Today is my last day off work, and right now I'm not feeling ready to go back tomorrow. I can't complain. I've had 24 days off - nearly an entire month - and I'm well aware how fortunate I am. We had all kinds of plans, and sadly many of them have been abandoned through one person or another being ill. We managed to get as far as Christmas eve before Peter got ill, and then I caught it too, the day after my race, and we've both been snivelling and snuffling and coughing and spluttering ever since, staying in separate rooms, well away from each other. Still, I am trying to slowly ease myself out of illness and back into activity, and as part of that I'm trying to pin down my days, to make me remember what I've been doing. I did make a trip to see some of my family, which was lovely, although the drive wiped me out all of the following day. Closer to home, we wrapped up and wandered down an unfamiliar footpath in a familiar town, and although the weather was a bit grim, it was nice to be out, and to see the beginnings of green shoots in the ground. One day, we sneaked the chickens into the house - a rare treat under the avian flu lockdown. While Peter supervised their shenanigans, I took the opportunity of having them out of the way to clear out their run, digging several barrows of compost out and tipping it onto the veg beds, and getting soaked in the process by the fine mist. It felt good to be doing something out in the garden, even if only for an hour, and it felt good to have the run all nicely tidied up, ready for the arrival of the new chickens next weekend. It's warmer (and drier) inside the house of course, and I've been pottering about finishing the thermal blinds and painting a second coat on the kitchen. I created quite a mess in the process, but slowly things are coming together, with little corners here and there almost seeming finished. So, it's back to work for me tomorrow. From home, thank goodness - easing myself in gently.
I confess I have a new, not-so-secret plan for this year. After a lot of pondering and staring at my diary, I've realised it might just be possible for me to be at work for less than half of the days in every month this year. Wouldn't that be a thing?
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Brrr, it's been chilly this week. Still, things have been done, adventures have been had, and people have been seen. All good. On Wednesday, we met a friend at a local cafe, and bought tea and cake to have in her garden. It was lovely to see her, and I am so much enjoying the feeling of doing 'normal' things. We had to wrap up in blankets of course, but actually I'm finding one of the benefits of enforced outdoor socialising at the minute is being outdoors. We would definitely have been inside if the rules had allowed, and would have missed out on the crisp spring day, the neighbours walking past, and the birds singing (and the smell of muck spreading, but the less said about that, the better). I spent the rest of the day pottering about, some of it in the garden. Some of the beans have fallen prey to the frost this week, and I've now replaced the several layers of plastic with fleece in an attempt to stop the rest going the same way. Miraculously, a tomato seedling has appeared! I hope the rest quickly follow, and that they'll be cosy enough under their fleece blanket. I harvested the last of the leeks and kale from the garden, and made a start on processing them. Yesterday (Thursday) I decided I was going to have a productive day, and wrote an ambitious list, starting with a new morning routine that involved preparing lunch before I had breakfast. Miraculously, that got done, as did most of the other things on the list, including a five mile, extremely cold and windy, bike ride. I spent a lot of time on Thursday processing kale. There's quite a bit of it, and it was a bit of a nuisance in our tiny temporary kitchen. Some of it I rubbed with a bit of oil, salt and smoked paprika and put in the dehydrator for a few hours to make kale chips. Some I blanched and froze in little blocks, ready to pull out and throw in soup or curry or whatever. I'll do another batch of those this morning (I could only find one baking tin). There's still quite a lot left - more in the freezer, more kale chips, and I might experiment with dehydrating and powdering some, to add a nutritional boost to soups and smoothies (this has the advantage of not taking up much space...).
