Monday 26th February 2024: Not frosty this morning but we have a cold wind instead 🙄 It’s lunchtime and I am just sitting down writing this up while I wait for my beef broth to defrost and heat up in the pan. Apart from the usual jobs one of the first things I did this morning was go out and pot up some more rhubarb plants. I dug up a huge root last year and divided it, potting some of them up and the rest just got left. I put the potted pants up for sale and had such a response I thought I better pot up the rest. Luckily rhubarb root weathers the winter well and then spring into life again which is exactly what all these have done so I might as well sell them on rather than compost them.
Next I decided to clean the kitchen, I had to wait for a few people coming to collect things so I figured I could do that and keep an eye out for anyone arriving. It really needed doing, there were cobwebs and everything in the corners 😂 Once upon a time I would have done a full clean weekly but not any more, life is too short for that, instead I tend to tackle one room intensely and skim the rest. That way everything gets a good clean every now and then and I get to do other more pleasurable tasks 😊
Tuesday: Oscar day, we did venture out for a little walk in the afternoon as it was not raining and the sun was trying, the wind was cold though so it was a short round trip of the village lol.
Wednesday: Have I ever said that February is my least favourite month of the year, I probably have 😂 It’s just that you seem to be waiting an age for things to warm up a little, even though this winter has been fairly mild so far. It is the dull, grey that is depressing and this year has been one of the dullest with only 36hrs of sunshine recorded apparently, I mean come on that’s bloody stingy isn’t it Mother Nature 🙄
Meanwhile I occupy myself with preparations for Mothers Day and Easter and hopefully the not too far away spring temperatures. It is the time of year when I try to do a good bit of learning and I often discover things I want to have a go at doing.
It is Shelley’s birthday today and she booked herself the day off, we are pretty much a family of self employed so she is her own boss and gave herself permission to enjoy her birthday 😂 We went out for a lovely lunch and a wander round the local upmarket garden company. When John comes home we will pop round to hers for some birthday cake 🎂
When I returned home I found a lovely delivery of plants, always a great cheer up moment on a dull, wet, cold day. These are eryngium, two different types to the ones I already have, a lovely white one which will be amazing dried hopefully and a blue one with more star like qualities than the blue one I have already.
Thursday: You know some days you just want to scream lol, no wonder mental health and stress levels are off the scale these days. A morning of trying to get things sorted or waiting for updates is crucial but so much time wasted 🙄 Trying to track a shipment that the tracking app wants to link to an email address I don’t use and didn’t use when I purchased the goods. So now I can’t find out the tracking number and have no idea when it will be delivered or even if it will. I tried several ways of rectifying the problem to no avail so I have to just wait and see what happens, if anything, not great.
Next was trying to ring and get a prescription 😣 Every day I think the NHS systems are broken just a little bit more and it just borders on ridiculous at the minute. Once you actually get where you need to be the service is great but ffs getting there is painful. I have been with the same practice since I was 5 yrs old, in all those years I knew who my doctors was and what they looked like, every one of them. Covid comes along and everything changes (fair enough) but things have never gone back to how they were and are so much worse now. You can barely even speak to a human being, go round in circles and just get left in limbo. First they put up plastic shields to talk through and now they won’t even talk to you, you are at the mercy of an answer machine or an online system that does not function fully 😡 Even worse for those who are not digitally adept or the elderly. To add insult to injury they then send you a ‘rate your appointment’ message well I rate my appointment, great but I would rate the system to get there in the first place defunct! 0, nil, shite to be perfectly honest. They are pushing people towards private health care which is all well and good but the elderly or someone like me with a long term chronic illness has no hope of that so we are just hung out to die I reckon, and that is how I feel today, I just want to cry.
I had Oscar for a couple of hours while Charlie went to get something sorted out (another system that has gone awry 🙄) I waited for my deliveries, one said delivered ( the most important one) but it wasn’t and I was just about to message the sender when the van turned up with it, so the delivery driver obviously pre programmed delivery which is fine but stressed me out. The other deliveries turned up at various points in the day.
Once Charlie had collected Oscar I made some lunch and then went out to the flower room to have a couple of hours doing flowery things. When I am doing that I am not thinking of anything else which is nice and relaxing. I have orders coming in thick and fast for Mothers Day as well as other orders, it’s nice to be working with flowers again.
Friday: It rained a lot last night and looks like it will be the wettest February on record as well as the dullest 😂 I have been busy doing flower things today, I have had a lot of work come in this week and that’s on top of Mothers Day orders lol, I am not complaining though as I love doing it. I will have to balance it a bit more carefully once I am working outside more too or there won’t be enough hours in the day I am sure of that 🤪
Saturday: More flipping rain and quite a bit of it, the temperature is cold, wind chill even colder. I want to get in the greenhouse but I need ungloved hands for the work I want to do and they just keep going blue 🙄 pretty please can we have some sunshine soon 🙏 The spring flowers I have growing need a bit of warmth to spur them along, I was hoping to have lots of tulips ready for Mothers Day but I think they will probably make an appearance the week after 🤪 This flower farming lark is unpredictable at the best of times especially if you are not using heat and purely relying on Mother Nature which is more sustainable. There is not a decent solar heater on the market yet so that is not even an option, if you use bubble wrap you run the risk of mildew with all this wet damp weather, it is a no win situation at the minute so we just keep holding on and hoping.
I spent a quick half an hour making sure I have enough stems ordered for Mothers Day, I will have some flowers I can cut but I need to supplement with flowers from other British growers at this time of year and that is a bit of a balancing act 😬
Sunday: We had some sunshine and it was most welcome 😊 It started of foggy and frosty but the sun was trying hard to break through and eventually did so we made the most of the day. John spent the day cleaning out chickens, cleaning the car and mowing the grass. I spent the day potting up dahlias that had started to grow, some peony plants, strawberry plant plus some eryngium that need to go in the ground but we have another frost forecast so I potted them for now. Sam arrived for a visit with the children and they had bought some seeds they wanted to grow, strawberries and tomatoes. So we went into the greenhouse and they had a lesson on seed sowing, if they make it home still in the compost in one piece I will be surprised 🤪 but it’s good they have an interest and they can watch them daily to see how they are doing. Once they had gone a barrowed some woodchip put on the paths in the garden then cut some fresh greens from the greenhouse for our dinner later.
All the dahlias are now in separate pots and languishing in the kitchen for the next few weeks until it is warm enough to put the into the tunnels.
I had someone coming to collect some flowers, some rhubarb roots to drop to a neighbour, cook the dinner then I am done for the day, but it was a good, productive and fairly warm day.
frieslandfarm (flowers) 