Little words of wisdom

 

Peace...

 

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)  

Little words of wisdom

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)   

Ouchies take 2 *sigh*

image from Clipart Library

 On Monday Adrian and I made a start on The Great Housework Campaign ~ you guessed it we've got family coming to visit, 'cos as you all know by now I'm sure as hell a terrible slut when it comes to housework 😏  Anyhoo, things were going well albeit we were both pretty knackered by the end of each day.  As I keep saying, housework simply doesn't come high on my list of priorities and to be just a teensy wee bit fair to ourselves, the house still looks terribly shabby no matter how much cleaning we do as there is still so much updating/decorating to be done in most of the rooms.....well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it like glue 😉  In view of our advanced years (*snigger, snigger*) we were aiming to do a room a day but unfortunately the very first room we tackled, the living room, over-ran a tad as I decided to take down and wash the curtains ~ then, of course, they had to be ironed before being hung back up again and as they are very long curtains, it all took longer than I had planned!

Tuesday had been designated for the dining room but we had to finish off in the living room 😒  Still, as we knew it wouldn't take as long as the living room we decided to divide and conquer a little.  So whilst Adrian made a start in the dining room, I emptied out and thoroughly cleaned the fridge.....which took me a fair bit longer than I anticipated, if I'm honest 😲

Wednesday was going to be kitchen day but ~ you guessed it! ~ we had to finish off in the dining room first 😄  It's also the day we have our Tesco shopping delivered so very little got done in the kitchen to be honest.  Then came Thursday.....

I woke up about 6am with extremely painful cramp in my left calf, albeit not quite as bad as it had been a couple of weeks previously in the right calf.  I was not a happy bunny as I'm sure you can imagine!  Adrian more or less insisted that I phone the surgery for a telephone appointment with our GP, just to see what she thought was going on.  I couldn't get an appointment for that day as the surgery is closed on Thursday afternoons, but she phoned me yesterday morning.  To cut a long story short, she thinks that because I've been making a conscious effort to eat more healthily I'm not having quite enough salt in my diet (I know, right 😆), and I've also suddenly increased my exercise levels so my body is using up glycogen in my muscles hence the cramps.  She has suggested adding a little more in the way of naturally salty food (she suggested olives would be a good choice) as well as more protein. The annual blood tests I had done back in March (because of the high blood pressure meds I take) were all normal but if I'm still having problems in a month or so, she wants me to go in for more blood testing.  So now we wait and see if things settle down.

Thursday was a somewhat a slow day in the kitchen because of how sore my leg was, so we over-ran into Friday which we had planned would be for cleaning the downstairs bathroom 😖  Because my leg is still a tad sore, we are spreading out the bathroom and utility room over the course of this weekend.....

image from Clipart Library

and we're both feeling rather old!  Ho hum, got upstairs to tackle next week ~ fingers crossed for no more cramp-in-the-night incidents 😉

Chaos yet again!

A couple of weekends back, my friend Lyndi came over for the day to help me make some Big Decisions out in the craft room 😬

Three years ago the room had got into a similar state, and I spent quite some time getting it back into some semblance of order.....

but alas ~ as is so often the case in my little world ~ it all too quickly became an unholy mess once again😲

Quite apart from my general rather untidy nature, some of the problem is this butterfly mind of mine ~ some new craft catches my eye (and strains my purse 😉) or an idea pops into my head, and off I go buying the book or supplies needed for the latest in a long line of potential projects.....

Nine times out of ten, though, that project never actually gets done and the supplies/books just keep piling up in the craft room, which most definitely isn't built along the lines of Dr Who's Tardis!

So I sent photos to Lyndi of the wreck formerly known as The Craft Room and lovely friend that she is, she still agreed to come help me sort out the chaos in there 😊 

Lyndi was very good at helping me make decisions about what to keep and what to let go.....not so much what she said, more the looks she was giving me when I was undecided or hesitated 😉

Mind you, in my heart-of-hearts, I know that even if I were to live to be 200 years old I would never do all those little things that have caught my eye over the years 😄 

We re-jigged the layout of the furniture a tad and now all my dolls houses (except one, which will come indoors when it's finished), even those still in their boxes, have a designated surface to be displayed on.

Now it's much easier to walk from the door right round to the "workshop" area.  We checked on the ultimate sizes of the houses not yet built and carefully left enough space around the pieces of furniture they will be displayed on.

It seemed much more sensible to move the white bookshelves from the wall where the sewing-machine table now is to stand beside the other shelf unit beside the door.  The blue crates are currently full of dolls house accessories; as the houses/shops are built, the crates will gradually empty out 😊

One of the biggest decisions I finally made was to dispose of my doll collection ~ I know, right 😲  Now as far as Lyndi was concerned this really wasn't a hard decision to be made as she is none too keen on dolls 😄  It's something that I've had to work up to for a few years, though, as I was very fond of my doll collection!

