot, what to pack if it’s not, daytime clothes, nighttime clothes and everything else in between. John came home early and I popped down to the chemist to see if there was anything I could use in my eye. It is pink and watering and been going on for a week now, 3 days of optrex has not improved it at all. Through my powers of deduction, also known as common sense and intelligent thinking, I think it is viral, def not bacterial because it’s not gunking just watering, it is possible its hayfever though I have never had hayfever before so nothing to compare it too. The chemist was not much help, wipe it with a warm wet cotton pad 🙄 I guess if it is viral then it will eventually clear up but it is annoying, just to make sure it’s not hayfever I took a antihistamine to see if that helps at all 🤷♀️
Tuesday: I phoned the doctor this morning and am waiting for a mec appointment for my eye, it is always worse in the morning and I wanted to check and see what they thought, they think it wants looking at so now I am waiting for the optician to call back 👀
Meanwhile I have been getting all the little things sorted for going away, so many bits to sort out to take and so many bits to sort so that Shelley knows where everything is. I will have definitely earned a rest by the time I go 😂
Wednesday: I am a day ahead of myself mentally, yesterday I thought tomorrow was Thursday 😝 I was quite pleased when John said it wasn’t as I still have plenty to do. Yesterday and this morning I have been sorting out things that although I know what they are and what to do with them Shelley might not. Mostly that is flowers and foliage that are in buckets or jam jars, I have taken petals off of some flowers to dry and I have hung up some flowers to dry and I have put anything that is a few days old on the compost heap to give Shelley a clean start. The thing with foliage especially is that it will last well in water for a couple of weeks although I tend to either use it up or tie it up for drying after a week and if I leave it then it might accidentally get used in the bunches which I don’t want to happen hence sorting it out.
I have a mecs appointment with the optician at 12 noon today so I am trying not to get involved with a job that I can’t just leave.
Well it’s a good job I trusted my instincts and not the pharmacist lol, I had the appointment at the opticians who sent me up to the emergency eye dept and I was there for six hours! I have anterior scerlitis apparently which once I goggled it I realise is lupus related. Basically inflammation in the eye which if left untreated could cause loss of eyesight. The inflammation causes the iris to become sticky which then folds on itself causing blurred vision and eventually loss of vision. So after four hours both eyes had been dilated and looked at numerous times for a full diagnosis, I now have steroid drops for 6 weeks and I have to dilate the eyes three times a day to stop the iris sticking. Luckily the left eye is almost unaffected and so I am allowed to stop dilating that one when I go on holiday which is a bloody good job because it blurs the vision and so I wouldn’t be able to see much 😂 At least with one eye clear I will be able to see something. At the end of the appointment a senior doctor came in with a student and asked if I would consider donating tear fluid for research. Probably a schoolboy error to say yes just before I go away but someone has to do these things right? So I had my eye numbed, cleaned, clamped and a needle stuck in it to extract fluid, now I also have antibiotic drops to take for 10 days too 😝 The research is specifically for diseases that cause chronic inflammation such as Lupus so I could hardly decline could I. I have to go back up to the eye hospital on the day I return from holiday to see how things are going. Not viral, not bacterial, not hayfever and not conjunctivitis so trust your instincts if you think it is something but not sure what and especially if you have a chronic inflammation disease 😁
Thursday: Up with the alarm this morning mostly to get the medications done 😜 Then outside to cut flowers for tomorrow, it was pretty cold out there I can tell you. Almost May and we have not had much warmth at all this year, I think we had a drier than usual Feb a wetter than usual March and now a colder than usual April, who knows what May will bring 🤷♀️ Shelley picked me up early morning, first I had to go and get a prescription for the antibiotic drops as they didn’t have any at the hospital and then back to hers for a manicure, I was going to het my eyebrows done but probably not the best idea at the minute. When I returned home I needed to sort out the timings for taking these three lots of eye drops 😂 it was not easy but I think I have now found a regime that will work plus I have put each individual one in the reminder app and on repeat daily so that should keep me in-line🤞 I have to take one lot of drops every four hours, one lot every six hours and one lot every eight hours 😝 thank goodness for technology at my fingertips or I would end up totally confused. Meanwhile John has been cleaning out the ducks and chickens and also putting up some of the boarding on the outside of the flower hut.
Oh my days, so it comes to early afternoon reminder time for the antibiotic drops, the reminder came up so that was not a problem, I had managed to collect them this morning so that was not a problem. Trying to get them in my eye when my hand went into a serious cramping event was a problem 😂 The tubes are not very giving and so squeezing hard is required, cue cramp on an epic scale that lasted for around five minutes, tried again, cramp again 🤦♀️ At this point I said to John that he would have to do them for me, now if you know John at all you will know that he HATES anything to do with eyes, he will walk out of the room if anything is even mentioned about going near an eye 👀 When he stood up and said give them here I realised that after 40 years of marriage he really does have my back 🥰 In the end it wasn’t necessary as the cramp eased and I was able to do it myself but that would have been quite some dedication if he had done it for me.
I did a bit in the greenhouse making sure the watering was done and going to be easy for Shelley to manage, I don’t think I need to worry about outdoors as it started pouring with rain mid afternoon and I do t think we are quite going into a heatwave just yet somehow.
Had the twins as usual then dinner then get flowers ready for the morning when shortly after we will be leaving for our holiday 😁 Leaving everything is the capable hands of Shelley who will be living here and Sam and Charlie who will be coming over to help out. Without them we would never be able to go away so we are extremely grateful for that, many smallholders never get away.
Saturday 6th May: The King and Queens Coronation Day 🇬🇧 I left the farm in Shelley’s capable hands and she did a fantastic job as always 🥰
I went away with one problem in my eyes which is responding to treatment thank fully because I came back with another problem! Suspected shingles, suspect because apparently it is on two different neuro trajectories 🙄 which is unusual and it is down my arm and into my hand. The one thing I can tell you is it’s extremely painful, luckily the doctor was on it quickly, I sent photos, infection control had a look also, I have anti viral but they needed to see if I needed any further treatment. I now have to wait and see what it does, if it gets worse I call 111 who call infection control, if it doesn’t get better but doesn’t get worse I need to get swabs done of the blisters to see if it is something else entirely 🤦♀️ I am wondering if it is related to the cramping episode 🤷♀️ maybe it just weakened the nerves enough let the virus take hold, who knows.
Because the blisters are on the palm of my right hand I am finding it difficult to do anything without pain which is a pain in itself as you can imagine. I was going to come home and get full steam ahead with planting up and flower arranging etc and now I will be waiting every day to see what I can actually get done. At the minute John is doing everything, quite a lot of it under instruction 😜 as you can imagine that is already getting slightly fractious 😂 I will not be keeping a blog this week for obvious reasons so I hope you enjoy the festivities, the pomp and pageantry and parties and I will be back when I can function better.
frieslandfarm (flowers) 