I thought a lot about productivity yesterday. Yes, I was productive in terms of 'doing lots of things' (although most of those things were small, pottering tasks, not big, achieve-y ones), but I was also productive in terms of producing - in this case mostly veg in the garden, and future meals. There's something satisfying about that. So there are three days left of my holiday now. I've got a list of things I want to do, of course. Today and tomorrow we have visitors - it's been raining overnight but the sun is peeking out now and I hope things dry out a little. I want to finish the kitchen ceiling (four more pieces of plasterboard to go!), and finish processing all this kale, but other than that I have no big plans. I would like to go back to work with the house reasonably tidy though, so there's a bit of a sorting and decluttering mission going on there too. Right this second, though, I'm going to put the kettle on for another cup of tea, turn the heating on to defrost my fingers, let the chickens out of their run (they've been out of their house for a couple of hours, but left in the run to avoid early morning predators, and to encourage them to eat a proper breakfast), and do a bit of crocheting. My plan to post every day for the rest of my holidays didn't last long, did it? Oh well, good job nobody's counting. Sunday was energetic. I cycled eight miles in the morning, we went for a walk in some local woodlands in the afternoon, and the evening was spent pottering in the garden, making a start on fixing one of the many walls that's fallen down. This wall separates our garden from the cows (who aren't out in the fields yet, fortunately). We propped an old gate over the gap last year, but I do want to get it fixed sooner rather than later. And it's close to the house, so handy for spending a few minutes here and there getting my eye back in with walling. On Monday we pottered off to a local town where we had pastries in the sunshine and a walk around the streets. We had a little walk around the local village in the evening too, as the light was just to nice to miss. I finally got round to a bit more DIY too - one more piece of plasterboard into the kitchen ceiling, and I sealed around the edges of another couple. Getting there (very slowly). There are four pieces left to put up before the builders arrive - I'd like to have them done and sealed before I go back to work on Monday, and preferably painted too. We'll see. Today has been all over the place. I had a very unsatisfying dentist appointment, followed by an extremely cheerful lunch in our friends' garden. Most jolly, even if we did have to wrap up in old sleeping bags against the occasional flurries of snow. The seedlings seem to have survived last night's chilly weather, although some of them are looking a little worse for wear, and they've now got an extra layer of plastic - they'd probably be happier with a heat lamp, but they won't be getting one. It seems like we've had several seasons today. The rest of the week is looking sociable. We're meeting friends for a takeaway cuppa tomorrow, and have visitors coming here on both Friday and Saturday (we've got hot water bottles and blankets ready). I'd like to finish the ceiling, and go for at least one more bike ride, and do a signposted walk around our local town that I discovered the other day.
There's that wall to finish fixing of course - I don't know whether any more will get done on that. And I've started decluttering - a project will probably last the rest of my life, so I'm not setting any goals for this week. I'm back at work on Monday, but that's also the day our favourite cafe re-opens. You can bet we'll be waiting outside when it does, hopefully first in line. After complaining that I felt I was drifting yesterday, I tried to be a bit more mindful of what I was doing for the rest of the day, and give myself a bit of purpose. At lunchtime we went into town for a couple of errands, and had a little walk around an area we've not been to before. It was good, and I'm going to see if there are any town trails or something that we might be able to follow in the future to discover new areas. It was nice to see people out enjoying the park in the sunshine - I'd forgotten we had boats on the lake, and will make an effort to hire one this summer. I made myself a healthy lunch, and had a cup of tea in the garden with the chickens. I spent much of the rest of the afternoon in the garden. The seedlings that have appeared are doing well, especially the beans and peas. No sign of the tomatoes yet though - I suspect I may have sowed them a little early. I won't be planting anything outside for a few weeks yet, but I've done a bit of preliminary weeding of the beds and paths in the veg garden. I don't dig, but I do try to remove the grass and dandelions at least. They've had home made compost on over the winter, and I'll have some more ready soon to put down before the seedlings get planted out. Bunty and Bonnie helped me with the weeding, and it was lovely to see them getting so close to me - last summer they were still very easily startled and wouldn't help with the digging at all, whereas now they'll happily stand right next to me if it means easy access to a worm. I've started cutting the hay field again, as I didn't finish it in the autumn, and to my surprise, the two rows I cut last week had dried out, so I raked up the hay to spread around the willow dome. This is willow I brought with me from our previous house, and it's taken a while to settle in, especially with so much grass competition. I'm hoping this will the year it grows properly, and I can lie in this little willow dome in the summer and look out at the view. As the evening wore on, I attempted to jump start our older car, which has had a flat battery for weeks, but after much searching, we couldn't find the jump leads, so that's a job for another day. Instead, I repaired the flat tyre on my bigger bike, and gave both of them a bit of a clean. So Saturday turned out alright after all, although I was tired and grouchy by bedtime, and I didn't sleep that well. Miraculously, the sun is still shining today, and I'm up and about early, so I think I'm going to take my newly fixed bike, and my newly acquired parking permit, and head to the old railway trails for a bit of cycling in the sunshine.
