Aberdeen in Spring

The EFG went for a walk yesterday with some of her friends and she sent me some lovely shots of the scenery this morning.

Almost makes me wish I could pop up there for the day!

I am so glad that she has found some countryside to enjoy as I was a little worried that she would spend all her time in the city and forget what colour green was!

Operation Downsize continues

I downsized our house's population as the EFG left again to back to uni in Aberdeen.........but she'll be back soon so that doesn't really count.

Operation Downsize has continued today with the last of the lavender bushes being pulled up, and the rehoming of all of the chickens.  Beryl was just the start.  Her parent flock of Gold Partridge Orpingtons has been found a loving home in a nearby town with a friend of my sister, who has had chickens before but had been down to her last three or four and was happy to take on some new ones.  They left this afternoon and then my friend from church came this evening to take the last ones: five black hybrid ladies and five Brown Sussex ladies will tomorrow be enjoying a big grassy field at the other end of the village - they will think that they are in heaven!

We are now chicken-less.  I don't think that I will always be chook-free but I think that our chicken keeping is on hold for a while now.  I shall miss them in the garden and my cups of tea in the sunshine will be quieter and less entertaining without being able to watch their interactions and antics.  I shall definitely look for more GPOs when I resume chicken keeping, even if it is in my dotage!

And the next stage begins - I have a huge strip of land to redevelop now and to make it look like garden again......this may take some time.  If the sun is co-operative tomorrow, I shall take some "before" photos which I hope to be able to compare with some "after" shots later in the year, if all goes to plan.  The garden has to look the part when we come to put the house on the market, whether that is later this year or next.  Next, probably!

The cheapest way to redevelop the land will be for me to do the work.  However, I think we are going to need a rotavator and I don't have one, so I may need to get some help in.  I need some work doing on the fencing as well, so I have thought about asking several people to quote for the job as one thing.  I'm going to start on the tidying work tomorrow anyway and see how I get on.

The EFG was back in her room just after midnight last night - I stayed awake to wait for a text to be sure she was home safely.  I just about had my eyes propped open with matchsticks, but I managed it!

Hope you have a great weekend - see you tomorrow xx

Begging your pardon...

please may I be excused?

You'll have noticed that I have not been here quite as much just lately.  Sorry about that!

Sometimes, there's just TOO much going on in real life that there isn't time to tell you all about it.

I've been digging up old lavender bushes, knitting hats, watching films and generally enjoying the EFG's company whilst she's been here, visiting with my Dad and MB and UJ this afternoon, helping UJ plant potatoes and sow grass seed.......doing some work on the phones and spending two and a half hours at a school meeting this morning also got in the way a little...

The EFG is back to Aberdeen tomorrow - she leaves here in the afternoon and will arrive back at her hall just before midnight - she'll be e-x-h-a-u-s-t-e-d!  On the other hand, I might get more sleep when she's gone as she had us watching a Hugh Jackman film last night called Prisoners - I thought it was a nice murder mystery and it turned about to be verging on the horror genre and then I had a nightmare about being abducted!

I'm really hoping to get back into a more regular routine next week - just for the rest!

Hope you are enjoying the sunshine - it has been glorious here today x

Catching up

Well, it may have been pouring when I got up on Saturday morning but by lunchtime, the skies were blue and the wind was whistling the clouds across the sky pretty quickly.  The weekend passed by too quickly but we enjoyed it!

We did some of this:

(old photo - motorhome in the background is long gone!)

and this

as well as some of this

and I even found time to put my feet up in the verandah, in the sun, with one of these

(image from amazon.co.uk)

Today the weather has been better in that it has been a lot less windy than it was at the weekend, and we have had our "last" day of the holidays.  The YFG is back at school tomorrow, and then we have only three sleeps until the EFG is off.  The FH's cousins came over to see us this afternoon, and we had a lovely chatter over a cuppa.  We have also had to go to town today to the optician for the EFG to sort out her glasses.

