Reading round-up: July 2026

image from Freepik

The Private Patient (Inspector Adam Dalgliesh Book 14): PD James

The Maul and The Pear Tree: The Ratcliffe Highway Murders 1811: PD James and T.A. Critchley

To Die For (The Hidden Norfolk Murder Mysteries Series book 9): JM Dalgliesh

Fool Me Twice (The Hidden Norfolk Murder Mysteries Series book 10): JM Dalgliesh

The Raven Song (The Hidden Norfolk Murder Mysteries Series book 11): JM Dalgliesh

Angel of Death (The Hidden Norfolk Murder Mysteries Series book 12): JM Dalgliesh

Dead To Me (The Hidden Norfolk Murder Mysteries Series book 13): JM Dalgliesh

Blood Runs Cold (The Hidden Norfolk Murder Mysteries Series book 14): JM Dalgliesh

A Litter of Bones (DCI Jack Logan Crime Thrillers Book 1): JD Kirk

Thicker Than Water (DCI Jack Logan Crime Thrillers Book 2): JD Kirk 

Slimming World August/September 2025

July was a surprisingly productive month for reading, considering the big garden job we're currently tackling!  It's been rather nice not to just veg out in front of the television after dinner, reading instead ~ my poor 'ole body may be knackered, but my brain is still raring to go 😄

I have reached the end of the Adam Dalgliesh books, which is sort of a shame.  However, I think his story has ended in a good place so that's really nice.  So many stories seem to end with death and destruction so it makes a change for a series to finish on a happy note!

The Maul and The Pear Tree just popped up in the "suggested for you" bit on Amazon, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  I have occasionally read real-life crime books, but I must admit that I found this one a bit dry and hard-going in places.  Still, I persevered to the end and to be fair it was quite an interesting case.

I'm still really enjoying the The Hidden Norfolk Murder Mysteries and there are still more left in the series for me to read 😊  As you can see, I've come across yet another series of detective novels.  The Jack Logan books are set in and around Inverness, which is an added attraction for me as we fairly regularly travel through the city when we go south to visit family and friends.

As for whittling down my magazine pile ~ well, I managed to read just one this month.  Still, at least that's one more than I managed last month 😏

Drunken fairies!

The fairies look like they've had a night on the town 😄  We've had some rather windy weather so I left them laying down for a day or two, rather than risk the poor little buggers ending up being blown into the pond!

We got this next bed lifted up ready for staining and being moved to its new position.  Thankfully it was very much easier ~ and a good bit lighter ~ than the bed when the pond now is 😳

We put it on top of the bed at the far end of the garden, which made it much easier for Adrian to tidy it up and apply a couple of coats of wood stain. 

Once we'd cleared out the first section of the wall border, he was able to remove the first of the sleepers that we'd used to edge it.  

This gave us enough space to get the newly-renovated bed moved into position.  It took a bit of fiddling about to get it in place but again, it wasn't as hard as that first bed had been!  As you can see, we are stepping the beds down to accommodate the slope.  Now, in the interests of transparency, I feel I should confess that we decided in the end to set the bed so that it looks "right" to the eye.  We did attempt to do this using the spirit level but it really looked more than a little odd, to be honest.  Now this may well come back to bite us on the proverbial bum at some point, of course, but it is what it is 😏 

We put a layer of the rubbly soil in the bed first, then we used the soil from the old rhubarb bed on top of that.  That completely emptied the rhubarb bed, so we'll be able to move it round to the back garden in due course.

There wasn't enough to fill the new bed, though, so we started to empty out the one beside the old rhubarb bed.  I'd been using it as a temporary home for plants that I moved last year, half of which have now been replanted.  This left enough clear soil to finish topping off the new bed.  I will be moving the hypericum and rosa rugosa from the wall border at some point into it, then I can go shopping in the garden again to see if I can finish planting it up without having to resort to buying new plants 😉

It's possibly not that easy to tell from this photo but the pond has started to go a little green and murky...

but fortunately, the pond plants arrived at the end of last week 👏 I bought them online, from Puddleplants, a company I've bought from previously.  Once again, I was very pleased with my purchases and hopefully the water will clear in due course now that there is some "life" in there 😊  

The lovely little delosperma sutherlandii in this pot seems very happy.  I can't remember what I planted in the little pocket above it, but it didn't survive the wet and cold winter.  I may see if I can divide the delosperma and put a section in the pocket instead of a different plant.  I must also try to remember to put the pot under cover this winter, as I don't think they really like to be very wet!  