After that? More garden pottering I think. The weather is meant to get colder for the rest of the week, so it would be good to take advantage while it's nice to be outside. If you're new round here you might not realise I've been blogging for almost twelve years. Not all in the same place of course. My first blog, started in December 2008, was called Daffy's Garden, and ran until September 2011. I moved to A Cheerful Living Adventure, where I stayed until February 2015. Then I moved to Snippets of a Life, and then finally here in March 2018, just after we moved house. I'm not sure why I've moved around so much. Part of it was changing blog platforms (from Blogger, to Wordpress, and now to Weebly), and partly just that I like a change of scenery and a bit of novelty. I often look back on my old blogs, and it's nice to have a record of what I was doing day to day all those years ago. Some things are the same (gardening, knitting, reading, cafes, occasional running) and some have changed (chickens for a start). I've been looking back recently and enjoying reading those ordinary everyday posts, and so yesterday I thought I'd track a whole day, like I sometimes used to do, so I can look back on it in the future. Saturday started like most other days, going outside in my fluffy dressing gown and rigger boots to let the chickens out. Back inside to do a HIIT workout with Joe Wicks. After breakfast, we headed to a local market town for a quick sweep of the charity shops for the first time since lockdown. This used to be a favourite and very regular activity, but obviously it's not been possible lately. We went early, but not quite early enough, and some places just felt too busy. It was nice to be out with the sun shining though, and we had a bit of a wander round the town, which we also haven't done for months. One of the cafes we like to go to was open, with a space near the window, so we nipped in for a cuppa. It's hard to relax properly in a cafe when people are queuing nearby waiting for your table, but we did have an acceptable cup of tea and a bit of a read for twenty minutes. Back home - I love the drive to this town as you have to cross this little bridge which has the stream running over it. It's about as adventurous as my driving gets. We got home, made a cup of tea, and then I realised I had a couple of parcels to post. Yes, they could have waited, but they've been sitting around for long enough, so I nipped back out to the post office. Home again, and the sun was still shining (which felt like a small miracle after the amount of rain we've had lately). I spent an hour out in the garden, shifting damp hay to use as mulch on the windbreak and the raspberries, tidying up the compost area, and admiring the damsons. Back inside for lunch, and a nice cup of tea. And then back outside again - into the meadow this time. The hay I cut last week (or the week before?) has been lying getting more and more soggy, so I turned it all over to (hopefully) dry out a bit over the next couple of days. While I was working, the farmer turned up to check on his cows (there was a calf born that morning in our fields, which I'd not seen), so we stood either side of this gate for a while and had a natter. After that, I swapped the hay fork for the scythe, and cut another row of hay. I'm still going to be doing it at Christmas at the rate I'm going. The chickens spotted me eventually, so I headed back inside - heading swiftly back out again to peg out the washing. Back inside for another cuppa, and then a light rain started (of course!) so I got started on the next stage of DIY - drilling holes in the battens I cut the other day. Oh, and somehow my sister persuaded me to enter the virtual London marathon. Half an hour of that, and it had stopped raining, and was time to shut the chickens in. I gave their house and run a good clean out first and replaced all their bedding and cleaned food bowls - somehow I didn't take a picture of that, but it wasn't exactly picturesque so you're not missing much. Once they were safely in the run, I went for a wander round the veg garden to see what was ready to harvest. The peas had blown over in the wind, but I managed to pick some kale, chard, calendula and our first turnip. The dehydrator hasn't had much use since we first bought it, so I thought I'd try drying calendula flowers (not sure what I'm going to make with them yet) and some oregano. Finally I got round to making my tea (a kind of aubergine and tofu concoction). After tea, I did the washing up, crumbled the dried oregano and removed the stalks ready to store, and chopped the kale and chard to put in the fridge - I'm far more likely to use it if it's all washed and prepared, rather than having to start washing and chopping when I'm hungry, and preparing last night means that today I can just throw it in a pan. By that point it was after eight, and I was getting rather tired... I did have one last push of activity though - clearing up the mess from my chimney-sweeping exploits the other day, and trying to salvage these shoes. I bought them in Belgium years ago - I love them, but rarely wear them, and they'd been stuffed in a box and gone rather mouldy. I've wiped them over with white vinegar and we'll see what happens. By that point it was almost nine, and I was fit for nothing other than a soak in the bath.
