Tuesday 9th May - Hail! and other astonishments

I've just come in from a quick look around the garden, after a sudden thunderstorm with hail hit us early this evening. Luckily everything seemed to have survived.

The salvia 'Armistead' and 'Hotlips' cuttings that I have been nurturing all winter and Spring were out in their pots, waiting to be planted in the borders, and I was worried about them, and also all the little vegetable seedlings but I needn't have feared.

The slugs have found my broad beans; I have encircled some of them with copper tape and will have to take action over the rest very soon.

This morning was mainly shuffling pots about; the dead lavender and rosemary plants are n longer disgracing the front door step, various other pots which are just full of weeds have been dealt with, and I have looked out 72 little flowerpots for when the plug plants arrive in a few days. We have also worked out how to repair the very, very cheap cold frame I bought a year or so ago. The plastic transparent sheet that forms the hinged lid had crumbled into holes due to the sun. But we still have a large transparent piece of plastic which was used to protect the floor from an office chair that we were using. Today we checked, and it will just about fit, so can be fixed to the old lid frame. Excellent.

This afternoon I was at last ready to chase after the osteoporosis treatment I should have received back in 2020, but since then, there's been 

Covid lockdowns, a routine right heart catheter for me (bit like an angiogram but not quite), various accidents and alarms with my father, Himself's cataract appointments, my medication change which left me seriously breathless (turns out the original dose was exactly right and reducing it did me no favours), and then my pancreas scare 

time can certainly fly when you are 'having fun'. 

I sat down with diary, telephone and the number of the hospital department and settled down for a long wait and explanations. Wow! What happened there? I got through straightaway, the medical secretary consulted her computer and noted I had a telephone appointment which had been cancelled (what? when? by whom? I didn't even know about it!) for THIS THURSDAY, as in the day after tomorrow! It has been reinstated, and so it is being set in motion again without any more waiting. 

This astonishing event left me completely at a loss - a cup of tea, Pukka 'Feel New' seemed most appropriate;

I'm not sure that I actually 'feel new', but certainly revived.

Let's post this NOW as I am about to write up piano lesson plans for yesterday's lessons and may feel a bit jaded after that!