Tuesday 30th April

 That appears to be the shortest reaction I have ever had to a covid vaccination; just one day. I'm very grateful. 

This is what I saw when I looked out of the back door this morning,  

I watch that great oak tree through the seasons; every change in its appearance is a new pleasure. The little apple tree manages to survive even though it is rather close.

I rinsed the bean sprouts; I reckon we'll be eating the alfalfa tomorrow. 

Then I took a mug of tea out to my chair in the vegetable patch. 

That's the Egyptian Walking Onion in the foreground with eight flower heads. If you expand the photograph you will be able to see them more clearly. 

Best Beloved came out to join me quite soon as he is determined I shouldn't get carried away... how well he knows me! So he opened the slug wool container which had defeated me yesterday and spread it round the little pea and broad bean shoots.

I just sat and regarded the flowers and vegetables, and made a little sketch using a drawing app and the stylus on my phone.

It's a useful record of what's happening at the moment. The potatoes to the left are too far over to be properly included. The three apparently empty tubs in front are spring onions which didn't come up, an empty tub waiting for something to be sown or planted,  and another bonus potato tub.

April has been an almost complete write-off as regards the cross-stitch collaboration. My head has been too full to even think about it, but today I made a start on the borders. Ang has sent me her charts which will speed my progress. 

Monday 29th April

 As I expected, the reaction to the covid vaccination is slowing me down.

The intention was to 'take it easy', and that has sort of happened... I refrained from spreading 'slug wool' around my broad beans, partly because I couldn't summon the strength to break the seal on the container, partly because spreading 'slug wool' wouldn't really count as taking it easy! I'll just have to hope the little plants survive another night, and I can get the job done tomorrow. 

The sprouts are continuing to grow...

Alfalfa;

Mung beans

I also started a bean, well two beans, a borlotti bean and a French bean, in a jam jar. I set this up at the time time as the alfalfa sprouts but nothing is showing yet.

I still haven't worked out where to put my sprouting jars, so they are cluttering up the draining board and generally getting in the way for now.

Otherwise I have been reading... I can recommend 'Smallbone Deceased' by Michael Gilbert, written in 1950, if you like D L Sayers. Now I am re-reading 'Dancers in Mourning', a Peter Campion mystery by Margery Allingham. I always have to read her books several times before I begin to work out what is going on. I'm also listening to Richard Coles 'Death in the Parish' on audible with a lot of pleasure.

Knitting- a few rows on poncho no 2. I'm using the yarn front a giant granny square blanket which I never finished. I've had the bright, but possibly crazy idea that if I reuse a 20 inch square from the crochet blanket, and just knit a 10 inch strip along one side then the second side is more or less complete already!

I'm therefore going to bind off the first side when I have knitted a 20 inch square and then sew two 10 inch granny squares along one knitted edge. That way each side will be part crochet, part garter stitch. It will look amazing, interesting or completely bonkers.

Sunday 28th April

April nearly all gone... and Spring not yet arrived?

One year, perhaps it was 2018? I can't remember, the trees were incredibly late in coming into leaf. So much so that people were beginning to ask if the trees had all died. I was travelling through the lanes every day from one school to another in beautiful sunny weather, with all the trees bare-branched as though it was W8nter.

Not so this year. The trees are all bursting into leaf, and we were driving through grey rainy weather and sharp northerly winds today. I felt very sorry indeed for the people staffing the car oark at the school where we went for our covid vaccinations this morning. Because of my lovely new Blue Badge I didn't even have to get out of the car; the nurse came to me! That's what I call service.

That took up the morning...

Where did the rest of the day go? 

I took a little toddle around my veg patch and flower border during a brief moment of sun this afternoon. 

Now, do you call them columbine (what I was taught to call them) or aquilegia like the garden centres, or granny's bonnet which is what my 90 year old neighbour,  brought up in Kent, calls them? What ever they are, the buds are showing, a promise of pink flowers any day now. 

No sewing but a little knitting, and a lot of reading filled the rest of afternoon, and the regular family zoom and also a phone call with a cousin filled the evening.