The YFG has spent every spare minute today finishing her Textiles GCSE coursework to hand it in tomorrow - not that she's a bit last minute, or anything!!

Thanks for your comments - it is always lovely to hear from you.

Who did that?

(image from youtube.com)

What a change in the weather today!  We had a gorgeous day here yesterday with blue skies and sunshine, and I line dried two loads of washing - it looked lovely blowing in the slight breeze.

This morning: raindrops lashing at the window and a howling wind again.....more like autumn, and rather chilly.

I'll be content to stay indoors today now, and will probably even light the fire later on.

Stay warm!

In praise of daughters

The EFG has been sitting at the dining table tonight, doing a two week menu plan and doing an online order from Sainsbury's to be delivered on the morning after she returns to Aberdeen next week - forward thinking or what!  She does work the opposite way from me, in that she plans what she wants to eat and then shops, whereas I look at what I have in and add bits and pieces to pad out what we have and make meals from that, but she is eating really good vegetarian food and building up a repertoire of interesting recipes.  Whilst I do think that she could make more economic choices sometimes [halloumi, watercress and butternut squash are not the cheapest of ingredients] she is saving some dosh by not eating meat, so I suppose it balances out in the long run.  Jack Monroe's books will have to come out when she is home at the summer break for a longer period to give her some more inspiration.  She's even taking some of the Approved Foods cup a soups from my stash back with her.....

They have both been shopping today - on the train to Peterborough - and the YFG has bought herself a pair of nude-coloured heels to wear at the prom, and a little clutch bag.  She had me in hysterics earlier in the week when she, quite out of the blue, asked, "Where do you think I could buy a clutch?" and I immediately wondered why she wanted to buy part of a car.....She's done well today and bought reasonable quality items at decent prices - the shoes were about £17.99 I think - and they made use of the EFG's student discounts in some of the shops too.  She is unlikely to get much wear out of the shoes so she was sensible not to spend too much on them - although I dare say some people could have sourced shoes for less.

And me?  Well, I have been working again today, doing the laundry, catching up on some phone calls and letter-writing [forgot that the FH had some shares till a letter came this morning about them and so I have had to write a letter about that, not that they are worth much!] and then had a break and sat knitting in the sun.  The YFG went to school for a revision session and I picked her and her friend up at 2pm, so I was out for a short while on taxi duty.  We seem to have done quite a lot today...no wonder I am getting weary.

The weekend is here again and so I am hoping to get out into the garden again tomorrow, but I also have a service to prepare for Sunday so that must be the top priority tomorrow.  I know I shall look longingly out of the window so the earlier I get started and finished, the better.  Hope you all have a great weekend x

Back to work today

Back to the phones today...

(image from dailymail.co.uk)

Somehow only having two days to do before I get the weekend again is uplifting.

Plans abound at this end of the week. The EFG is off to Cambridge with a friend from school here, and they will be mooching around, spending time together more than anything else as I don't think that there is actually much on her shopping list.

The YFG will be busy revising again today - she will be in school tomorrow for a science revision day. She has a friend in the village who is also going so we are sharing lifts.  I think I am on afternoon pick-up duty.

The garden is looking smarter and better cared for after the last few days.  The woodwork has been treated, there are seeds sown and veg beds weeded.  The sunshine has really got us in the mood for the gardening season.

There has been near-hourly mutterings along the lines of "when are we going shopping?!" and "there's nothing to eat" to which I have firmly replied that we are shopping at the weekend and there is plenty to eat in the cupboards, even if most of it is not instant, out of the packet kind of stuff.  There was a bit of a mutiny yesterday in that they decided to walk down to the village shop and bought bourbon biscuits from their own funds, and since the YFG had to send a parcel, that was two jobs done in one and some exercise to boot!

My purse has been firmly closed since we returned from Bletchley on Saturday [apart from my Sunday offering, of course] and will remain so until I go shopping, again on Saturday.  Money-saving at it's most basic!