Monday 5th February 2024: February 😊😬😣🥶 the month that for some reason we expect to warm up but it never does 😂
I had intended to work outside today but it’s pretty blowy out there and it has a chill,with it so I abandoned that thought 🤪 I spent a quick half an hour in the flower room pressing some flowers and hanging others to dry. My take is this, if you don’t try, you will never know, so I will try some of everything because what have I go to lose, nothing.
Next I had a quick look at the seedlings I have growing indoors to see how they are doing and if they need any more moisture and then out to the green house and poly tunnels just to check on everything growing out there but that was the extent of ‘outside work’.
On my to do list this morning was making healthy breakfast bars. I don’t know about you but I go through phases of what I want for breakfast, oats, yoghurt & fruit, toast, banana or a breakfast bar for quickness. I found a lovely recipe from ‘the minimalist baker’ for a quick and easy bar that just needs refrigeration. Back at Christmas I indulged myself with some medjool dates, I don’t know why but they say Christmas to me and I love them. However I only ate a few and so I needed to get them used up (I will be honest I forgot they were in the cupboard 🙄) and dates are a wonderful sticky glue for breakfast bars. So I pulsed the dates and added them to oats, cashews, some warmed maple syrup and almond butter and then mixed it all up together and popped it in the fridge to firm up. I made a second batch with peanut butter and dried banana chips (which I dried last year) and I found a few squares of dark cooking chocolate so I melted that and spread on top for a different taste. These can then be left in the fridge for a few days or can be frozen for future use (just remember to defrost well). Why bother when you can buy them at the shop, well as you can see the ingredients are all goodness and no hidden sugars, salts or anything else. I do buy them now and again but these are so much healthier and so why wouldn’t you?
I have been able to do the washing up today without that deep ache, hooray, don’t tell John though 😂 he has been epic on washing up duties for almost 10 months, he hasn’t even suggested getting a dishwasher lol. I also found what has been aggravating the healing of my tooth socket, a shard of bone was still in there and giving me grief but it came to the surface yesterday and is now gone which means the healing might move faster now.
Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰
Wednesday: Up to the eye hospital for a check up 👀 some good news and some different news. The good news is that the inflammation has practically gone 😊 the different news is that I have high pressure in one eye 🙄 so swap out the steroid drops for some beta blocker drops just for that eye and the general consensus was to up my lupus meds to see if that can keep things on a more even keel. I am not joking when I say we were there for over three hours this time which is less than before but still a fairly long time 🤪 By the time we got back home there was no point trying to get stuck in to anything major and so ‘pottering’ commenced instead lol.
Thursday: It is raining heavily and has been overnight, we have a flooded paddock again already, it didn’t take much this time even though we have not had rain for a couple of weeks. The high winds we had have clearly dislodged something on the roof because rain is dripping in near the flue of the wood burner. This has not happened before, John will need to investigate once the rain eases off and fingers crossed it won’t get worse before then 😣
This year February 16th is the day when we have, at last, 10 hrs of daylight. Why is that important? Well seedlings and plants need at least that amount of daylight to be able to photosynthesise and grow strongly so it’s a day growers look forward to with anticipation and it’s fair to say, probably get carried away with seed sowing 😂
Some of the electric went out around 3pm but not all of is, some water is getting into something. Normally I would have a pretty good idea what but this time it’s a little bit random, some sockets in one room but not all, some lights in another room but not the sockets 🤷♀️ it seems to be two different circuits affected which is a bit bizarre, I waited for John to come home and try to work it out.
The rain is insane, as I said the paddocks filled up really quickly and it is notable that today is the day they announced the planet has reached the 1.5c warming for 12 consecutive months in a row 😢 Its dramatic I know but it seems to me that we are heading for Armageddon without paying much attention, volcanic eruptions, floods, fire, huge storms, earthquakes, war, disease, famine, massive declines in some insect, bird and mammal populations, it’s not just me that thinks this surely?
We revel in an ever expanding online world that is not even real half the time and ignore the real world falling apart around us, ‘laughs hysterically’ 😢
So the problem with the electric is in the hay barn apparently, no problem because we can isolate that until the rain stops (still going at the minute 😣)
Friday: It’s still raining and has been all night long, twice I think it woke me up with the intensity of it. The lower paddocks are getting more and more like a huge lake 🙄 I reckon you actually could float a boat or a canoe for a good stretch 🤪
Saturday: I cant actually remember what we did today (writing this on Sunday) but it wasn’t anything much I am inclined to think. Oh I did sow some pre sprouted sweet peas (3rd lot) and pricked out seedlings and potted on some other plants.
Sunday: A more productive day today 😊 I wanted to get the egg shed area sorted out so it looks a bit tidier and things are more cohesive. The small flower shed has gone and we have moved the table that I put plants for sale out on, then we removed one of the pull out baskets that I usually put veg for sale in. This freed up the side that has a basket where customers usually return empty egg boxes, it is a tallish space and this is where the buckets of flowers will now be. Everything will be in the one shed or next to it instead of bits here and there. Then we went off to the garden centre because I wanted to get a hanging basket on the side of the egg shed to pretty it up a little. I don’t really like the usual type of hanging basket, it is just not me, I like something a little different and so I decided to make my own basket in my own way. I bought plants that you would not normally associate with a basket of that type, snakes head fritillary, pinks, one token primrose and some foliage plants that I have no idea what they are called but they are a lovely silver grey colour. I took an old rusty, square cone shape basket (I don’t know how else to describe it 😂) cut it in half with wire cutters, put it back together bending the bottom point up into a base and wired it back together. Then I needed to disguise it so I used some plastic mesh I had and wired that on then wired on moss all the way round (that was pretty tricky) and voila had a half basket type planter that I could attach to the side of the egg shed. I am pleased with the result and it was only the cost of the plants because I had everything else.
Cooked a roast later on in the day for Charlie, Macca and Oscar this week so I have had everyone over in turn now 😊
John has been busy doing lots of small jobs outside, the ones that always get left because the bigger jobs are usually more urgent, raking, tidying, clearing, picking up debris from the windy, wet weather we have had lately.
frieslandfarm (flowers) 