TARRAGON & THYME

Having techy issues at moment sometimes connects but then suddenly goes off the phone is not much better.  Will be back as sorted.  Pattypan xx

I ts been a very busy first day back at work.  And my feet have not stopped running around since I got home. I have literally just sat down to have some egg custard and five minutes rest to write this post and then it will be upwards and onwards again. After having tea I nipped into the garden and started in the area outside the back door and I now have the little section near the back door done.  Mind you I was outside from about 6:40pm until just gone 9:00pm. So that is that little section done I am going to now have to gradually work myself down the pavement until we get to the shed.  OH is going to the tip again and so a lot more rubbish has joined the pile.  I have even managed to wash the area that I have sorted just by the back door down with clean water and as I have said I am going to work my way down the pavement.  Will have another bash tomorrow night on the next small section.  Until I get it done.  I am not putting a time limit on it....

Now that the nights are far lighter I am trying to plan ahead again.  I am usually shattered when I get home from work so a little time in the garden should not come amiss and help restore my inner peace and serenity.  Sometimes under the surface it is bubbling to such an extent that I feel I am going to explode and that is what I am trying to do at all costs avoid explosions. A while back I purchased some oval tubs from B & amp; M the idea being that I would plant some strawberries in two of them and some veggie seeds in the other two.  Because of the weather that has not happened yet but is about to.  I have some of the strawberry plants I have just to get a couple of bags of compost and then that will be another thing ticked off the list and then hopefully some strawberries for tea during the summer. Yesterday I bought herbs for the herb garden 12 mixed plants including Tarragon, Coriander, Dill, thyme, lemon thyme, parsley, chervil, Rosemary,...

I have a lot of them especially from the home of my parents and others that have been given to me over the years,  Precious photographs, photographs of people who were family members who I never had the chance to meet but have heard so much about, photographs of loved ones who I knew and have now passed and photos of my birth family and special times.  No end of photographs and then there are the photos that my dad took as well.  I want to sort out in due course some "official albums" but I also want to put them online for my family to have access to if they want to as well.  I think this will be a job for the winter months more than anything else.  A lot of photographs I am not sure who they are and some of them its as though I am instinctively knowing who these people are and being able to place them successfully and receiving outside confirmation of this as well.  I am hoping once I have got the photos sorted a bit more to have a word with my cousin (sh...

We have been fortunate in the weather today no rain, the sun has been out and it has been a lot warmer and the sap feels as though it has risen on the barometer - Spring Fever.  When I get Spring Fever which I do every year I end up craving fresher lighter food especially after the substantial meals of the winter months. After going to the Pasta shop OH and I did a detour and went to a new Lidl store that had been built at Werrington which is a lot bigger than our normal store off of Westfield Road.  It was new, bigger, and not as squashed but the store had no soul no identity.  Everything was set out in pristine fashion but the feeling was clinical and dead and this computerised advertising tannoy kept speaking out.  They had not got half the bays filled.  The staff were trying to load up and blocking the gangways to get by with shoppers and their trolleys which was causing congestion.  For the size of the store there was not enough staff and to tel...

For many years I have been trying to get to this well established community shop and for one reason or another it just has not happened.  It has happened by chance now in a very unusual way.  OH is a fan of Provolone and has been unable to get a decent version anywhere.  He was speaking to one of his female colleagues at work (who happens to be Italian) and she was amazed he had not been to the Pasta shop.  He went during the week on his way home from work (whilst I was on my sick bed) and came back with all sorts of goodies. Today is the first day I have been out all week although I am still absolutely full of cold and after our breakfast at "Ferraris" which again was very good (On Mayors Walk near the Record and Veg shop).  It seems to be becoming a regular thing and a regular routine with us on a Saturday morning.  They also do bulk orders or deliveries to local businesses and are a great couple Laura and Johnny and despite being new to our neck of ...

Whilst general day to day living and dreadful weather have been going on I have kept to my promise and have been working on my needlepoint panel to the exclusion of anything else. Beavering away where I can, I have continued  to nibble away bit by bit at the part worked needlepoint panel.  So far there are about 24 man hours gone into this small panel alone and it is still not finished.  I do  not think it will be long before it is finished though. There is still quite a bit of colour-work to be done on this panel but at least working the cream background first is showing up the differences between the greens a lot better than working it the other way round.  Near enough one side has been completely worked.  I am well chuffed with how it is turning out.  I have enlarged the last photo so that you can literally see where I have been.  It is finer work than usual needlepoint which when you are tired and go one further over than you sh...