I did remember to deal with my sprouting mung beans and alfalfa beans this morning 

Those sprouts are coming along nicely. 

Saturday 27th April

Weather-wise, well, 'if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all'....

So, moving on...

The sprouting beans are amazing. I'm sure I must have green bean sprouts before but it would have been a long time ago. Nothing much is happening with the alfalfa seeds yet, but just look at these dear little shoots on the mung beans; I hope you can make them out.  I took the picture this morning so they had been growing for scarcely two days. 

This 'kitchen sink' gardening is going some way towards satisfying my craving to do Something, Anything ! in the vegetable garden outside, which is proving impossible while the weather is still so cold and wet.

This a very small lightweight quilt that I'm not particularly fond of. One side is made from scraps, strip pieces onto the filling, the other is a piece of Laura Ashley cotton rembant bou ght maybe thirty or more years ago and used for kitchen curtains for many years, I have a feeling that the filling was a mattress protector for a very narrow single bed. It may even have been here when we arrived forty years ago, acting as rather inadequate insulation on the old immersion tank.

Last night I eyed it up and decided it would be just the job for a prototype Bog Coat.

By this afternoon it was well on the way.

It's still only pinned together. I will finish it, as, with a few modifications it might become a useful loose cropped jacket. I now know that the sleeves need to be shorter, and I would prefer a slightly longer length. 

I used the whole quilt without making any cuts except for the sleeve fold and cutting out the neck, so I've almost no finishing to do at all. Once I've sewn the underarm seams which contine straight across to the front edges, and bound the neck, it will be about done.

(Having the new stair lift makes it so simple to get to the full length mirror on the upstairs landing; you can see my Inogen portable oxygen unit dangling from my shoulder. There's no way I would have gone upstairs without a very good reason before the stair lift was installed.)

Friday 26th April

1 This morning all I wanted to do was return to hibernation

Daughter's Drawing

Preferably with a hot drink, box of chocolates, book, blanket, hot water bottle....

Last night I struggled to get to sleep because my feet were cold - once I wrapped them up in an extra layer of duvet they warmed up and I managed to drop off. To sleep, I mean.

We had said, last week, or maybe the week before that it was heading for time to swap to a lighter weight duvet after getting too hot a few times. Now I'm glad we didn't. 

Converting my pyjamas top from 'pull over my head style' to buttons didn't go well. Cutting the two pieces of edge tape I used to the same length would have been the biggest improvement- what was I thinking? Was I even thinking? At Ang's suggestion I have sent off for some lightweight iron-on interfacing. 

I'll still be able to wear the top. It will look fine in the dark.

My bean sprouting jars arrived today. I started off with the traditional jam jar and muslin system,

 I started mung beans last night in the trad way and then transferred them to the new jars, 

Mung beans on the left and alfalfa on the right. Now I need to work out where to put them, somewhere out of direct sun, not in the way, but somewhere handy for the twice-daily rinsing with tepid water. The lids are a fine metal sieve to make changing the water easy, the stand makes sure they drain and the tray catches the drips. Perfect. 

Thursday 25th April

 Oh me oh my, it is SO COLD outside.

The only gardening I did was to start a jar of mung bean sprouts - indoors. 

Although my gardener came, and dead-headed and weeded and generally tidied up everywhere. She's squeezed a few more plants into the cold frame and shut the lid. The keen gardener next door has wrapped up all the tender new shoots on his hydrangeas in a fleecy tent.

I did go out for a short toddle up and down outside in the afternoon, peering at the neighbour's gardens. Our neighbours on the other side have masses of azaleas in bloom, in every shade of pink. It makes for a very vibrant display  and every Bush was covered in busy busy bees.

Those little twins were out again later, with a slightly older sister. The twins are still so busy just managing to stagger along without falling over that they have no control of which direction they go in; it just depends on where their short little legs take them. Father was running in every direction at once, until mother appeared to help out!

Wednesday 24th April

Evening All!

