In the long run

 What with gardening and "tidying up" my books and covers, I'm a tad busy which is just as well as it helps to get over the big gap there is in our household once again. Those who've never had a dog cannot imagine how silent and empty the house is without that doggy presence,

I haven't gone for a walk since last Sunday, but I have been in the garden every day. Pruning overgrown buddleias and digging up crocosmia that has overtaken everything else in the vicinity. Next it will be the Michaelmas daisies, but at the moment they provide a wonderful contrast to the autumn colours of the Virginia creeper.

Next, we are planning to take down an apple tree that is getting far too big for the size of garden we have and only produces tiny little crab apples - I think it was a wild seed anyway! Also, a laburnum, for the same reason. We will still have another laburnum in a different part of the garden. It does look lovely when in bloom.

The garden will look very bare throughout the winter but will be beneficial in the long run.

NB The Elsdon Affair is free for a few days from today. Why not read and review?

This is not a lounging holiday

 

11^th September

More gunshots this morning. A hunter parked at the end of the lane, and I didn’t want to take Perla out while he was firing over the fields. The owners of the mill tell stories of hunters shooting each other more than the game they are chasing, which sounds both reassuring, thinking of the wildlife, and a little worrying when considering our own safety. We know the man who, with the help of his dog, tracks down the animals they do injure but don’t kill. He makes sure they do not suffer.

We’re starting on the roundup of “last tasks” – shaking out beds, cushions, sofas, sweeping floors, dusting, last minute washing of socks and knickers to get us home feeling clean. Dh has trundled the BBQ down to the Earth Room, (which I am told has now been renamed the West Room) and is currently out on the tractor cutting the grass. I am still dead-heading lavender. Tomorrow the Great Packing Adventure begins.

The heat has been so intense these three weeks with all but two days in the high thirties that working after 11.30 was impossible, so there are some things we did not get done that we would have liked to do. Our holidays here are not the lounge around the pool kind. Dh sanded and revarnished or Danish-oiled the fence around the pool and the balcony fence. I pruned the garden that skirts the pool (and got well and truly bitten doing it!) and we both hacked away at the vegetation so there is a wider view of the field from the bolly. The pictures are a Before and After record. We wanted to trim the laurels at the back of the mill, take some of the ivy off the trees and tidy the creeper in the east patio, but it wasn't to be. 

Rain...

Two hours gardening in brilliant sunshine this morning between 9 and 11 o’ clock. We’ve cleared the lower patio, which was slowly disappearing under the plants there and now our only problem is what to do with the cuttings and weeds produced. (I’ll add pictures tomorrow.) Then the rain came down, so we withdrew into the shady interior of the mill and settled down with a cup of tea while we watched the space craft land somewhere in Russia. A blackbird with a beak full of worms is sheltering under a leafy branch and I don’t blame him, because when the rain comes down it comes with some force. Rain is forecast for most of the afternoon, but promises improvement over the next few days. I’ll get on with writing during these dull spots.

I checked my blog for last year and found that the farmers had cut the hay by 5^th June, so they are well behind this year. The fields are waterlogged in low-lying areas and none of the local meadows have been cut. The grass doesn’t even look as high as it should be. Walking down the drive to the road the sound of the water pouring over the dam is quite clear – usually I can’t hear it at all. Tim has given up splodging in the stream because it comes well up his chest and he doesn’t like that. He likes it at ankle or knee level!

Back ache blues

I've put off blogging today because I'm disenchanted with everything. You name it, I don 't like it. Now, this state of affairs may not last - in fact, I hope it doesn't. It's a good thing I'm not critiquing today!

Several months ago I had a fall when out with Tim. I turned my ankle on the curb hidden by grass at the precise moment he took off like a streak of lightning for some unknown delight several yards away. Result? I crashed down shoulder and hip on the tarmac path. It must have looked spectacular, for a gentleman walking some distance away ran  up to ask if I was OK. Tim, of course, licked my face like a concerned dog would
Anyway, it jarred something in my spine and I finally got tired of the aches and the morning stiffness - in fact, getting out of a chair of an evening ment I walked at a crazy angle for a while. I booked an appointment to see Dr Melrose.
He's an osteopath rather than a chiropractor, according to my local GP. He's good, very good. One, or perhaps two visits, should be enough, he says. I'm always afraid he'll have retired when I really need him. He doesn't agree with these modern practitioners who require patients to visit every other week. No need for it, he says. I've been precisely three times in the last sixteen years, including the visit I made this week, and each time he has cured the problem. He can deal with the mechanical problems, but insists I must undertake to keep my spine supple so that  future falls will not be so punishing. Five movements, thats all it takes. I know them off by heart, and they are very simple. I am doing them religiously at the moment. I'm also sitting here with a heated bean bag wrapped around my spine to ease the soreness following the manipulation.

It probably wasn't a good idea to help out in the garden today while dh took a chain saw to several overgrown cottoneasters and a thorn tree that was threatening to break the fence.  By the end of the day, in spite all our hard work, we still had a lawn full of spiky thorn branches. They'll have to be chopped up and taken to the tip tomorrow. Tim is wondering why he's only had one walk today.

Pic - waterlogged fields and the shifting light on the local countryside where I walk with Tim

Easter lambs

Since it is Easter Weekend and there's such good weather about at the moment, no one can bear to be indoors, so let me just wish everyone a happy time over this mini-holiday.

We went for a three hour walk yesterday and I took lots of pictures, as I usually do. The weather was hot and pleasant, but the horizon faded out in a strange cloudy mist.

If we're not walking, then I'm in the garden - working, I hasten to add. I've planted out lupins and sweet peas grown from last years seed, even though we don't usually plant things out until May here in the north. The winer's collection of weeds are in the compost now, and after the first day, my back didn't ache too much! We're always a fortnight behind the south of England as far as the growing season is concerned. But the weather has been a full fortnight or more ahead of itself this year, so hopefully my little seedlings will survive.

I'm still writing, but not as much as usual. Finally killed off my character. Gulp. Now I have to deal with the aftermath. I don't know how authors can write really harrowing stories. Heavens, I've only killed off a minor character and I put it off for a fortnight, and really didn't like writing it. So if authors write of truly horrible things, the echoes they feel in their lives must be terrible. I don't like reading about nasty things either. There's enough horror and hate in the real world without taking it to bed to read before I fall asleep. T'would give me nightmares.