Today has been a busy one

 for me.  I met up with a friend who I had not seen for absolutely ages and had a lovely walk with her.  We came upon a walk that neither of us knew and it turned out to be really lovely and quiet and has a fair bit of history to it.  Well chuffed shall go there again.

I tend to keep myself to myself these days in any event.  I have a lot on in the house and my hands full with himself at the best of times.  I also cannot afford to meet up with all the people I used to in any event and I do not like being beholden to people.

Since coming back home, I have been in the garden again. I have set about the side of the border to the patio slabs that I was half way along and I have managed to weed right until the end of the slabs.  There were lots of roots on top and plants that needed to be pulled.  This left a load of roots or "twitch" as my dear Dad used to call it in the soil.  Therefore I have forked about half way along that border and got the dreaded "twitch" out as much as I can.  The soil is pretty healthy as it has a lot of worms in it. In any event I had to stop as we had a massive thunder and lightning storm going on (which I do not like at the best of times) and then it started pelting down with rain.  It has been raining a lot since then with dry spaces inbetween. It is currently streaming down again. We have rain forecast again for tomorrow - will see how it goes and if can get out onto the garden again I will.  My muscles are a little tight from the digging workout today, as I am so out of practice.  It will do me good in the longer term though.

I was however blessed by a pale blue moth/butterfly whilst I was gardening.  It looked ever so delicate.  I did try and take a photo of it, but it just would not open its wings.  I love Flutterbys as we used to call them when we were younger.

After forking the remaining bit of that border, I will then be able to start weeding the top border to the patio slabs which will be the last side.  This is quite a deep border as I am going back as far as the Rhubarb plant. This border is heavily infested with brambles and thistles as well as weeds.  I am therefore going to need my gloves on for tackling those. There is also a big pile of dried plant stalks, brambles etc. that I am going to have to clear off the patio and clip it all up and get it into bags in readiness for the tip.  A few more planters need stripping and then that will be it for the patio slabs; G will have to look at these though to make them level.  I will probably then be able to put the patio chairs and table out on them to sit out of an evening in.  If we are going to be home for the best part of the summer months (which at the moment we are), then I want to take every opportunity to take advantage of any good weather.  

Once this last border has been dealt with in a similar fashion to this last one, I can then return back down the bottom of the garden to where the greenhouse is, and clear that section thoroughly.  Then I might be able to get the greenhouses up and operational.

Some work has been done in the kitchen this afternoon as well.  However if it is raining again tomorrow I will probably get that finished and out of the way with.

On a different tack, I have many UFO projects yet to tackle.  At the moment I have not been able to settle to these; I desperately want to do some, but am not in the right frame of mind for tackling some of these.  If I do things will go wrong, so I am waiting for when I have a better spurt of energy to start focusing on these again.  When I am like this, I do research other projects for the future.  There is one piece in particular that I do want to work.  G in later life was contacted by his true sister.  G was adopted by his grandparents, who lived in a small two bedroom terrace house.  They took G in, but no one who was in the family knew about the sister.  It turned out that they had literally been brought up a stone's throw from each other and they must have passed each other at some point in their  younger lives as they both had the same hobbies.  We formed a strong loving friendship with her, and went to stay several times. Whilst we were visiting when they were in Birmingham I admired a cross stitch that she had worked which was immaculate. C gave me the chart, but I managed to lose the legend to the chart.  I found the chart the other day and as I very much want to work this chart, I started to see if I could locate it on the Internet and I have.  I have therefore researched what fabric and threads I need to create this project.  It will be one of the first to work after a lot of the UFOs have been finished.  Unfortunately C died a week before getting married.  She failed to return home from a trip out and they found her passed in her car by one of the Lochs in Scotland to where she had moved to live.  Her partner and ourselves were absolutely devastated.  I often think of her and for me working this particular chart will be a reminder, memory and keepsake of special times.  It is the Time and Season chart by Bothy Threads; Words from the Bible Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.

It will be a little way off working it, but this is one that I have promised myself I will make. I do like old sampler embroidery in any event.

Right am off to put my feet up.

Have a lovely evening.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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