More tidying has happened, and it s very satisfying. There are so many 'methods', 'hacks', call them what you will. Earlier this year I was partway through the 'Scavenger Hunt' method,and that was pretty good fun; it consisted of selecting categories, like particular cupboards or drawers, or 'kitchen utensils', 'books', 'clothes', and then removing 10 items from that category to Out Of The House, recycling, charity shop, rubbish, whatever. It was going pretty well too, until I was rather overtaken by events and called a halt. Or rather, a halt happened.

Now I have just read about '365' decluttering; every day you sort out one item to go into the charity box or the recycling box or the rubbish box. The suggestion is that you could extend this by also tidying away one item every day - presumably this is above and beyond the usual every tidying? Still, that would be 365 items at least evicted from the premises, and another 365 found and placed into permanent homes within the premises. I rather like the idea.

I'll start tomorrow...  

Daughter's Drawings - birds on a branch 

 

One of the bits of decluttering/tidying, that was started yesterday, but not finished yet, involved my daughter's drawings. I was salvaging them from one of her old exercise books as I thought they were much too good to throw away. I asked her about sharing her drawings and she said she would much rather that I didn't share the ones from her A-level exercise book but I could share these from a blog I used to write. Just about all the drawings were done by her after she finished Uni and was looking for 'what next?'. Art was one of her subjects (always has been, actually) so I persuaded her to do the artwork and blog design (with my son).

 The blog is still alive - www.themusicjungle.co.uk - and related to when I was working as a music and piano teacher. It was a place to share all the resources, tips, and tricks that I tripped across. I haven't posted anything to it since 2020 by which time I had already stopped class teaching, but you're welcome to have a look.

This was the very first picture on the blog; it exactly expresses how I felt when starting as a piano teacher, and then as a class music teacher, and when starting up the blog...  

Daughter's Drawings- Into the Unknown

Talking of going into the unknown, I'm about to convert my pyjama tops from 'pull over the head' t-shirts to 'button up the front' t-shirts. I've got as far as cutting down the centre front, and pinning on the bias binding to cover the raw edges, and am now considering my next steps. I reckon it's going to be a job for my trusty Elna sewing machine, bought way back in 1979. Does that make it a vintage model? Not far off!

It has straight stitch, zig-zag and a weird 3-step stitch which if you set it to zig-zag as well is supposed to be good for stretchy fabrics. It will do buttonholes very manually - that takes an enormous amount of practice, and then you have to cut the slit afterwards. We shall see how I get on... tomorrow.

    

Tuesday 23rd April

 St George's Day

Not your usual telling of the story.....

St George and the Dragon - Paolo Ucello - National Gallery London

Not my Best Side - U. A. Fanthorpe

I

Not my best side, I'm afraid.
The artist didn't give me a chance to
Pose properly, and as you can see,
Poor chap, he had this obsession with
Triangles, so he left off two of my
Feet. I didn't comment at the time
(What, after all, are two feet
To a monster?) but afterwards
I was sorry for the bad publicity.
Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror
Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride
A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs?
Why should my victim be so
Unattractive as to be inedible,
And why should she have me literally
On a string? I don't mind dying
Ritually, since I always rise again,
But I should have liked a little more blood
To show they were taking me seriously.

II

It's hard for a girl to be sure if
She wants to be rescued. I mean, I quite
Took to the dragon. It's nice to be
Liked, if you know what I mean. He was
So nicely physical, with his claws
And lovely green skin, and that sexy tail,
And the way he looked at me,
He made me feel he was all ready to
Eat me. And any girl enjoys that.
So when this boy turned up, wearing machinery,
On a really dangerous horse, to be honest
I didn't much fancy him. I mean,
What was he like underneath the hardware?
He might have acne, blackheads or even
Bad breath for all I could tell, but the dragon--
Well, you could see all his equipment
At a glance. Still, what could I do?
The dragon got himself beaten by the boy,
And a girl's got to think of her future.