Little words of wisdom

 

Will the mystery finally be resolved???

Amazingly the "mystery plant" is now sending out a flower 😳  I keep looking at it feeling like I know what it is ~ but I just can't put my finger on it 😏   Hopefully once the flower opens it will become clearer and the mystery will indeed finally be solved! 

We're still plodding along with the garden project.  I moved the rest of my little garden knick-knacks from the back to finish off around the pond...

and also got the far end of the bed planted up ~ shopping from the garden, of course 😉  As I've already mentioned, I know that this isn't the best time of year to be digging out and relocating established plants and shrubs.  However, I really do think that I will simply run out of time before the winter weather arrives if I don't get on with it now.  I can tell you from previous experience that it's definitely not fun trying to dig things up when the soil is cold and claggy 😒

I can't remember what this shrub is called but when Adrian dug it up from the wall border for me, it rather conveniently split into two pieces ~ so two-for-the-price-of-one meant that I could put them in two different beds 😊 

The wall border is starting to be emptied out.  Eventually we will have a stone chippings path running beside it virtually all the way along.  Whilst we've already moved stones up to the area near the pond, we will leave the path until after we've got George in to re-do the mortar in this last section of the wall.  Hopefully we'll be able to get that done some time next year 🤞 

Then it was back to shopping from both the front and back gardens...

to get this second bed planted up.  So far, whilst some of the plants did sulk at first, everything seems to be okay.  We have had some warm weather up here but also a fair bit of rain too, which I'm sure must help the plants to settle into their new homes ~ even if it delays us from getting on with the job in hand!

And to finish off this post, I thought I'd show you how nice the raised bed on the other side of the garden is looking 😊

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

 

Hazelton

 

New blog post at Hazelton ~ tales from a miniature town:

More gluing and priming!

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)  

Slow progress...

...but progress nevertheless 😊  Beverly came over on Saturday and we of course put her to work, despite the photo above seemingly showing her just taking life easy 😄 

I'm afraid that once again not only am I somewhat behind with my garden posts, I've also been a tad remiss with taking photos of our progress ~ oh well, I'm sure you are used to that by now 😉

In my last garden post, we had got the old strawberry bed moved into its new position and the stone chippings paths started.  Since then we've filled what is now the new pond bed with soil and Beverly helped us to get the pond in position.  Unsurprisingly it wasn't easy to get level, despite setting it on a good layer of sand, as I'm sure you can tell!  In the end we decided that it was just going to have to be "good enough"  Hopefully when it's got the aquatic plants in it (which should be arriving by the end of next week) and the plants around the edge have filled out it won't be quite as noticeable 😏

I somehow managed to bruise my right thumb at some point.  I really don't recall doing anything dramatic and can only think that perhaps it was when I was digging out the chunky wooden log that the windchime hook is set into, as it was harder to get out that I was expecting!

I finished planting around the pond, "shopping" from elsewhere in the garden.  I also hunted around in the wilderness on the other side of the garden to find the little frog house that I'd put there a few years back.  It had a fair few snails inside and I don't think any of the frogs that visit/live in our garden have ever used it to be honest, but it looks quite cute set out beside the pond 😊

Adrian filled the second bed with soil from the other two old kitchen garden beds on this side.  There wasn't quite enough of the "good" soil to completely fill it up, so I moved the three rhubarb plants into very large pots so we could start to empty the bed they were in.  The rhubarb will be found permanent positions in the back garden in due course.

