Sunday 3rd September - Job Done

I shall be putting August's cross stitch collaboration piece in the post to Ang tomorrow morning. It's gone 9pm and I finished stitching about ten minutes ago.

We've just been out slugging, but it's too early. Yesterday evening's jaunt round the garden with a torch was a great success and I can report that slugs appear to be as susceptible to cider as they are to beer. We'll go out again later before we go to bed. I'm still obsessing about these sneaky molluscs as I have transplanted the swiss chard now as well;

They are all looking a bit despondent at being turfed out of their pots, but hopefully they will recover. I have covered the entire surface of the pot in slug wool, and also propped up any leaves that were flopping towards the edge of the pot so the slugs and snails can't reach across. 

It was a beautiful day for being in the garden; I cleared a number of pots which had optimistic labels like 'spring onions', 'spinach', 'cauliflower' stuck in them, but after over a month no evidence of anything growing. 

The earth is so lovely and soft and crumbly that I prefer not to use gloves but stir it around with my hands - I love the feel of it. The pak choi and kohl rabi have survived overnight. The pot right at the back is labelled 'lettuce' but now only contains forget me nots. I haven't decided whether to let them stay or weed them out.

That's Aki, the cat next door. He had been an 'indoor cat' for the first year or so of his life; he was completely astonished when tentatively exploring our garden to discover other cats. He obviously knew about, and understood people, but had not met another cat since he was a kitten. It was very amusing to watch him and our elderly (sadly no longer with us) cats; he was non-plussed by our cats, and they were alarmed by him. Partly because he was a new cat, and partly because he had no idea what was going on when they hissed at him, or tried to stare him out.   

My friends in Canada were asking if we had issued our slugs with passports and sent them their way - apparently their borders are crammed full of them too....

Saturday 2nd September - brilliant day (so far)

This morning began with a morning meet up at our favourite farm shop cafe with son and daughter. Husand and they had their usual waffles, bacon and maple syrup, I had what is becoming my usual; avocado on sour dough toast. (Guess who was NOT plagued by wasps?)

After a rather ominous start to the day, weather-wise, the sun came out, so we walked over to the picnic area and played a board game in the sun - oh joy - we haven't met up for a family games night since the beginning of 2020. 

 

We are playing Ank Morpork, based on the Terry Pratchett games. I wanted to buy another set a few years ago and was astonished to find that they are available on e-bay at over £100 now; they have stopped making them (why?).

Daughter won; himself and I can barely remember the rules, let alone the winning strategies. 

After lunch was an intensive cross-stitching session, followed by an hour in the garden. With some trepidation I decided it was time to transplant my kohl rabi and swiss chard plants after all our diligent slugging.

Horrors! When I looked inside the garden bin, I could see all the snails up at the top, waiting to make their escape, but not a slug to be seen! Some, no, most of the slugs were absolute MONSTERS when we chucked them in - had the snails eaten them all? I doubt it.

I think they spend every night oozing their way under the lid, and it had been the same slugs we have been trapping and chucking every night.

There's nothing for it - we will have to take my friend's advice (she is over 80 and been a true countrywoman all her life) and 'finish them off'. But how? 'Don't ask, don't tell' can be very good advice in certain circumstances and this might be one of them.

Meanwhile I have planted out the kohl rabi;

 Each little plant is surrounded by slug wool, and I have set cider (we haven't got any beer) traps in the tub, unprotected by slug wool, and placed a cider trap at ground level. We have also put a cider trap next to the garden bin. I'm not sure why, (don't ask, don't tell, remember?) but it seemed a good idea at the time.

Since then I have read up on beer traps, how often you replenish them, what to do with the horrible contents, and, finally, why they are such a bad idea according to one website... 

this is because they attract slugs from all over the garden, and many just take one or two sips and then start on the flowers and veg! NOoooooooooo!

Tonight's slugging, and tomorrow's inspection will be nail-biting times.

In other news, I have barely used the oxygen machine at all today; while I was out walking this morning, and now, after that relatively strenuous hour in the garden, and I shall stop the machine very soon.

Friday 1st September - best laid plans

No 1 plan, to send my August Cross Country Collaboration off to Ang hasn't worked out. It's partly because having hummed and hah-ed I have decided that I DO want to fill in the white space between the motifs - and having missed the post today there's no chance of Ang getting it before Monday. Ho hum.

One serendipitous discovery is that having started filling in the white space (Yes, it was the correct decision) is that there was one line that needed a border stitched, but this would have impinged on Ang's 'Bless this Home'  piece. But, hurrah, close inspection and careful counting revealed that her picture is off-centre by a whole row!  

The picture above doesn't show the full space, but to the left of the border there are 5 squares, and to the right of the border there are 6 squares. So I have encroached by one square, making Ang' piece exactly central.