III

I have diplomas in Dragon
Management and Virgin Reclamation.
My horse is the latest model, with
Automatic transmission and built-in
Obsolescence. My spear is custom-built,
And my prototype armour
Still on the secret list. You can't
Do better than me at the moment.
I'm qualified and equipped to the
Eyebrow. So why be difficult?
Don't you want to be killed and/or rescued
In the most contemporary way? Don't
You want to carry out the roles
That sociology and myth have designed for you?
Don't you realize that, by being choosy,
You are endangering job prospects
In the spear- and horse-building industries?
What, in any case, does it matter what
You want? You're in my way.

It was after reading this that I bought a book of U A Fanthorpe poems - they are fabulous.

Monday 22nd April

 A new week begins...

I am sitting here looking at the hearth rug with great pleasure. It us completely clear of Stuff, for the first tine since Christmas. The final bit of sorting in the hall was done at a great rate while lunch was cooking. Two crates, both empty and stacked one inside the other so that was the easy bit, and the few bits and bobs on top were sorted and rehomed (bin, cupboard, recycling,  charity shop pile). Now my father’s wheel chair is in the hall, his spare rollator is stashed in the boot of the car, and we have won another victory over the clutter.

I've given the first piano lesson of the term to a student who passed her Grade 7 last term with a merit. That's quite an achievement, especially only having zoom lessons. I am so looking forward to sharing two of my favourite pieces with her. I introduced them in the lesson and to my joy she likes them both.

I've been playing them for over 50 years; here they are;

Rumores de la caleta by Albeniz

Gymnopedie no 1 by Satie

Sunday 21st April

 I am so used to knitting or sewing while following our Sunday service on livestream that I'm sure I would be lost if I couldn't take some along if I was there in person. 

Anyway I finished the baby sock during the reading and sermon (the wedding in Cana, John's gospel, see I was listening properly as well).

In the afternoon I got into the garden for a very short while, but it was really too cold. I  came back in, and tackled a Very Large Storage Crate, half again as this one (which is next)

The papers were stored in six or seven of these, crammed full of

Daughter's school and uni notebooks and BB's jobsearch papers from a Very Long Time Ago. It's been sorted into 'recycle' or 'bin', and the crate has gone upstairs for reuse. That's about 2 square feet of floor space freed up in the hall; excellent!

Christmas Cards?

Yes indeed. I'm beginning the purge of the dining room table; this is the final task relating to the Christmas card list. I want to write a short note in reply to the notes inside these cards now, rather than waiting until next Christmas.  

The Countryfile weather report said that tonight would be 'perilously close to freezing ' so BB kindly went out and put a cloche over the tiny weeny peas just showing green above the earth.

Saturday 20th April

Lots of things got done today!

Knitting

It continues... 

The 'Holy Hat' grows steadily at the rate of three rows a day. I call it a Holy Hat because I knit round and round while I listen to the day's chunk of David Suchet reading 'The Bible in One Year'. Once it is finished I'll put it into the bag of knitted hats waiting for some suitable charity collection like the Christmas shoeboxes.

I've finished the heel of the sock yarn baby sock, so it's now just a couple of inches of round and rounding until the toe. It will hopefully be complete by  onday at the lat3st, and then I can get on th8s the baby sock in double knitting. 

Poncho no 2; I might get a few rows done later this evening!

The Bog Coat

I took a charm square from a stack of 5" squares I have beside me and made a mock-up of the coat. I haven't measured it to scale; I just wanted something I could touch and handle.

I need to find some suitable fabric about 60" by 48", or piece together a selection of fabrics, to use for a lining. And clear the table to give me the space for cutting out.

More searching on the Internet for information on the 'Cut my Cote' book has lead me down all sorts of enjoyable rabbit holes. One site notes that the book is 'readily available for about $15'. That may have been true when that blog post was written over 10 years ago but that was before the interest in zero-waste pattern cutting grew!

Swaps;

Cross stitch collaboration; my stitching has come back to me, and Ang should have hers today or Monday so we can each stitch our own borders. 

I also do a Notebook Swap with a friend, and I thought it might be interesting to try sewing fabric to a page before I send it back on Monday. I chose this charm square, because it was handy, and because I love the beautiful handwriting of the domestic accounts. So consistent, oso even, with no crossings out... how did they do it? They must have written more slowly, in a more considered fashion than we do today.