A long, productive and satisfying day. Notably, it was also an internet-free day, which does rather increase the time available if, like me, you have a tendency to run off down internet rabbit holes when you could be doing something more useful. Hopefully this will serve as a reminder of just how much I can get done when I turn the phone and the laptop off. I enjoyed tracking my whole day - I used to do it quite often and I might start doing it again. I love to read what other people have been up to as well, so if you've done something similar please do post a link! I've been underlyingly grumpy this week, for no good reason. It's been really windy, which I always find unsettling, and I've had a sense of my days slipping away without me really doing very much. I'm trying to pin them down, to be more deliberate, to at least create a record of what I've done so I can look back and remember. Thursday was pretty cheerful. We started with a cuppa in our favourite cafe, and then I spent quite a lot of time sitting in the garden shelter, plotting and scheming. It was windy outside, but not in the shelter itself. The chickens sat with me for a while - they can be pretty settled and restful when there isn't food on offer. Thursday was also the day I finally got round to weeding the veg patch - with the chickens patrolling the perimeter looking (unsuccessfully) for a way in. I'd been pretty pleased with the lack of slug damage so far, but this last week the kale has been full of caterpillars. Any illusions I had about the chickens acting as pest control were shattered when they wouldn't even eat a caterpillar that was plonked directly under their beaks. Thursday was also the day I harvested some veg! Not much, just kale, chard and a few peas, which I cooked up later with a massive risotto. I've been slowly shifting my 'hay sponge' onto the edible windbreak to use as mulch, so I did some more of that on Thursday too. The garden (or at least the veg patch) was looking pretty tidy by the end of the day. Friday was quite different. I woke up in a bad mood, and grumped myself into an even worse one by stomping around trying to tidy up the house. Eventually it was 'suggested' that I meet a friend, and so we had lunch in a cafe near her house, and it was most cheerful indeed. We managed to lose our only set of keys for one of the cars (it seems we may have thrown them out with the recycling), and then later in the evening there was a power cut as I was trying to cook my tea. Written down in the cold light of a new day these things don't seem so bad, but they piled up on one another and by the end of Friday I was Quite Fed Up. Fortunately, sanity has been restored this morning, as a lovely locksmith-magician turned up and created a new key out of thin air, and a spare for both cars (and a spare for what I thought was a front door key, but which apparently isn't). I've been pottering outside today, but the weather is a mix of sunshine and showers and I keep having to dash back inside. I did stay out long enough to find some windfalls though - half of our apple crop and all of our plums (er, one). Sad casualties to the weather. I'm never gloomy for long though. This afternoon I'm off to meet some friends for a cuppa in a place I've not been to for years, and later we have a friend coming to camp in the garden. I've got some adventures planned for next week, and it's nice to have something specific to look forward to. All good.
