Month: April 2024

Monday 22nd April 2024: Sorry I forgot to blog last week but it was a week pretty much like most, work rest and play in various different quantities lol.

The weather at the weekend was great and we got a fair bit done in the front area. The Parthenon is almost ready to paint into, just needs a bit more top soil. John has been busy clearing weeds and raking the top of the driveway off so it is a little more level than it was. I discovered vine weevil grubs in most of the pots I had in the front, I emptied the first one to plant up into the bed and saw the little blighters. I checked the rest of the pots and they were in about half of them 🙄 I have ordered nematodes to water in, these are expensive and time sensitive once you have opened the pack but they do work really well and so they are worth the cost because well established plants cost more! I also decided on the Sunday that I would do a giveaway with some of the tulips I have been growing. Because of the lack of sun they have been delayed by quite a few weeks and then when the sun came out so did all the tulips, all at once 😂 Far too many for me to use this week and they won’t wait for when I am ready so I may as well give them to someone. I put all the names into the spiny thing and had a winner who collected them this evening 😊

The rest of the day has been pretty rubbish to be honest, the weather has turned again, it’s wet and cold and will remain that way all week I think. I decided to try bottling some rhubarb, I haven’t ever done this before because without a canner I am not confident in the quality of the contents, botulism should always be a concern. I found a method that uses the Le parfait jars and seals and gave it a go, the first one was fine, numbers two and three cracked the glass of the jars 😒 So I have one jar that has been filled and water bathed and I will put it to store and see how it goes, it can be stored for two years potentially which would be awesome.

My greenhouse is fit to burst, I have so many seedlings, plantlets and plants that need to be moved on but the weather is still a bit iffy and so I dare not risk it just yet. We are going away for the weekend and I am hoping that next week I can really get going with the planting up.

Tuesday: Oscar day today 🥰 While he was sleeping I did do a few bits, stewed some rhubarb with vanilla for a pudding later and order a bulk lot of jam sugar, I have a lot of fruit still to use up from the freezer before this years bounty appears and so I will make jam. It’s always useful for gifting and it is one way of making sure you have something on the shelf that can be used in a quick sponge pudding. I will also cook up a lot of it and make some pre prepared crumble topping, another quick pudding option. I give up looking for different recipes because John doesn’t eat a wide range and I don’t need the extra calories from a custard or cream based dessert 😂 I am happy to stick to stewed fruit and yoghurt or a splash of cream. Besides I can always jazz up the crumble topping with chopped nuts 😊 I did get around to shelling the hazelnuts I collected last year so I have a nice jar full of them. I could actually save a lot of kgs as we have that many hazel trees but the squirrels need some so I just take what I can use and that’s all.

I am planning to dry quite a lot more herbs this year than I usually do, I always find in winter that I wish I had and so this year I will. I have lots of flat leaf parsley growing so aim to dry that as well as oregano, basil and sage. Maybe some dill (I don’t use much but maybe I would use more if I had it to hand) Rosemary is an evergreen so no need to dry that, the same goes for bay but again it might be handy to have some dried in a jar for the days when the weather is so cold/wet I’d rather not step outside 🤪 Coriander I need to add to that list too and I have lots of garlic chive (which does not die back) growing in the tunnel but again who wants to go out into the garden in winter to get it 😂

I have lots of flowers to do for Friday this week and I just had another big order come in, I can’t do any cutting today but I will be doing plenty of it tomorrow by the looks of things. The rest of the top soil also arrived today and so that is another job that will go to the top of the list this week, hopefully the weather will stay fairly dry.

Wednesday: A dry day and not too cold either which was just as well as I had lots of flowers and foliage to cut which took me most of the morning with a short interlude to do the horses water and hay. Then I grabbed a bit of lunch before having my haircut early afternoon. I had a bit of a sit down for an hour then out to start planting up the Parthenon 🤪 I have plenty to go in it’s just a case of getting it right, some of the plants are small but garden ready and some are bigger, I kind of want a cottage garden look so hoping I manage to achieve that 🙄

I was enjoying a gentle plant up when life suddenly got complicated, not in a bad way just lots of different jobs came at me all at once, it does not take much to scramble my brain these days plus I was hungry too which never helps with the brain fog. So I needed to get dinner sorted, I needed to get some flowers and change to the pub, I had a phone call to rearrange an appointment from early May to tomorrow and John wanted a whole load of invoices and estimates done asap (tonight that means) So I sent John off down to take the stuff to the pub and he managed to snap off two of the heads from the flowers on the way 😳 I got the dinner prepped and on to cook and then sat down to do the invoices etc, and then eat dinner.