Filling in the white space is going quite quickly, I'm glad to say, just using one colour (well, two thread from different skeins) so I can track up and down the rows doing all crisses and then all crosses. No thinking required. Or not much.

So, Ang, if you are thinking about September already, firstly my apologies for delaying your start, and secondly, at least you know that I am filling the bottom right corner!

Secondly, I was going to post a photograph of Ang's lovely piece of stitching for August here. She must be a real high-speed stitcher because she appears to have all the stitching over the weekend! I'm happy to manage 50-70 stitches per hour if I am reading a chart, and can reach 100 per hour if I'm just doing large blocks of colour.  

I still haven't got me, my phone and the sewing all together, so I am 'borrowing' Ang's photo from her post; (hope you don't mind) and I really recommend you follow the link as she has written in detail all about the inspiration(s) and why she chose shades of purple.

the writing is 'tenui filo magnum texitur opus', the original motto of the company which is now DMC threads and means 'from a single thread comes great work'.

Yes indeed.

Other news - I don't know. Is slugging news? We went out again, and I took a bigger pot, and we collected at least another 20 slugs and snails. 

I'm hankering to get back to the pen and ink stuff I was doing - I've tried an idea or two but not started the next topics in the work book yet.

Books; Oh how I have been reading books this past week!

I finished

'How to run your home without help' by Kay Shrubsall, a Persephone book I have read before. This time I read it with increasing horror; daily dusting, sweeping, brushing and vacuuming carpets, washing and polishing floors, the labour of laundry ('first assemble everything you will need; soap, jelly soap, soda, buckets, brushes, bowls, make sure you have arranged plenty of hot water and set the boiler to heat, fetch in the mangle'). She fills every moment of the day with unrelenting cooking, cleaning, shopping and house work, and the evening with knitting, sewing, ironing and mending. 

and

'Cotillion' by Georgette Heyer - I snapped it up for 99p on kindle as my own copy is a well-thumbed paperback from my teenage days. I had completely forgotten the plot, which is oneof her more complicated ones. But the right people paired off in the end (as if it were ever in doubt...)

I'm still moseying through Isabella Bird's 'A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains'; an account of this intrepid lady's travels in the 1870s. Fantastic adventures and descriptive writing, but not light-weight.

and 'Coot Club' by Arthur Ransome. Rattling good yarns, which I have been reading every few decades all my life.    

Thursday 31st August - every day, in every way...

I'm feeling better and better...

At the time I would have blogged yesterday I had just about nothing to say, except that Ang's August Cross-Stitch-Collaboration (or were we calling it Cross-Country-Stitching-Collaboration - I forget) arrived late afternoon, and as usual it is awe-inspiring. I shall photograph it and share it's glory this evening, when I can get the stitching, my phone camera and the laptop all in the same place at the same time.

Other exciting things happened just before we went to bed...

(don't hold your breath - it takes very little to categorize an event as 'exciting' these days)

To begin with, this was the first evening I felt up to going 'slugging' since Friday. I noticed a day ago that those marauding molluscs had been at my three surviving pak choi, chomping on the leaves. We went out and prowled around the pots, and, Eureka! A massive snail just getting started on the pak choi. He was first into the pot (NOT a cooking pot for Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's slug and snail stew, I should add). In a few minutes we  had collected a dozen or more of assorted species and sizes and dealt with them.

Secondly, I actually remembered bout the supermoon, and opened the front door on the way to the stairs, and there it was, huge and pale and creamy-yellowy-white watching over us all in what I took to be a benign fashion.

...............

Pak choi check this morning; there they are, the little darlings, bedded down in slug-deterrent wool and surrounded by coffee grounds. The snail in question was stretching out from the edge of the tub to reach the overhanging leave - I shall take steps to thwart that mode of attack later today!

All the other tubs contain nothing except forget-me-nots and weeds, as the slugs and snails have already munched all the little cauliflower and spring onion seedlings for their suppers. I have swiss chad and kohl rabi all ready to plant out, but am strangely reluctant to bear any more mollusc-related disappointments...

This morning I am considerably improved, as long as I don't test the boundaries of the improvement too far.

The proof is in the killer sudoku test - I completed the 'expert' level without needing any of the 3 lives.

 I have spent most of the morning NOT using oxygen, until just now when I completed the arduous task of choosing 2 long-sleeved shirts, checked, 2 short-sleeved shirts, patterned, and two pairs of jeans for my father, having had an opportunity to look a what he was wearing to the hospital last week. I'll tackle shoes and slippers and a decent jacket for him next... thank heavens for mail order.

Friday 25th August - slugs in love, joy of hospital gardens

 We took my father to the hospital for a day of various out patient treatments.

Before we set off I discovered this unlovely sight. I've left it as as amall picture because it is pretty ugh..

It is two ENORMOUS slugs twined around a great blob of goo.

If I were a naturalist I might be fascinated, but I am trying to grow vegetables. So I fetched the slugging tongs and dumped them in the garden refuse bin with the rest of their mates. I don't think they even noticed. 

