Thursday

Good morning.  Yesterday was a real mixture of weather.  Heavy rain, drizzle, dull and dry and even some sunshine.  Cold though - the heating clicked on again!  The sun is shining at the moment but already the clouds are gathering so more rain might be on the way, you never know!

While I've been focusing on the allotment, my garden has been doing its own thing rather nicely.  The clematis Ooh La La has shot up and is loaded with flower buds, way, way more than last year.  It should be a picture soon.

The strawberries seem to be smothered with flowers too although they won't all turn into fruit, I expect.  Nicely promising for June/July.
This is just one of the plants.

The middle bed has flowers and they are all doing well.  Very little colour yet but lots of promising growth.  It doesn't look great because of the bulbs dying back but the geranium, lupins, lavender, fuchsia, delphinium, irises and pinks should come into their own fairly soon.

And the herbs are doing great.

Personal training was very good.  Because of the shoulder/neck issues, we are doing half an hour twice a week and taking things carefully.  Very few problems yesterday, I was just starting to 'feel' it by the end but nothing sore.  The other half is tomorrow.

Then I got a message from Val saying 'want a chat this afternoon?' to which, of course, I agreed.  And just to cap that, the web-cam thingy I ordered over a month ago turned up so I was able to give it a test run on the PC.  So much better than the laptop with a bigger screen and much better sound.  I'm so glad I splashed out on it.
It was great to catch up on Val's doings and to hear about her family (all well so far).  Her oldest daughter is a head teacher so, of course, she's working all the hours of the day and night, providing appropriate activities for the children in her care at the moment.

Today was the day I was going to Milestones Museum with Jackie.  Obviously, that's not happening at all now and there's nothing else in the diary so I'm looking forward to a really slow and lazy day.  I have a lengthening shopping list but it can wait.

Something energetic - well, I have a feeling this isn't going to be a particularly energetic day; the allotment certainly won't need weeding and it's too wet to faff around with weeding, putting support canes up, etc, etc.

Something in house/garden - not exactly the house but yesterday, because the bins are emptied today, I wheeled it round to the garage and started sorting out the rubbish inside.  I might do a bit more today although perhaps put it into rubbish bags in a corner for a fortnight, just in case the bin space is needed for something else (it might be).  The other thing is to make sure the house is ready for the cleaners tomorrow.

Something social - probably a chat with Beth,  The new web-cam is very good although it doesn't always talk to the PC straight away and I don't know enough to know what to do about that.  No worries!

Something entertaining - I have loads of stuff recorded so won't go short on entertainment.  We should hear what the Loyd-Webber performance is today as well.

Something creative - I had big problems finding crochet fruit/vegetable patterns to actually download.  There seem to be some on Pinterest but I find that place very, very confusing and can't work out how to actually get to them.   However, good old YouTube came to the rescue and I'm half way through a cabbage!  From what I can see, there are three or four basic shapes and then it's all about colours and little add-ons.  For example, this cabbage can be a cauliflower with a white centre or a lettuce, the centre part, made a little longer, would be an apple or an orange, the longer shapes could be leeks, pears, aubergines, etc.  I'm jotting down the pattern as I make it up from YouTube and I'd really like to work through some of them today.
It will be fun!
Here's a screen shot of the cabbage ( cute, isn't it?) and the link to the clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG0KPhawGMo

Have a great day  xx