Goodness me I'm tired. I'm having a week off work at the minute, and I already feel like I need another week off to recover. I don't think I've been so busy for a long time. I started the week with a trip to see my sister's new house, and to walk along the beach with my mum. I think this is the first time I've seen the sea for a year. So nice to see them all, and a lovely day, but more driving than I've done in months. After all that sitting down, Sunday felt like the time for a walk, and the sun was shining, so I donned my sandals and walked to our favourite cafe. It's only just over four miles, so it feels absurd that it was so tiring. The first half was on footpaths and tracks, but the second half was all on the road. It was lovely to be able to stop and photograph the scenery that I so often drive past, but crossing and re-crossing the road to avoid blind bends, and hopping on and off the verge to avoid cars passing too close, did get rather tiresome, and I'm not sure this is a walk I'll be doing too often, despite the views. I met Peter at the cafe, so fortunately I didn't have to walk home as well. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon out in the garden, strimming the grass. I have a love/hate relationship with strimming. Ideally, I'd manage all of the grass in the garden with a combination of the scythe and the push along lawnmower, and most of the year I do this. However, neither of those things is really suitable (in my hands at least) for the narrow strip of verge down the sides of the drive. The pushalong lawnmower doesn't deal well with the bumpy ground that is everywhere other than the small front garden, and the scythe is in need of peening (of which more later) so isn't at its most effective right now. So I braved the strimmer, after a small tantrum while I tried to remember how to start the damn thing. Eventually we came to an uneasy truce, and after three or four hours with headphones and visor on, audio book playing in my ear, I was pretty pleased with the results. I'm not one for a super tidy garden - good job really as I have neither the time to keep properly on top of ours, nor the money to pay someone else to. I quite like a bit of long grass, and don't really cut beyond a small bit of lawn that we use for picnics for most of the year. But after my (so far) annual attack with the strimmer, everything does seem rather calmer and a lot bigger. There was a reason for all my strimming - a friend arrived on Monday afternoon to camp with her family. They'd been planning to go to a campsite, but for various reasons had decided they weren't happy with communal facilities, so I'd offered a spot at the end of our garden. We have a separate toilet and sink, and plenty of space, and of course our deluxe outdoor shelter which got plenty of use, especially in the evening. They left on Wednesday, and there was just enough time to sanitise the spare loo before our next guest arrived (just one this time, and just for a short visit). Today I popped to meet a friend for ice cream outside another cafe, and now one of Peter's friends is here (I'm hiding while they talk about guitars).
I had all kinds of plans for this week. Some things I've done (mostly the ones that involve other people), but others I've not even started. Right now I don't have any appointments tomorrow, and it looks like the rain will have stopped by then, so I might have a day of garden pottering. The list of jobs is getting longer and longer, and I only have another three days off work. No jobs tonight though - I'm anticipating another evening in the outdoor shelter watching the sun set over the hills. This has felt like the busiest weekend in a long time. Some of our Friday visitors stayed over, and the others joined us on Saturday morning before heading off to visit a local park. We spent much of the rest of Saturday sat under our festival shelter, reading and dozing. Saturday was a big day for the new chickens - we let them out to properly free range for the first time. There are no chicken-proof fences between us and that view, and when they headed into the long grass I was slightly concerned we were never going to see them again. But chickens are home-loving creatures, and never seem to stray too far. We spent a lot of time outside, and they spent most of the time hanging round with us, with a wary eye on the other chickens (who are still giving a nasty peck occasionally, but are learning to tolerate them at a distance). Yes, I did let them into the veg patch for a while - I thought it would provide a nice distraction for the older ones, and encourage the new ones not to go too far away. It did confirm why I usually keep them locked out though. So they pottered about, and Bessie had a bit of a sunbathe, which was very nice to see as she's clearly not feeling well at the minute. Poor old Bessie. Vets on Wednesday, so she just needs to hang in there until then. When they'd finally gone into their run for the evening, I took my bike out again. I confess it's the last thing I felt like doing, but I'd enjoyed the ride the previous morning and promised myself I'd go again, trying a slightly different route. Down the normal trail for a couple of miles, yes, but then off onto the quiet back roads. I was tired, but I was so very glad I went. Sunday was a day of parks. I got up early to join a group of women for my first run with other people since lockdown began. Up until the middle of March, I'd been doing a 5k programme with a local running club, and we were about to start going further when all activity stopped. We've kept in touch, and a couple of the women had been running together in the last couple of weeks. This was the first time I'd joined them though - five of us ran all stretched out around the local park rather earlier in the morning than I'd usually be running, and it was great. After that, an exciting trip to Sheffield. I had lunch in a park with a friend and her children, and then met another friend and we ended up in another park near my old house. Such a lovely afternoon, and so very nice to see people, but by the end of it the sun, and the driving, and probably a bit of dehydration had caught up with me and I had rather a nasty headache. I got home to find Peter had been cleaning and shifting things in the chicken run, which now feels nicely spacious with plenty of places to perch and hide, and somewhere for both of us to sit too. We had two more small eggs from the new ladies (no sign of any from the older ladies this week I don't think). There are a few more raspberries on the bush, and I should probably pick those before the chickens notice them. Back to work today, although I confess I am extremely ready for a week or two off now, if only to recover from the weekend...