You may recall that way back-in-the-mists-of-time we had a soil mountain that had to be sifted to get out all the pieces of rubble that was mixed in with it.  We did make use of some of that rubbly soil though as a base layer in all the old kitchen garden beds, except for the ones where we relocated the strawberries and the rhubarb bed (pictured above), as an added layer of drainage.  We've used some of the rubbly soil in the base of the second new bed but what is left will simply be spread over the ground to level the areas out. 

It's not a very good photo, I know, but I thought you'd like to see the flower on my pink ornamental dandelion (taraxacum pseudoroseum) ~ it's very pretty and I'm hoping that the white one I have in the same tub will flower this year, too 😊

Little words of wisdom

 

Hazelton

 

New blog post at Hazelton ~ tales from a miniature town:

Brunswick House

Hazelton

New blog post at Hazelton ~ tales from a miniature town:

The dangers of a dreary, wet day

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)   

Flexing those muscles...

image from Magnific.com

Well, sort of 😏 To be fair, Adrian has been doing most of the "proper" muscle-flexing ~ under my supervision, of course 😄

I mentioned previously that we were going to reuse the old kitchen garden beds to create the new, purely, ornamental ones.  The first one to be moved was the old strawberry bed.  Before we relocated the strawberries into it, it was smaller and Adrian extended it with odds 'n' sods of wood.  This made the bed really weighty and it took a lot of muscle-flexing on the part of Adrian to lift the bloody thing, with me prising it up as much as I could manage with a long iron pole that my Dad gave me years ago. 

We were able to shuffle it across the (thankfully!) short stretch of garden to lean it against the new raised bed.  Adrian then spent a fair amount of time prising off the old bits of tattered weed membrane that had been tacked to the inside.  He wanted to clean it up as much as possible so that he could get some fresh coats of wood stain on it.

The space where the bed had been looked like a flippin' grave when it had been moved 😳  We've already started to whittle the soil down, though, and it won't take long before it's level with the ground around it.

It took some huffing and puffing but in the end we got it in its new position.  It's amazing how smart it now looks after three fresh coats of wood stain!  The canes in the new bed, by the way, are just markers for when I start to move shrubs into it 😊  The very large pot to the left was one of two that originally stood against the front of the house.  At some point I will get the matching pot emptied out and moved to stand at other side of the new bed.

We have also now shifted some of the stone chippings from further down the garden to create this new path.  All the stone chippings are gradually being moved from the lower part of the kitchen garden area; eventually it will be grassed over.

As you can see, I've been "shopping" from the garden to plant up the first of the patio containers.  I also brought a few little bits and pieces round from the kitchen courtyard.  I was going to put one of the round tubs where the chair now is but changed my mind.

I also put a largish pot (that I already had) beside the bench, again filled with plants from elsewhere in the garden.  The black rectangular thing currently being stored beneath the bench is the new pond; hopefully we'll be able to get it in position before too long.  

I'm so thrilled with my beautiful white peony 😍  I couldn't get a very good photo, though, as it was a tad windy at the time.  This is the first year that it's flowered so well ~ I'm just hoping that it won't sulk too much when I move it later in the year!

Hazelton

New blog post at Hazelton ~ tales from a miniature town:

Nothing is ever straightforward!

 

Little words of wisdom

 

Hazelton

New blog post at Hazelton ~ tales from a miniature town:

A completely new build

 

Very pleased...

and a little amazed, to be honest!

I haven't posted about my weight loss journey since back in February but I've still been plodding along.  I've had plenty of weeks where my weight has just stayed the same, along with small losses of 1lb at-a-time, but since my last post I'm now down a total of 29lbs 😊

I realise that "slow and steady wins the race" is a good adage when it comes to trying to shed excess weight and I've definitely been taking that road!  However, I'm also very much aware that my losses would be much more consistent if I were actually following the Slimming World plan as it's meant to be rather than my somewhat lackadaisical approach 😏  My aim going forward is to knuckle down, as it were, and properly get on board with the plan.  Whilst I am, of course, thrilled with my total loss so far I'm also well aware that with having such a lot of excess weight still to shift, dilly-dallying around with the plan won't be so helpful in the long term.