The rearranged appointment is a biggie because it is the installation of our new internet so there is lots I need to move out of the way for them to be able to access the office and we are also having it on the outbuildings so that we have a good connection outside too. I am tired of BT and the old copper wire network hardly seems fit for purpose anymore yet they still charge and never want to look into problems. So it’s bye bye BT and hello Wurzel 😊 Wurzel are a local company specialising in rural internet and the signal is through the air from mast to antenna rather than underground, it has to be better than what we have now which at times is shocking to be honest. They were coming in early May but had a cancellation tomorrow and offered it to us so I said yes, I probably should have said no I will wait just because I already have a lot to do tomorrow and this just adds to my list 😂

Thursday: I thought it was actually Wednesday 😂 Anyhow I had a busy morning doing a hundred and one jobs including cutting more flowers and making up a couple of bouquets going out today. Jam sugar arrived in bulk 🤪 by the time jam making season comes there is never much jam sugar on the shelves so I pre ordered direct, free delivery 😁 and now I am ready for the season ahead. I wasn’t going to make much but we always have so much fruit so it seems like the right thing to do, besides once water bathed it will keep for a few years (prepping and all that)

On the preparedness topic there is a lot of chatter about food shortages ahead, the relentless rain has caused the farmers havoc with planting and soil structure and that will have a knock on effect. Grains and veg mostly as far as I can work out, don’t say I didn’t warn you if that particular event unfolds later in the year. Flour can be frozen in its paper wrapping and popped inside a plastic ziplock bag. Veg, I suggest growing some of your own this year, stocking the freezer with frozen veg or stocking up on dried goods, don’t forget to rotate your stocks though you don’t want to find a 2024 date when you clean out the cupboards in 2030 😂

Friday: A very busy day getting lots of flowers ready for delivery/collection later, birthday flowers, get well flowers, subscription flowers and a lot of flowers for an event. I had cut them all over the last two days and I spent all morning getting them ready. The afternoon I spent getting everything in order to go away for the weekend and making sure I have packed what we need.

Saturday: We were up earlier than usual to get on the road for our experience the girls bought us for Christmas. We were off to Hereford where we spent 5 hours being blacksmiths and forging our own tools. It was brilliant! We bloody loved it, John made a knife and I made a herb chopper and I found a new respect for hand forged tools and items, I would go back and do it again in a heartbeat and I can notch up another self reliant/survival skill 😂 They also bought us Dinner, bed and breakfast in a boutique hotel in the area which was friendly and relaxed serving local produce, excellent 🥰

Sunday: A rare lazy morning for us as we were away, a leisurely breakfast and then a gentle meander back home where Charlie, Macca and Oscar had been staying over and looking after everything for us.

Out to get a bit of shopping, pop in to have a cuppa with Mum, back home to unload the shopping and then pop round to see my sister who was just dishing up dinner and had enough to invite us to stay and eat, cracking weekend 😊

Monday 1st April 2024: April fools day, Bank holiday Monday.

We have had very few nice weather days lately, one was on Saturday which was great for the party and another one was today. A fair bit of sunshine and only a couple of heavy showers, we certainly could do with a few more hours of sun though. We spent the morning trying to get the last bit of the new bed dug out and tidied up, I am glad to say it is now all done and I am pretty sure John is glad to see the end of it too. We now need to fill it up with some well rotted compost and top soil before planting up, actually John needs to dig out a bit more for the posts that are going in for the climbing plants. There has been stuff dumped there over the past few months, some ibc tanks, heras fencing etc and the fence posts we had delivered a while back. They were supposed to be in by now but the fields are so wet that the tractor would churn them up too much so we have to wait. We moved a lot of the stuff but still have more to move but called it a morning at around 11.30am, can’t work all day 🙄 Today is my Mums actual birthday so we went round to visit, give her birthday presents and have cake. I did manage to get some washing on the line in the morning and we just about managed to get back before a downpour arrived hot on our heels 😂

I was watching the news about the shortage of water in Mexico City and here we are with a deluge of the stuff every day for weeks it is crazy, so I have to think to myself ‘don’t complain, don’t complain’ because I would rather have rain than no water at all.

Tuesday: A change to Oscar day today. I was with Oscar for a while but he had a paediatric appointment at the hospital and I had an eye appointment so I went up with Macca and Oscar for his appointment and then when they left I went to wait for my appointment. Mine was a couple of hours later but it made sense to go up with them so that John did not lose a day at work bearing in mind we just had a long weekend. I pootled about and had some lunch while listening to an audio book until it was nearer my time.

