It's back to school now. Properly back to school, I mean, into the usual curriculum stuff which, this half term, is rather good and interesting for the children. It's always a good sign when the teacher is looking forward to the work!
Yesterday was a very pleasant day and I do feel thoroughly rested now. I was very bad in the evening and tried out a web site called Just Eat, which has local takeaways under a sort of 'umbrella' and where you can order and pay online and then they deliver (assuming the order is over a certain amount). I went Indian and it was jolly tasty so I guess I will be using them again. It was interesting to note that quite a posh local place is listed there so I'll give that a go at some point.
Better get started, I suppose. The work is planned, the breakfast is last night's leftovers - weird but rather tasty - and I need to iron something reasonably neat to wear. Have a good day!
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Monday, 2 May 2011
Monday morning and yum yum
I found four very over ripe bananas in the fruit bowl this morning. Not wanting to throw them away, I Googled around and found a very simple recipe for banana cake which is now baking in the oven and starting to smell rather good.
The cake took three of them so I looked in the fridge and found some double cream that needed using up, some blueberries and sone strawberries. So I blended up the remaining banana with strawberries, blueberries, cream, milk and some honey and it's made the most gorgeous smoothie ever - quite a lot too, so that's my healthy eating out of the window today. Smoothies are thought to be healthy but this one ain't, not with the cream! But yum yum all the same.
The cake took three of them so I looked in the fridge and found some double cream that needed using up, some blueberries and sone strawberries. So I blended up the remaining banana with strawberries, blueberries, cream, milk and some honey and it's made the most gorgeous smoothie ever - quite a lot too, so that's my healthy eating out of the window today. Smoothies are thought to be healthy but this one ain't, not with the cream! But yum yum all the same.
Monday morning: Sage
I have two purple sage bushes. They were originally planted, not for herbal purposes, but because of their leaf colour and fragrance. Over the years they have grown and grown and become pretty huge and I have loved the way they have trailed over the edge of the beds and down. However, they're getting too much now so yesterday I had a go at chopping one of them back. I'm no expert but I was quite pleased with the result, so today I'm having a go at the other one. I'm sure you can tell which is which in the photos above!
Oh - and they help to make the most delicious Christmas stuffing - so they're more than merely decorative.
Monday morning: picture post
It's so lovely and sunny this morning that I thought I would have coffee in the garden. I treated myself to a big pot of fresh coffee (not instant) and meandered outside, only to find that it's actually pretty chilly with a very fresh breeze a-blowing, not at all comfortable for sitting and drinking coffee. So I took a few quick photos and came back in.
Here are some of the photos:
Still pretty, still with cheeky faces following the sun around from side to side.
The perennial wallflowers are doing really nicely now. I'm so glad I replaced the old, woody ones.
This is the herb bed to the left of the garden. Not completely herbs, of course, there's a bush, some hostas, heuchera and the euphorbia, plus, when I get them in, some cosmos. But there is thyme, rosemary, oregano, chives and parsley and the mint I will probably kill is in the greeny-blue pot to the side. There's a great big gap in the middle and I'm not entirely sure what to put there in the longer term.
This is the middle bed. It looks a bit scruffy at the moment because the blue and white bells and the other bulbs are all dying back, but there's exciting stuff coming up: campenulas, lilies, irises, pinks, lupins, nerines . . . well, I find it exciting anyway. A miracle every spring.
And this is the bed on the shady side of the garden with colour mostly being provided by the different coloured foliage. See those curly 'canes' - that's where the sunflowers will be and they have definitely grown considerably. Behind the bush that thinks it's a tree (which is getting another chop come the autumn as it's sending up new growth right from the middle bottom which will be the basis for next year's bush)I will probably plant some delphiniums. And the strawberries are in that black pot to the right, close to the very much pruned back sage.
Here are some of the photos:
Still pretty, still with cheeky faces following the sun around from side to side.
The perennial wallflowers are doing really nicely now. I'm so glad I replaced the old, woody ones.