Sewing it was quite a challenge. I was mindful that too many needle holes would perforate the paper. 

I also included some sketches of very young twins out for a stroll. They must have been barely a year old and just staggered unsteadily along the pavement,  across the verge, into a driveway, into the road (it's a very quiet road!). Their father was attempting to manage their progress, and was kept busy rescuing them from their carefree toddling here there and everywhere!

Gardening

Broad beans transplanted

with cloches as the temperature has been dropping sharply overnight, and seed potatoes in their potato sacks.

The muddy mark is where a sack of pukkamuck (mushroom compost) has been sitting for over a year, over 2 years? I can't remember. Long enough for the original coarse texture to have become something that looks like proper soil. I'm glad that the pukkamuck sack has been finished up and put away. The potato sacks look so much better.  

Himself came out just in time to save me from myself; I was about to set to work using a trowel, but he did it much faster using a proper spade.

Friday 19th April

 The Bog Coat.

I am back in 'think' mode, at least until I have cleared enough of the dining room table. All the people writing about early clothing are full of praise for a small book called 'Cut my Cote' by Dorothy K Burnam. I had a look for it online but it is only available second-hand costing between £70 and over $100. Ah well. 

Mini-socks

I'm on schedule to complete this over the weekend;

So that's the heel flap and heel turn completed. Top tip for future sock knitting; if I can, I will knit the heels, starting with the heel flaps, in a different colour; keeping track of how many rows I had done drove me slightly mad, especially when I discovered a surprising pearl row early on and needed to take out a few rows.

I'm storing the finished socks in a net laundry bag  and I'll parcel them up in it when I send them on their way. All the yarn is machine washable. Hand washing baby clothes can be therapeutic, but it's nice to have the choice!

(My Lent discipline of refraining from bad language is sort of holding but is getting a little frayed round the edges!)

I've made steady progress on poncho no. 2. It is in Sirdar jewelspun aran weight I think. I have cast on 82 stitches on 6mm needles, which is about 20 inches wide. I'm knitting every row (television knitting!) until it is 30 inches long, and then I need to make another the same. The colours are lovely! 

I've started a new proper project notebook to keep all these patterns and comments together. I've scraps of paper all over the place and in different books; it's time I gathered them all up together. 

It's an A5 Seawhite travellers journal, with alternating plain and lined pages on reasonably thick paper. It does buckle a bit with very wet watercolours but otherwise behaves well. So now I have a destination for the current slow-stitched book cover.

Thursday 18th April

 The stair lift was installed! Almost everything else I did today is eclipsed by this wondrous event.

Otherwise there is a plethora of things to mention; sowing my heritage sweet peas; six varieties in a box, a Christmas present;

There are only a few seeds in each packet so I have sown six of each in paper pots.

Then I  suddenly realised that we are racing through April, and I need to finish the baby socks before the end of the month. I set to, finished the ribbing and the leg. 

Heel flap and heel turn tomorrow, gusset and foot over the weekend? That's the plan, distractions permitting. 

And what a distraction! I did a lot of reading and thinking about this Bog Coat; there is no way it will work with 5 fat quarters. The body will be far too narrow. Further digging lead me to a free pattern from Threads magazine, still available online. 

After a bit of approximate measuring, and thinking, and thinking, and measuring, I decided the only thing to do was to try it. 

Problem 1; the dining room table has got out of control. To be honest it is mostly my stuff. I need to get it sorted.

Problem 2; I was using the only piece of 'spare' cloth I was prepared to sacrifice; some creased and crumpled cheesecloth, and I couldn't get to an ironing board.

So, doing all the measuring and cutting and sewing (rough and ready tacking stitches) while sitting on the settee I cobbled together a very rough Bog Coat in less than 2 hours, including carefully arranging it over my model and taking a photograph before it disintegrated. 

This has given me the confidence to cut into some rather lovely fabric I've got upstairs and make it for real, which is what this was all about.

