Delayed Thursday 4th July post

 The advantage of writing Thursday's post on Friday is I know what the election results are! I'm hoping for a government that is humane, compassionate, wise, courageous, and where the MPs have integrity and put the welfare of this nation above tribal politics. That's a lot to ask. 

On to more frivolous things; 

we took advantage of the weather (as it 'it's not actually raining) to go out to the Prairie Gardens in Henfield again. It's a month to the day since we were last there, and a lot has changed.

The little wooden boxes are surviving well; 

And I had remembered my notebook to make rubbings of the wood blocks inside. I can see that some people, frustrated by not having and paper, or maybe too little to understand, coloured in the woodblock with the crayons!

There are some new sculptures. I think these are meant to change colour - we wondered if that was because they would be affected by the sky, or maybe the pigments in the glass are temperature sensitive? I took this picture partly because of the sculpture, and partly to show the immense variety of foliage in the beds. Those are cardoons at the very back, about seven feet tall. Mine have reached the height of my garden fence and have purple thistle-like flowers on them. 

  

We stopped for refreshments! I had half a chocolate brownie, and he had the other one-and-a-half brownies (!). We sat in the same little arbour as last time, but swapped sides. I took this picture because I liked lovely curves of the side panel 

Most people would have burned or got rid of their old garden furniture when it got to this state... this old chair is now encrusted with lichen and almost rooted into the soil. If only we had the space to let our garden benches gently decay like this in a corner... the risk is someone would sit on them. That did happen once when a friend of mine plumped herself down on one of our old benches which half gave way...  

Finally, the cutting garden. The sheltering beech hedges are thickly in leaf, and there is hardly any bare earth to be seen.

I'm hoping that on our next visit many more of the plants will be flowering. 

Thursday 4th July - My Oxygenated Life

 Depending on when you read this you might still have time to vote.... the polls close at at  10pm...

At yesterday's pulmonary rehab gym session I was asked if I minded doing the final assessment today, a bit early as I still have one gyj session left. So I said yes (might as well get it over, I thought).

It went well, and I think we are all agreed on how I should manage the use of supplemental oxygen in the future. (In other words, pretty much as I was doing before everything got turned inside out by the rehab team).

The main difference is that I am officially prescribed 6 l/m for walking, whatever I need when I am doing anything that makes me short of breath, and, most importantly for my happiness and energy levels, it is OK to use oxygen at 1 l/m, or even 2, to fetch my levels up when I am very low, like below 83%. 

My oxygen levels will in fact go down to below 80% just from walking from the bedroom to the stairs, coming downstairs on  the stair lift and walking to the settee. It will be so much easier, more comfortable and, I'm sure, safer, to boost my recovery using oxygen. It reduces the time from about 10-15 minutes careful,  focused breathing to a far more relaxed 5 mins or less. The same thing happens when I want to go upstairs to the loo.

I have been getting so tired from 'breathing myself up' four or five times during the day that I've been ready for bed by half past eight!

So I am a very happy bunny.

They are thrilled with the increase in my walking endurance test, 80m at the beginning of the course and 180m at the end. The usual increase is about 30 or 40 m. I'm less impressed; the first figure is without extra oxygen, the second is with 9 - nine! l/m... so not a fair comparison!

All I all the course has feen very beneficial and I will carry on with the exercises at home - at least for a while!

Wednesday 3rd July

 We sent off our postal votes last week... It makes me feel very uncomfortable not to vote, even if I know my vote wouldn't have made a difference in our constituency. But, just maybe, this time it might...

Tennis tonight... Emma Radecanu and Sonay Kartal both played brilliantly in my uninformed opinion. It's now nearly half past nine and it l9oks as though Sinner and Berrettini are set to make a night of it. Sinner is winning by two sets to love, but will have to do something extraordinary to save the third set.

I tried my hand at paper weaving. It doesn't look that tricky, but looks are deceiving. I'm not sure it's entirely worth it..

It looks interesting but was a really fiddly thing to do.

Some young girls appeared and with much giggling stuck this notice to the telegraph pole outside our house.

(I've cropped it to conceal their address) I  tried to persuade Best Beloved to take a potato round early tomorrow morning and leave it on their doorstep but he's not keen.



Tuesday 2nd July

Delayed blogging; the tennis match between Tymer (I didn't get round to learning his first name, he's Sweden's no 1) and England's no 1, Jack Draper was still going on after 'Bake-Off; The Professionals' had finished. Draper won, hurrah hurray!

Katy Boulter is also through; I saw her match earlier in the afternoon. Hurrah hurray again!

(What has happened to me? I don't particularly like watching sport...)

Seeds have been sown. Borlotti beans, to be eaten as French beans, and also French beans. Carrots and, a new venture, Florence fennel. Opening the fennel seeds up was an unexpected pleasure - but I should have realised the seeds would snell exactly like the seeds in my jar of fennel seeds in the kitchen. Would those ones grow too if I planted them? They're probably too old. Could I grow a little nutmeg tree? Would star anise grow into a - a what? Bush? Tree? Shrub? What about cloves?

I've bought a 'vanishing' pen to mark fabric with. You have to be jolly quick to do whatever you wanted to do with the lines you drew before they - vanish.

Monday 1st July

 It always seems right that the first of the month should be on a Monday. An auspicious day for beginning things.

I've got an art challenge going with a friend; it might last the month or we might change our minds.

The plan is to deface a book (shock horror) with a doodle or drawing or collage or anything Monday-Friday in July. Obviously one doesn't want to deface a good book, but something that's not valuable or important would do. I've chosen an out of date Persephone books catalogue, dating back to 2012. It's good, because it has pages with a mix of text, photographs and artwork, but not so good because it is low quality paper. 

I prepped the book yesterday, glueing the first two and large pages together to make a stronger cover. I've also added a pocket inside the front cover to store scraps for adding to a collage and made a start on today's page.

Today's also the first day of the new collaboration! Scary and exciting! I've been having a look in my scraps and remnants box for ideas...

That blue flowery print, at the bottom comes from a bridesmaid's dress I wore in 1977... I turned it into a l9ng skirt, and then a shorter skirt, and now it's become scraps.

Sunday 30th June

At our zoom church home group on Thursday evening, as usual we chatted about out concerns large and small, ranging from the upcoming election, and which is the best optician in town, and the difficulty of finding space to reflect on readings or sermons or prayers in a sunday church service...

Along the way we always talk about our own concerns, prayer needs, and how we can 'keep on trucking' through the coming week.

One of the group suggested this verse;

We thought we would each spend time through the week reflecting on it, reading it in different translations and 'chewing over' the words.

So here it is, and I invite you to do the same.