Once I had booked in it was the usual couple of hours wait until I was seen. I had the initial eye checks and thankfully the high pressure in my eye has gone down, I had scans on both eyes and then waitress for the consultation to find out how the eyes are doing.

At first all was well, with the eyes at least, there is no sign of active inflammation and the pressure has gone, all good so far. Then the discussion of what medication I am on, I was dumbfounded when the Dr had no record of my previous appointment, the last one they had notes on were for the appointment in December. This meant they had no record of the beta blockers they prescribed for the high pressure in the eye, no record of the continuation of steroid drops and no record that they had increased my immune suppressant medication and lastly no record that they were supposed to inform my Rheumatology consultant! I even pointed out to the Dr that it was her that I had seen after an initial consultation with another Dr because he wanted a second opinion on the change of meds 🙄 I had to convince her that I had actually had been to an appointment at the beginning of February 😳 So I now have little faith that they will inform Rheumy this time nor that it will filter down to my GP who is actually the one that signs off the repeat medication they have changed ffs 🤦‍♀️ I realise they are under great pressure but really, I should have thought that it was a basic chain of communication that was important to be relayed.

By the time I got out of the hospital it was 5pm, I had looked up the bus timetable online and there would be a bus that left at 5.20. So I made my way up to the bus stop only to see the bus going past me 😬 I get to the bus stop thinking, that’s ok the online time table says there will be another one along eventually. I read the time table at the bus stop to find that it does not say the same as the one online 🙄 I call John and he comes to pick me up, there was not another bus in all the time I was waiting 😒 We eventually get back around 6.30pm and pop round to say happy birthday to our son in law before eventually get home just before dark.

It was a broken systems day and I was knackered just from the thought of it all 😂

Wednesday: Rain again, every day we have rain, I won’t complain though as others are no so lucky but the spring sunshine is very little and not very often at the minute. It is Saturday now and I can’t actually remember what I did on Wednesday, I did cut flowers ready for Friday I know that much.

Thursday: I started early and got flowers arranged first thing then Charlie phoned to see if I wanted to go out and get a coffee, yes please. While we were out she wanted to see if Oscar would get his hair cut at the barbers and despite the heroic efforts of the barber, Oscar was not having any of it 🤪 We went and got coffee and a bit of breakfast then a quick bit of shopping before returning back to mine. We got Johns hair clippers out and had a go ourselves with Oscars hair which was a little bit more successful but obviously not as good. Then we went out for a walk round the village as the weather was dry today for a change.

I had a couple of hours rest in the afternoon before going back out into the garden and getting a few small jobs done.

Friday: Today I had Sam’s three while she went to work, we spent the day, colouring, crafting and playing in the garden. Hearing ‘nanny’ every two minutes from one is head filling enough from from three at a time is hard work. In the end I had to tell them I can only listen to one person at a time 😂 bless them. I definitely was tired out b the time they left so didn’t do much else until it was time to get some dinner on.

Saturday: An epic day of non stop work today, first job was deliver flowers to a weekly customer and then back home to get started on a lot of jobs that need doing. The rain held off all day and so we were able to get a lot done, pushing ourselves to our limit at times. John spent most of the day building the Parthenon 😂 that’s what I am calling it. It is the new bed for the climbing plants and it looks as though we are building a house but it is actually just a flower bed with uprights. The uprights will have mesh attached so that I can grow things like my chocolate vine, an evergreen clematis, jasmine and a climbing rose. Luckily there is plenty of room for other flowers too 😬 Meanwhile I planted up some of the flower plants that are now big enough to go into the poly tunnel. Snapdragons, stocks and China aster, I had to stake it all and put in some support mesh too which I made from string. Once I finished that I dug up a few self set plants and potted those up along with some excess sweet peas. Then onto the job I really had on my radar which was the fruit cage, this needed a few hours of work to bring it back under control and by the time I finished I was knackered. John got the ride on mower out and cut the grass in the small paddock at the back. We didn’t do it last year and it got too long to manage so we had to leave it, now it has died off a bit over winter he was able to mow it and hopefully we will keep on top of it this year. He did some more mowing down the walkways before mowing the lawn with the hand mower, we are well and truly pooped today.

Sunday: Another dry day 😊 so plenty of work to be done as always 🤪 I don’t think we will ever get to the stage where we are wondering what job we could do 😂 the list is always long and gets longer by the day. We did go out for a coffee in the afternoon and ended up getting a roast dinner instead, saves time cooking later 😬