Thursday 18th April - My Oxygenated Life

 Before;

After

When the chair gets to the top, just before the landing, it stops, leaving the foot rest over the top stair. Then the chair swivels through 90° to face the wall, so that is no danger of wasting the journey by tumbling back down the stairs when you get off!

I've just used it 'for real', to nip to the loo (in slow motion...). Travelling by stairlift is slow, but still faster than I can manage on foot, and I went up and came back down with the portable oxygen concentrator on a lower setting than I would have used and not breathless at all.

I am so happy!

Wednesday 17th April

 I'm in between books at the moment, an unusual state for me. Kindle have rather got my measure and are always coming up with 99p offers. I managed to succumb to just one; 'Touch not the cat' by Mary Stewart. I must have read this a good number of times, but it will bear re-reading.

But, I did splurge on this last week which arrived today;

This is going to be very helpful for working out how to make a bog coat. I am imagining raised eyebrows... the original bog coat was found in a Danish bog and is one of the earliest pieces of clothing - that must be in Europe, because aren't the pyramid stuffed with textiles? - anyway it is reckoned to be about 2000 years old.

It's a very simple construction; basically sleeves, rectangles front and back, and a hole for the neck.

I was thinking it could be a zero-waste pattern, but I've had a better brain-wave; 5 fat quarters would probably be enough. 

These, maybe?

I reckon it could make a lovely light weight quilted jacket/top; I've a thin quilted mattress protector which has been retired from active duty, and also an old duvet cover which would make a lining. But Ang says I need to add gussets (help!) where the sleeves join the body! Here's where the book comes in. There's a whole chapter on them, and I pretty bearly understand the diagrams and instructions. Another couple of read through and I should be there.

Meanwhile, I've started the next charm square for the book cover. The plan is to chain stitch a spiral between the stamps to start with.

When I'm in need of a little tlc, being presented with a tea tray like this, is just the best thing.

Term has started, so I'm teaching again. Just five students left and three should be moving on at the end of the Summer. Ah... I'm no longer semi-retired, more like nearly completely retired!

Tuesday 16th April

 It's been a very showery day, with a cold breeze from the north. A lazy wind, as they say, that goes through rather than around you. I did get outside for a quarter of an hour after l7nch; even took my knitting and a canvas shopping bag to sit on as the garden seats were wet, but didn't stay out long.

 The radish pot in the veg patch looks as though it is covered with little green butterflies. It's the way the first leaves look, like butterfly wings trembling the fine stalks. You'll have to sow some for yourself to see what I mean. I sowed mine directly into the pot and put a cloche over it, which worked beautifully. 

I still haven't sown the sweet peas. I need a nice, dry, warm hour in the sun to get this done.

The first embellished square is finished. 

The square is a 5 inch charm square from a pack called 'fleamarket' by moda. I haven't done much; lazy daisy and French knots on the flowers, sort of satin stitch on the leaves and back stitch round what looks like a train, bus or perhaps a ferry ticket. Now to choose the n ext square...

I have been dipping in and out of 'Feel Better in 5' recently.  I bought this on kindle in the first year of lockdown as all our plans for the year slid away from our grasp, and I could feel myself slipping into a mood of angry despondency and rage and frustration. 

I don't slavishly follow his 'recipes' for mood-lifting 'snacks', but the ideas are good. No way am I going to ruin the treat of an avocado by mixing it into a smoothie with - let me see, what does it say - milk, kefir, almond or peanut butter, raspberries, cacao powder  (what's that?), cinnamon, turmeric, psyllium seeds (?) and ginger, although the last three are optional. Is that delicious? I'm not convinced. 

But other ideas are much more doable; spend 5 minutes outside, or at the least looking at outside every day, do some simple breathing exercises and so on. Just reading it and looking at the pictures ( I mean flowers and things, not the ones of him doing plank exercises, although maybe those are the ones others might prefer? Who am I to judge!)

So I adopted / adapted his methods, and I find it helps me find an upward path when I need one.