This is the herb bed to the left of the garden. Not completely herbs, of course, there's a bush, some hostas, heuchera and the euphorbia, plus, when I get them in, some cosmos. But there is thyme, rosemary, oregano, chives and parsley and the mint I will probably kill is in the greeny-blue pot to the side. There's a great big gap in the middle and I'm not entirely sure what to put there in the longer term.
This is the middle bed. It looks a bit scruffy at the moment because the blue and white bells and the other bulbs are all dying back, but there's exciting stuff coming up: campenulas, lilies, irises, pinks, lupins, nerines . . . well, I find it exciting anyway. A miracle every spring.
And this is the bed on the shady side of the garden with colour mostly being provided by the different coloured foliage. See those curly 'canes' - that's where the sunflowers will be and they have definitely grown considerably. Behind the bush that thinks it's a tree (which is getting another chop come the autumn as it's sending up new growth right from the middle bottom which will be the basis for next year's bush)I will probably plant some delphiniums. And the strawberries are in that black pot to the right, close to the very much pruned back sage.Only a little garden, but I get a lot of fun out of it at the moment.
Sunday, 1 May 2011
Sunday evening
. . . and I've not long finished watching Doctor Who (repeat from last night), this time with the screen setting right so that all the subtitles could be seen. I don't know why I didn't realise that it was wrong yesterday evening. I thought they'd just made a right mess of the subtitles with the result that I really couldn't follow the story at all. I have to say it made a lot more sense this evening (thank goodness). Who'd be hard of hearing, eh?
It's been a gentle day. I did go to the garden centre at one point, which proved to be more expensive that I had expected it to be, because the petrol warning light came on so I stopped off at Sainsbury's to fill up - and I did fill up this time seeing as I have recently been paid. Very, very expensive, that was! When I got home I did a bit of clipping and cutting back and generally tidying up, scattered a few slug pellets around the hostas and the baby lupins and generally took it easy whenever there was a back twinge with the result that it's really not feeling too bad at all now. I had bought some mint and some parsley, so the parsley went into the herb bed and the mint into a nice big pot. I'm dreadful with mint - I kill it off every year and every year I optimistically buy some more and hope.
I've planted three sunflowers in the bed by the big hedge separating my house from next door's. It's a bit of a dark spot and everything leans towards the light, but I am hoping that the nice curly wurly metal 'canes' I have stuck into the ground next to each one to fasten each growing sunflower to will mean that they will grow upright with their heads always facing into the garden. We will see!
Photo: the baby sunflowers - I swear they have grown considerably since I took the photo this morning! Not a terribly exciting picture, is it?
Sunday morning later on
Aren't strawberry flowers pretty? And there's several promising looking baby strawberries too. These are the ones DD gave me for my birthday present last year and, amazingly, I've managed not to kill them! Yet . . .
Sunday morning
White rabbits and a pinch and a punch for the first of the month!
There, that's got the traditional bit over and done with.
Yesterday was a bit of a nothing day. Having cancelled my family visit and also having cancelled George's weekly gardening hour, I managed to rest and relax my way through the day, being very careful most of the time and, as a result, not attracting too many painful twinges.
I did rather foolishly go out and plant a few things, which was perhaps not a terribly good idea, but I was glad to get them into the beds and the aches died down again.
The weather was glorious though, wasn't it? Warm and sunny but not too hot. Just the thing for an extended weekend. And there's still two days to go.
There, that's got the traditional bit over and done with.
Yesterday was a bit of a nothing day. Having cancelled my family visit and also having cancelled George's weekly gardening hour, I managed to rest and relax my way through the day, being very careful most of the time and, as a result, not attracting too many painful twinges.
I did rather foolishly go out and plant a few things, which was perhaps not a terribly good idea, but I was glad to get them into the beds and the aches died down again.
The weather was glorious though, wasn't it? Warm and sunny but not too hot. Just the thing for an extended weekend. And there's still two days to go.
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