Sunday

 

Today's garden happy - The Last Cucumber.

It's not ready to cut yet but will be on a few days.  The poor plants are in a bad way though - I think the heat or the sun got to them, they seem stressed and, despite feeding and watering, have pretty much turned brown and dead.  The other plant is worse than this one and I think I will have it out today.

After a promising start, the yellow courgette has been disappointing too.  Oh well . . .

On the other hand, I have several corn cobs in the freezer now and the tomatoes have been good.  I've had better tomato years but also worse ones and at least the dry weather has kept any blight at bay.

Good morning, everyone.  The sun is shining already and it looks to be another beautiful summer day.  Yesterday had a high of around 25C and overnight dropped to 12C which is definitely snuggle under the duvet levels.
There's supposed to be another heatwave coming but Beeb doesn't show any signs of this - warm, yes, but nothing touching the thirties.  Personally, I am fine until it gets to above around 32/33, providing the humidity is low.  If there's high humidity, even the low 20s is not nice!

I know it sounds terrible with all this nice weather but, as the days shorten and the evenings draw in sooner, my thoughts turn to Christmas and the various family and personal traditions thereof.  In two month's time, I will have made the cake (or, at least, set the fruit to steep in cointreau - not so far away really.  And I have my Advent calendar on order.

One of my personal things is some Twelve Days of Christmas gifts to myself.  At the Summer wool festival, I got some slightly sparkly sock yarn with the vague thought of making some socks for Christmas.  I think what I will do is make them, wrap them, and they can be one of my Twelve Days gifts to myself. 
I was hoping to have finished the second sock I'm working on and was doing really well yesterday until I spotted a mistake and had to undo almost all of the foot part to sort it out.  So careless of me and very annoying.

I managed to get all the washing, drying and ironing done so I'm happy with that.  I love how nicely everything dries outside and how it smells of sunshine.

Today is another quiet day.  I was thinking of going swimming but, as I'm going tomorrow, I won't today.  What I do need to do is go shopping as there are some items I thought I had but don't, or have just used them up, so I'm going to go to Sainsbury's so I can top up with petrol at the same time.  I'll get there for ten, before it gets too crowded.

Assuming it isn't too hot, I might take a stroll out along one of the country lanes to see the damage the fire did and I'll take a poly bag with me in case there are any blackberries in the hedgerow.

Apart from that, there are my meals to cook, clothes to put away and a kitchen to keep clean and tidy - cooking does generate a lot of mess at times!
Just a normal quiet day in the life of a retired teacher, in fact.  Nice.

Have a lovely day packed with good things, everyone.  xx