Anyway, I gave bought a copy from World of Books to give to a friend. She can always drop it in to the nearest charity shop if it doesn't suit her.

Reading;

Plot 29 by Allan Jenkins, gardening correspondent at the Guardian newspaper. Hmm. Not exactly a gardening book, but an infinitely sad account of his childhood; dropped off at Dr Banardos, fostered, and then trying to solve the riddle of what happened in his early life, and his parents, siblings, and family. With gardening as well.

The Shell House Murders, a series of three (so far) detective mysteries set in Cornwall, by Emylia Hall. I've read books 1 and 3 and enjoyed them,  and am about to start book 2. It would have been better if I had read them in the right order... clearly something happened in book 2 which I can only guess at...

Wedding Tiers - Trisha Ashley - fast paced frothy rom com. I enjoy them; it's like over indulging on fruit pavlova without the calories. 

Sealed with a Kiss / Sealed with a Christmas Kiss by Rachel Lucas. More rom coms - I had no idea that young women responded to an emotional crisis by spending an evening with a friend sharing 2 bottles of wine, three packets of haribo sweets and another couple of large packets of crisps and doritos, and then unsurprisingly had huge hangovers the next day... educational reading indeed. 

The Shell House, Wedding Tiers and Kiss books were all 99p downloads on kindle. That's my limit for rom-coms and cosy mysteries,  although the Shell House books were worth more.

Monday 15th April - My Oxygenated Life

One tries to stay cheerful - but there are times - yesterday morning threatened to be one of those times but luckily I got out into the garden in time and had a chat with the broad beans and the Egyptian Walking Onion. Replanting the poppies which were growing in a vegetable planter, to be transplanted into a bare patch of the flower border opposite helped as well. 

I was impatient for the next steps which will make life easier. 

Today some those steps have been taken. An extra long lead for the upstairs oxygen concentrator was delivered this morning. We have attached it and tested the length and there is plenty for me to be able to get into every room, including the all-essential bathroom and loo. 

I've also used a new arrangement to help with getting dressed; a medium height footstool strategically placed near the bed is a great help. I sit on the stool so that I can easily reach my feet for getting the lower half of me dressed without so much bending over.

We also, daringly (!) tried adjusting the flow rate of the concentrator. Up until now I was only using it overnight, as prescribed by the consultant. I think that's probably still ok for night time, but when I'm up and moving around or getting dressed or hanging things up in my wardrobe, it is not enough. The dial is very easy to twiddle, and simple to set at 2 or 3 for when I am active. As long as we remember to turn it down at night... I forsee a Big Red Notice going up where we can see it from the bed!  

The stairlift man came round this morning. It will be installed on Thursday or Friday. Wonderful.

I'll tell you the story of that wallpaper (I've probably blogged it before...) About thirty or more years ago, when we had been living here for several years, the furniture was arranged differently and the wardrobe was in that niche, facing out. The bedroom was decorated with two walls in that depressing greyish greenish yellowish wallpaper on two walls, and depressing stripes in the same colourway on the other two walls. BB was away on a course for several weeks, and I finally cracked. I went and about several tines of 'applewhite' paint and a couple of brushes, set about painting everywhere I could reach. Son, aged about two years or so, was very happy indeed to be kept quiet by being allowed to use my cassette player. He was always very precocious with 'mechanicals' and the cassette player sort of survived the experience. As in it still played cassettes pretty well without the door mechanism.

Of course, all was revealed several years later when we rearranged the furniture... 

the trouble with us and home decor as we seem to be pretty good at 'out of sight, out of mind'. So I see the paper (and it makes me giggle a bit) several times a day, and then all the time I can't see it, I sort of forget about it.   

Sunday and Monday 14th and 15th April

 Well, my head was full of profound (ish) and helpful (maybe) things to blog about on Sunday, and in the end the post didn't happen. Probably just as well!

But, on the more ordinary side of life, my Egyptian Walking Onion that I was all excited about last year has survived the winter and has six flower stalks. I am excited all over again.