I never win anything as a rule although I am very lucky in other ways for which I am very grateful. I have recently been buying some beginner and intermediate embroidery kits from Maggie Gee and I must say her kits are lovely and have been a great introduction for me back into the world of embroidery after having so many years where I have not actually done any finer needlework. I still have a long way to go.  Anyway Maggie has a monthly prize draw.  It is not something I normally do either i.e. take part in prize draws but I decided to have a go and this month I am the lucky beneficiary of this draw.  Its daft but I am ever so excited and it has really cheered me up. I have been suffering with a bad cold all week and have been in bed since then trying to shake the wretched thing so this little win really has perked me up. For those of you not familiar with Maggie her web site is here https://www.maggiegee.co.uk/ and Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/...

I had intentions of starting to deep clean the kitchen this evening after a busy day at work.  However it was not to be.  OH could not make up his mind what he wanted to eat and in the end I went to the shop to see if there was anything nourishing that could be had.  Not much choice and I ended up bringing back a small joint of brisket and we have had that with mashed potatoes, shredded cabbage, mixed veg, (cauliflower, broccoli and carrot)and peas with Yorkshire pudding and lashings of gravy.  Despite taking a little while to cook and it being a late supper it was tasty if I do say so myself and OH certainly tucked in.  Not the sort of thing you really want to be doing after a long day at work.  So my plans were scuppered for this evening.  However OH has instructions to cook a  chilli for tomorrow evening's tea I have already given him due warning what I am intending to do and it is not to cook a roast dinner for tomorrow night.  I believe...

I have been beavering away at my needlepoint and it is a little slow going but it is starting to grow very slowly notwithstanding that so far I have put about 18 hours worth of work on it - many more to come yet but it will be worth it in the long run.  I will show photos once the project is finished.  I have been managing to do an hour or so before going to bed. I have also been rootling through ebay again to see if I can find any bargains.  I was particularly looking at Samplers this evening and I came across one quite by chance which I started nearly 40 years ago when I was first married.  I have somewhere along the line managed to put the colour instructions and the thread somewhere safe and have not been able to locate them.  It made me feel very guilty and all the more determined to locate the threads and the instructions so that I can finish it.  I loved the sampler when I first saw it I think that the only decent thing would be to get her finish...

Hope your day has been a good one thus far. It started off yesterday really if truth be known when we started off with a leisurely breakfast and a bit of banter round at our local café which was all well and good no problems there. OH had seen a van for his fishing he wanted to take a look at.  There is never such a thing as take a look at with men as he ended up buying it.  Needless to say it suits his requirements, drives well and should stop him mithering on about one.  So that should be ready for him later in the week ready for him to go fishing for the weekend. First thing this morning therefore I have been trying to get connected on the Internet to arrange insurance what a palaver.  If they reckon they are simple come again I work on a computer all day long and that was not simple.  We have however got sorted after going on the Meerkat website to find out our options and that is now all sorted as well and with a local company.  Not every...

this evening.  We went back to the pub we went to the other day.  Today though we both had the carvery.  He had a large plate - I had a standard.  The large was too big for him the standard was a little too large for me but the meal was delicious. For pudding I just asked for ice cream. I had blue bubblegum which did not taste like bubblegum at all white chocolate and then mint and chocolate chip.  Nice ice cream.  What I did not know was that OH had gone and got other things as well.  At this particular pub you can take the desserts or cake home with you.  He came back from paying pleased as punch with himself and just handed me a carrier bag.  When  I looked inside there was a piece of carrot cake and an éclair.  Not standard size at all but humungous. The Carrot cake  - I think it is going to take me three attempts to eat this - not tonight as I am stuffed. The éclair which is the size of a baguette. ...

I have been fascinated by Lace since I was a little girl when I first saw Bruges lace on my first foreign holiday with my best friend's family when I was in Belgium for about seven weeks.  Aunty Iggy (Aunty Marguerite) (my friend's mum) was Belgian.  She had met her husband just after the war and had moved to England when she had eventually married him.  Equally they had a big family seven again all of them girls. Her brother an Architect had built his own home in a village called Maclen outside of Brussels. He had about seven children of all different ages and the house was a four storey one including the basement but quite large.  I was only seven years of age at the time.  Aunt Iggy's and her brother Raymond's mother was in her nineties at the time and was called Mimi.  She frightened the pants off of me as she used to glide into a room without you realising it and then make you jump.  Mimi could not speak English but it did not stop her jabbering...

Are flowing again and I am itching to get playing and I have to behave myself.  I am getting all sorts of ideas  and have been gathering things together to have a play for when OH goes fishing again.  In the interim I am beavering away at the background to the small briar rose needlepoint that is going to be used as a cushion centre panel however it is slow going but I shall persevere and will get there in the end.  I have done a little more than I had the other day. I am actually itching to get on with an embroidery kit which is a Glorafilia Kit Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady and is a panel surrounded by the months of the year and then relevant flowers or plants for each month and then a quote in the middle.  However at the moment for me I am being remarkably restrained.  Needlepoint first and if I can get the current cushion panel out of the way and the two little ones then I might allow myself to work the embroidery kit in between everything el...