Yesterday started with what is rapidly becoming one of my favourite Friday morning activities - a bike ride down the High Peak Trail. It's the best place to get a flat bike ride round here, and I don't mind it being the same out and back route each time as the seasons always change, and I'm mostly there for fresh air and exercise anyway. Yesterday there were plenty of wild flowers. I like to go early in the morning, partly because the car park is free (which didn't matter when I had an annual parking permit, but does matter now I have to find change after months of not using cash), and partly because it's so quiet - I only saw two sets of dog walkers in five miles. I was home by 9.15, and we spent the rest of the morning preparing for our visitors. We planned to stay outside, even though we're allowed to have people inside now - six visitors, including small children (they're all in a support bubble together) plus us seemed a little too many to handle inside at the minute. Bessie came inside for a while - she's swelling up with fluid again and off to the vets on Wednesday, and in the meantime seems to have done something to her foot. It can't be that bad because she's still walking on it, but yesterday she looked rather gloomy about the whole thing. I attempted to catch her and have a look at it in the mirror, but she wasn't impressed, and the implant is causing her to moult so feathers were falling out everywhere. I left her alone in the end, and after standing in a corner for an hour or so she toddled off outside quite happily. I made food (including a very quick gooseberry jam) and Peter re-worked yesterday's shelter in the garden. When we've done this type of thing before, we've put sheets of plastic down under the blankets, but this time we had the ingenious idea of spreading out a bale of hay. It worked really well to keep us warm and comfortable, although of course now we'll be pulling hay out of the blankets for weeks. We had a lovely afternoon of eating and chasing Rusty the chicken - she is by far the most tolerant of small children and they often ask for her by name. Beaky is still annoyed about the new chickens, and not much interested in people anyway, Bessie is poorly, and the three new ones haven't been properly let out at all yet, so those five were all shut away for their own good. Rusty played along nicely and got plenty of treats in return. She even let the new chickens go to bed without too much pecking.
We lit a fire and sat under the shelter while the sun went down, and it was a lovely end to the day. I'm writing this on Friday morning, and remembering just how much I used to love having Fridays off. I usually try to take a few Fridays off throughout the summer (like today) but it's just not the same as having a four day week every week. I'm working towards having Fridays off again, and as far as I'm concerned, it can't come soon enough. Anyway, yesterday was another long working day, although less arduous than the rest of the week. A colleague and I arranged a virtual 'writing retreat' for ourselves - nothing fancy, we just checked in by video at set points in the day and shared what we were doing. It was SO nice to see her, and it really did feel like we were working together (even though we were working on completely separate things), and I got lots done. It was still a long day though. We finished our writing stint at 4pm, and I remembered a deadline I'd missed at lunchtime (oops). Then I realised I was taking today off, so there were a couple of things I wanted to finish before the weekend. Before I knew it, it was 7.30, and a friend was ringing for a much-needed chat. After that we went to the supermarket - not exactly my favourite thing to do but needs must. Anyway, the most exciting thing that happened yesterday was that we had our first egg from the new chickens! Bonnie I think - I saw her coming out of the hen house at lunchtime. Well done Bonnie. It's slightly smaller and less speckledy than the ones from the older hens, but it's recognisably an egg, and it was even laid in the nest box! In less exciting hen news, Rusty has started pecking the younger hens while they're trying to get into the hen house at night. This is most vexing, as they'd all started to go to bed together nicely, regardless of their animosity during the day. Last night she was so persistent that I had to take her out of the hen house and chuck her into the outside run while the others went to bed, then plonk her in separately at the other end of the hen house when everyone else had settled down. Hope they sort it all out soon because I'm quite bored of chicken squabbling now.
Anyway, we have visitors coming this afternoon. Peter spent a couple of hours yesterday building a shelter, but now apparently the wind is blowing in the wrong direction so it's going to have to be rebuilt. I might ban all future visitors until the weather is more reliable. |
Hello!Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Jenni, and I write here about our new foray into country living, which includes growing food, knitting, baking, wandering around the fields, and seeing which local cafe serves the best cake. Categories
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