Then we got into the lovely lovely new car, collected my father and set off on an unknown adventure, knowing very little more than we needed to find somewhere in the 'orange wing' for a series of checks and treatments arranged at very short notice by the GP. The day ward turned out to be right next to a charming courtyard garden where we could wait in between tests, treatments etc. Being able to sit outside in lovely sunshine made all the difference.

We took turns staying with my father throughout the day. When it was my turn the courtyard had become quite hot so I moved to the dappled shade of the little summerhouse and admired the shadows on the decking made by the trellis.

There are a number of gardens in between the various wings of the hospital, maintained by volunteers. They are so appreciated by staff and patients all through the day.

We got home at about 6 after a very, very long day. All's well that ends well.

Thursday 24th August - Falling in Love Again

 Yes, it's true... we are in love (I don't mean with each other, no, that hasn't come out right. We've been married for nearly 46 years and we are most definitely still in love...)

but a new love has come into our lives.

It is a bright red Fiat 500x petrol hybrid It is smooth, polite, deferential, willing, cooperative and incredibly well behaved. We have owned it for only ten hours, and our minds are made up.

It is also an automatic; I've never driven one before. I was seriously concerned as to how I would cope. I was also very apprehensive because since Lockdown in 2020 my driving journeys, mostly to visit friends locally, could be counted on my fingers, not including thumbs, so I am seriously out of practice.

Himself drove it the twenty miles from the dealers mostly in a silence of deep concentration but occasionally saying 'oh joy' or 'that was so much easier' every mile or so.

I have driven it round our local residential roads with some success so far, in that I didn't have any scrapes, bumps or near misses. Himself sat as copilot offering encouragement as necessary. I mostly concentrated on Turning Left, but have tried Turning Right and Reversing Out Of A Cul-de-Sac. It took a couple of circuits, but I am beginning to get the sequence of 'Mirror Signal Manoeuvre' in the right order, and to be able to interpret what I see in the mirrors rather than alternately staring straight ahead or looking wildly round in all directions without registering what I see. What impressed me most is that I only tried to use the clutch pedal once! ("Tuck your LEFT foot as far back and out of the way as you can").

If I can add half an hour's driving every day in ever increasing circles, and start introducing Traffic Lights and then Roundabouts I am hopeful that I'll get back into the swing of things. After all, in my previous existence before Covid I used to travel anything up to 100 miles a day from one end of the County to another between schools, filling in the time between driving with teaching samba drumming, djembe drumming, trumpet, clarinet, flute, recorder, ukulele, guitar and sometimes piano, cello or viola!

Luckily I did not teach ALL these instruments in the same day, just half a dozen on a busier day. Loading the car used to be a mix of memory test and puzzle solving. Do I miss those days? On the whole, no. The music, the fun, the companionship, the buzz, yes. The exhausting classroom management of difficult classes, and lugging instruments and resources in and out of schools, no.

........

We didn't go out slugging last night. This morning I discovered one of my pak choi had been et. I have sprinkled coffee grounds around then next, and somehow I need to summon the energy to go slugging tonight. Ang asked what I did with the slugs and snails. I drop them into the council garden waste bin, whereupon they spend their days trying to climb up and out. The slugs sometimes manage to ooooooze their way to freedom. 

..........

Somehow half an hour's cross stitch got done this evening. Not the best time for me, but there wasn't that much left in this particular section and and just about managed to finish it without too much unpicking. I absolutely LOVE my Sarah Homfray variegated threads. You can feel the quality as you sew. The colours are beautiful with so many shades in each skein. Worth the money.

   

Wednesday 23rd August - Super powers, slugs and snails, drawings

 I'm hoping that when I wake tomorrow morning I will have acquired a super power.... what will it be? I had an infusion of zolendronic acid, a sci-fi sounding treatment for osteoporosis, and with a name like that I would expect my hair to turn day-glo pink, to to get x-ray vision or something spectacular. But if it's anything like last time around I'll wake up feeling just the same as normal. 

We were out with the torch and slugging tongs last night; it's much easier as a joint hunting expedition. Himself peers in every nook and cranny, in, on and around the pots, swooping on the unsuspecting molluscs, snatching them up in the silicone ended tongs (non-slip grip!) and dropping them into the empty flowerpot I hold at the ready. We got at least a dozen, and nearly as many the night before. Not sure if we'll go out tonight - the spirit is willing but the flesh is sleepy.

I'm just about keeping up with the August pen and ink project. The current topic is using 'value'. I have done rows and rows of exercises practising increasing decreasing shade and shadow, finishing by copying pictures from the workbook.

 

 

I think my fascination with pen and ink drawings began with the illustrations in the Arthur Ransome books. My father had accumulated a number of books in the series when he was a child, and I loved reading them over and over again and looking at the pictures. Here are two of them;