If you expand the picture you might be able to spot the buds, looking similar to chive flowers. From reading up it seems that these will become flowers and then a cluster of little onion sets at the top of the stalk. The weight of the sets should make the stalk bend over and deposit the sets on the earth, and then baby walking onions will root and grow. If I don't save the sets and pot them up for friends or eat them, because the leaves and the sets are edible. 

The first groups of little broad beans are also doing well. I don't know if the copper rings, made by cutting off the tops of plastic flower pots and sticking copper tape around them are deterring the slugs or if those pestilential molluscs haven't discovered them yet. Although some are looking a little nibbled... 

 Yesterday I was clearing out a pot which I had earmarked for broad beans or peas but had been colonised by self-seeded poppies. As I dug out the poppies, delving deep to get as much root as possible, I found a couple of very small potatoes, left over from last year. I've shifted those into another pot to see if they will turn into lots of potatoes in due course, and repotted the poppies. Two of the poppies were instantly at home but the other two looked sad and wilted by the evening.

However they have perked up overnight - maybe the couple of heavy showers of rain were just what they wanted, even if no-one else wanted more rain.

A current new sewing project to fill in time before the final phase of our cross stitch collaboration (that's Ang and Me) is another book cover. I've cut a foundation from an old worn pillowcase using an A5 notebook as a template, with enough at the top and bottom for hemming and on either side to make sleeves to fit over the front and back cover of the book. Top Tip - make sure the book is closed when you do this to allow for the thickness of the spine). I also drew around the borders to mark the finished size of the decorated part of the cover, again allowing for the spine.

Six 5 inch charm squares, meant for patchwork originally, are enough to cover the book; I've pinned my choice roughly the the foundation here;

It's hard to be accurate when you are working on your lap...

My plan is to embellish each square which whatever I feel like, just setting in a few stitches as I am in the mood. Then I'll stitch them onto the foundation and see what I think. Here's the first square in progress (top right in the layout above)

 

Saturday 13th April

Another day in the garden; two in a row!

This afternoon I slowly sorted out some suitable earth to fill 36 more paper pots in which I hope to sow some heritage sweet pea seeds from Kew - six varieties - that I was given as a Christmas present.

The earth was so wet from a winter sitting in an opened bag of peat-free compost that I added some much drier spent soil. I then had a very messy time sorting through,  evicting a few slugs and snails, lobbing dozens of earthworms into other flower beds, and, a revolting job this, popping all the little yellow slug eggs as I went along. I won't have got them all, but I will have dented their numbers.

The instructions for the sweet peas say to make a small chip in the hard casing, on the opposite side to where the indentation for the first shoot is, I think. I hadn't heard of this before, and I will double check before I start chipping away with a knife.

We had homegrown chard for lunch; picked and cooked within the hour, with chopped shallots and garlic. Very good it was too.

Friday 12th April

 Oh yes! The first really real whole day of Spring! I was out in the morning looking around...

I didn't expect anything to change in the greenhouse at the side of the house. After all I only sowed the leeks (blue tray) peas (red tray) and hyssop seeds (black tray) yesterday. 

In the coldframe there's a gap where the biggest broad bean seedlings were. The other broad beans are coming along nicely and will go into their tubs at the weekend. The rest are the Very Slow Growing peas and lettuces, and some more lettuces I sowed earlier this week.

I've also got two rosemary cuttings and one possible tiny agapanthus in there. I use the child's watering can to do the watering. 

Is anything nicer to look at than apple blossom against a blue sky? You can just make out one of the benches under the apple tree; it catches the early morning sun...

This is what I can see when I sit beside the cold frame in the vegetable patch. I have a chair and table conveniently placed where I can sit and commune with the chard, broad beans, garlic and walking onion. The further dome is sheltering a brave display of tiny radish seedlings. The broad beans are to the left of the chard, still in shadow. They all survived their first night transplanted out in the real world.

It was just lovely being out in the sun.

When I came in, a friend had texted a message suggesting we meet up this afternoon for a coffee. So she came round here, and we sat out in the sun for a couple of hours, catching up on everything.

What a perfect day.