In the end, though, it was a clear choice between the dolls or having another surface for one of my dolls houses.....as you can see, the dolls houses won the day 😄

There is still lots to be done out there, not least more Big Decisions to be made regarding my hoard of craft supplies, but thanks to Lyndi a jolly good start has been made 😊

Little words of wisdom

 

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)   

Little words of wisdom

 

Ouchies!

image from Clipart Library

This last weekend was a bit of a wash-out to be honest 😒 I woke up in the early hours of Saturday morning with the most awful cramp in my right calf, which lasted for ages before it all unknotted itself ~ it was really horrible😧  I do get cramp from time-to-time and the after-effects don't usually last long, but my leg is still not quite back to normal two days later *sigh*  Still, at least I'd got a fair few jobs done before Saturday so I suppose having a little rest, even if it wasn't by choice, wasn't too much of a bad thing 😉

The plug plants are doing well in the greenhouse.  I shall put the sweetcorn and ornamental bedding out in the arbour seat this week to acclimatise to the cooler outdoor temperatures before I plant them in their ultimate positions. 

As you know we moved the raspberries and funberries from the front beds and as I mentioned previously, I decided that because they spread so vigorously they would have to be contained in pots.  I repotted the raspberries in the largest pots I own ~ they will just have to like it or lump it 😄 The funberries have gone into smaller pots for now.  If they outgrow them, then they too will go into pots the same size as those the raspberries are now in.  Eventually they will live on a stone chipped path along the boundary wall behind the soil mountain ~ which hopefully will be a very much smaller affair in due course, a mere hillock perhaps!

The small pots beside the arbour seat contain red currant cuttings I took last year.  I repotted them as they were growing so well.  

We've made some changes in the front garden, moving the three tubs of herbs round to the back.  It seemed more sensible to have the herbs nearer the kitchen, plus we wanted to use the old galvanised water tank elsewhere out the back.

We've replaced these planters with five half-barrels ~ I'll take some photos in due course 😊

The poor bay tree got terribly scorched by the fierce winds over the winter.  I decided to put it in a pot by itself by the side of the arbour seat, where I hope it will be more sheltered in future.

I don't have a large herb collection, as you can see, but they are herbs that we make use of.  I decided to put the rosemary in a pot of its own, too, as it's getting quite large now ~ it has such pretty blue flowers.  The poor geranium wasn't best pleased to be yanked out of the planter but I expect it will pick up in due course 😉  The parsley is now in its second year, so will be discarded.  I took some houseleeks from elsewhere in the front garden to put in the rusty old bird cage, as the ones already in there had also been decidedly battered over the winter!

The arbour seat makes a rather good "sort-of" coldframe ~ good enough for my needs, anyway 😄

The planter on the kitchen windowsill was looking a tad worse for wear.....

so when Adrian was staining some wood, I got him to give it a few coats too.  It looks pretty smart now and just needs to be planted up with some of that summer bedding I recently potted up in the greenhouse 😊 

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)   

A new(ish) project

Back in 2020 we got these three beds built for fruit, planting redcurrants in the middle bed and blackcurrants in the one to the left.

 For the bed beside the wall, I ordered three vertical cordon fruit trees from Pomona Fruits: Scrumptious (a dessert apple), Victoria (plum), and Summer Sun (a dessert cherry).  

Fast forward a year and we built yet another bed, this time out the back ~ after all, we've got to find homes for that soil mountain somewhere 😉  The intention had been to move the raspberries here from the front but I changed my mind once I saw how prolifically the little buggers spread themselves around 😲  As usual, I went through all kinds of ideas in my head as to what to plant here but in the end decided to.....

 

take the bull by the horns and move the three fruit trees ~ perhaps  I should add content warnings to some of my blog posts, as "proper" gardeners may find it too traumatic to read about what I do to my poor plants 😄

Anyhoo, regardless of whether or not it was the right time (or even the right thing to do), we dug them out of their bed in the front garden and relocated them into this new one.  I did cut them back a fair bit once they were in place in hopes that it would lessen the trauma of the move a little, and so far they haven't curled up their toes and died on me 👍 I also moved the blackberries from the front to join them.  It's a variety called Tiny Black which, as its name suggests, is a small plant suitable for growing in containers so I'm hoping it will stay small in this bed!

Pulling down the mountain

Last year the soil mountain was a sight to behold ~ and not in a good way!

Adrian keeps plugging away at it, though.....

and progress is being made.....

albeit slowly!

And this, my lovelies, is where we are at the moment.  Well, I say "we" but of course it's Adrian who's actually doing all the work 😉  The weeds soon start to make a comeback and the rubble seems never ending 😒  The white sacks are filled with the latter and since this photo was taken there are now about double that amount.  There are a good number of sacks full of weeds, too, although to be fair they aren't all from the soil mountain!

It's not easy to see in the photo above but Adrian has not only shifted the soil from the paved area at the far end, he has also cleared a path running along the boundary wall at the back.  

The ground slopes away towards the bins quite considerably at this end, so something was needed to hold the soil in place.  Adrian made good use of the last couple of pieces of the old sleepers to build a small bed here but didn't have quite enough, so he had to cut down a new sleeper to finish off the far side.  It doesn't look particularly attractive at the moment, but his plan is to face it with log-roll and top off with lengths of 1.25" thick wooden boards.

We thought about taking this new bed right over to the boundary wall but after lots of cogitating, we decided to leave a fairly wide gap to accommodate some more changes we are making.....watch this space 😉