Thursday

 Good morning, everyone.  Was it mild your way yesterday?  It was here, very mild, cloudy, light wind, no excuses not to garden!!   It look as if today is going to be very much the same too.  I missed the sun but at least it wasn't damp and it certainly wasn't too windy.

At last, finally, I managed to get a bit of motivation together and gathered together gloves, secateurs and various digging tools and attacked the garden.  Starting is often the hardest bit, don't you think?  Once I'd got going, it all just flowed with a break for breakfast, a break for coffee and a break for lunch.  I guess I did around three hours of work and now it's a lot better.  All the things I should have done late autumn and all the things that should be done now have all been done.  The ornamental grass cut right down, the autumn raspberry canes removed, I was ruthless with the oregano, the strawberry bed is now tidy, the clematis cut back, the fuchsias . . .  oh, you get the idea.  Then I went round the front and did the same there although that only took around half an hour as it wasn't so bad.
The brown bin is pretty full (collection next week) and all the pots are stacked neatly in a far corner, the rubbish is in the black bin for collection today and it was all very satisfying.

What is really nice is that now that all the old wood, etc, has been removed, there are so many things coming up.  Geraniums, mint, bulbs (obviously), the clematis has tiny green side shoots, there are swelling buds . . . spring is very definitely on the way.

It was also very good exercise!

Then I drove off to personal training and that, also, was great.  Lots of laughs amidst the hard work.  Lindsey had to change the time temporarily from midday to later and I'm finding the current time works a lot better for me.  I mentioned this and we've changed it permanently as it made no difference to Lindsey's schedule.  I was finding that it cut the day in half and meant that anything I did in the morning had to be curtailed in order to get there on time so I'm very happy about that.

We had a lovely sunset as I drove back from Lindsey's so, as soon as I got in, I grabbed the camera and shot out the back to see what I could get.  True to the spirit of AYWMC, I tried various shutter settings and got a variety of shots.  It's really interesting what the camera sees - it was nothing like the below to my eyes - very colourful but lighter and not so dramatic.  The trouble is, I forget what the settings were; I'm just too used to point and click!

(I've cropped them a bit but not edited them in any other way)

I slept well last night!!!

Today, the only thing in the diary <just checking> is the weekly chat with Chris which I always look forward to very much.  
I want to sort out a few behind-doors areas in the kitchen and I'm going to pop over to Sainsbury's for two reasons.  One is to get some skinny oat milk, to which I am becoming rather addicted.  Morrisons does it but not the 'skinny' version.  It's not really to do with slimming but I can have more for my healthy extra A/points/syns/calories/whatever and it's really, really nice, I think.  The other is to look at the clothes in case there are any nice tops for the evenings at Potters.  I might also go a bit further on to Asda which is in the same direction.
I've just remembered that I also need an outside dustpan and brush so I'll probably find one at Asda.  It's a very big store.

And that will probably be it.  There's not enough clothes in the basket to do a wash yet so I can defer that task until the weekend.  I now need to get up motivation to do the allotment!  Next week?  We'll see!

Well, time is moving on and I need to pop over to face book to do some admin stuff there so, as Diane says, I will love you and leave you, hoping that today works out really well for you, whatever you have planned.  Take care and keep smiling!  xx