The next step, therefore, is to take time to actually get my meals properly organised and planned out, as per the Slimming World plan.  That way, hopefully I'll be seeing you in the not-too-distant future with news of further weight loss 😊

 

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)   

Reading round-up: June 2026

image from Freepik

The Blitz Detective Investigates - The Covent Garden Murder: Mike Hollow

The Blitz Detective Investigates - The Soho Murder: Mike Hollow

The Blitz Detective Investigates - The Bloomsbury Murder: Mike Hollow

The Lighthouse (Inspector Adam Dalgliesh Book 13): PD James

Kill Them Cold (The Hidden Norfolk Murder Mystery Series Book 7): JM Dalgliesh

A Dark Sin (The Hidden Norfolk Murder Mystery Series Book 8): JM Dalgliesh

Sew Felt Animals From Apple Blossom Wood: Claire Bowman

Making Luna Lapin;

Luna Lapin Making New Friends;

Sewing Luna Lapin's Friends;

Luna Lapin & Friends A Year of Making

(four book set): Sarah Peel

Dopamine Home: Rachel Verney

Dopamine Décor: Kate Rose Morgan

Granny Square Fashion: Cassie Ward

The Pattern-Free Wardrobe: Kimberley Hind

June was a pretty productive reading month, not least because I had birthday money burning a hole in my pocket, so treated myself to some non-fiction books 😄

I appear to be up-to-date with the Blitz Detective for now, but I'm hoping that as the war isn't yet over in the books there will be some more stories to come.

It seems that I have now read the penultimate book in the Adam Dalgliesh series, with just book 14 left.  I shall be sorry to say goodbye to Adam and his squad but I guess 14 books in one series is a lot of plots and twists to create for an author.

I'm still really enjoying the Hidden Norfolk Murder Mysteries books ~ there seem to be a fair few stories in the series yet to come.  It will be interesting to read JM Dalgliesh's two other series, one set on the Isle of Skye and the other in Yorkshire, but I am trying hard to resist the temptation to start on them 😏

No magazines read this month as I had plenty of other reading material to amuse myself with, so the pile is still sitting there and is in fact growing ~ I really must make an effort to get some of them read 😄  

A few steps further forward

Alright for some, eh!  Next-door's cat in one of his favourite spots again ~ he plainly doesn't mind sleeping on stone chippings😄

Adrian got the other half of the new raised bed constructed and set in place.  It really wasn't at all easy to get it level 😳 On reflection we should have done the levelling before putting down the weed membrane, and that is what we intend to do with the other beds that we move.  It actually looks worse in this photo than it does in real life, but in any event once it's planted up hopefully it won't be noticeable 😉 

I mentioned previously that we had used up one of the two little soil mountains from the back garden in the new bed.  Rather than take soil from the second mountain, we have started to empty out what had been the old strawberry bed instead.  We've thought long and hard about how we're going make the new garden area, and have decided to use most of the kitchen garden beds to create it.  Hopefully the new area will be a little easier to look after if it is raised up off the ground somewhat.  It seemed much more logical to move the soil from one bed to another first as they are, after all, out in the front garden already.  This is going to be a long process, methinks, and may well take a couple of years to complete.  

We haven't filled the new bed all the way to the top yet.  I'll be moving shrubs into it later in the year and want to avoid having to shift a lot of soil out of the way to accommodate them.  It may be necessary to top up with more soil once the shrubs are in place but we've got plenty to spare 😄

I finally got this side of the back garden tidied up.  Eventually all the plants in this bed will be moved elsewhere as this area of the garden is where our new, very much smaller, kitchen garden is going to be.

The raspberries and blackberries didn't take long to tidy up, and still seem happy living in their large tubs.

There had been four pots of dahlias here but two of them had disintegrated into nothing.  The remaining two, though, are growing quite happily.  The varieties are Café Au Lait and Tyrell.

This bed remains untouched, unfortunately.  I really can't be bothered to move all the bags waiting to go to the dump out of the way, to be honest!  It, too, will eventually be emptied out and will become the new home of our rhubarb plants.

There's still such a lot of work to be done but I feel that we've made a pretty good start 😊