Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 30 July 2017

Here's a pic of Bonnie on our new carpet, which is not an exact match, but it is brown:

Hi!  Sunday has started with dull skies and very short light showers about an hour apart – so neither wet nor dry!  No service at individual churches as it is end of Holiday Bible Club Week, so get together in one of the primary schools.  Couldn’t find suitable access last year, so not even trying this time!  J intends to go but has made a slow start to getting ready!  OH and I are missing lunch to go for cream tea at Waterbeck village – their last of the season, but first time we have managed this year.  Middlebie start their August season next week.  We have just blanched another batch of courgettes to freeze; J will eat spare tomatoes at lunch – he can eat them cooked although he is allergic to raw tomatoes!

Diane – thanks for starting the week and the Jackrabbit (Hare) – love the sunlight shining through its ear!  Struggling to keep up with events over there with the various votes and sackings!

AQ – are the burst watermains there a symptom of ageing infrastructure?  We expect that here, but still think of Australia as a “young” country!  Sorry to hear of planned terror attack in Sidney – glad it was averted.

Annette – PGCE is post grad certificate in Education.  GD already has first degree in Psychology and Masters in Health Psychology, but after a year as “House Tutor” at top posh girls’ school has decided to become a Chemistry teacher!

Linda – I hope you will get a dry walk today, and I hope the weather will be better for the young family when they arrive there next weekend!  When do you wear all the new shoes?

Harelady – lovely idea to meet up and enjoy your late Daughter’s favourite meal!  Have a good day enjoying your shared memories.

Heather – sorry you are being dragged down by the step family – but do try to just lift yourself above it and Wednesday will soon fly by.

Off to have another coffee now – and may be able to post more garden photos soon.

Harelady, I wish you happy memories today in Bishop's Stortford.  

I went to school there in the sixth form, when is was a lovely old Market Town, and lived there from 1972 to 1987, when I got married, divorced and on to new beginnings.  Today it is a huge much expanded town, with housing continuing to be developed. The centre has some charm in parts, a very small market square.  An historic pub, The Boar's Head, has been turned into a Turkish restaurant, and The George was an 14th century inn, but whether that is still a hotel I don't know.  All part of my youth!  Enjoy your lunch.

Sheila - nice to see you here on this thread!  Hope all is going well with you.

Decking photos continued.

Shows the deck space better - with table (wasn't a sitting out day so chairs were in garage)

Other end - the "bird end".

Looking back, towards garage.

The Maple in container has been in successive pots for about fifteen years, and has almost become Bonsai!  I didn't like all the black pots when we still had brown ones, so insisted brown was out, and we would combine just black and blue in this area.

Last few.

A different view of the perennials - there are gaps where some things came out while work was going on - mostly to go back in the autumn or spring.  The big blue pots of Alstroemeria have been very successful - they bloom such a long season.

This shows how we constructed level access to the deck and shallower steps down both sides.  The deck runs almost the length of the back of the house.

Finally, this shows the way to the "real" (veg) garden which is all at the side of the house.

Not going out after all - various reasons, including poor weather.  I think we shall find some lunch!  J was late for church, so has actually gone out to find lunch for himself!  ie Plan B all round!

Sorry you are missing your tea, OG. Deck looks good and I'm amazed at all the tubs etc! What a lot of work but stunning effect.

Morning all:

Lindybird (or should we call you Imelda!): Hard to imagine how much more horrific "inside White House" stories can be based on everyday news reports and Twitter.  And, of course, the sooner the Orange Menace goes away can't come soon enough.  Cute photo. Was watching Spy in the Wild on TV and some of the interaction between critters and others' babies was fascinating - they're so curious.  New carpet has nice low pile, which I prefer to what we've got.

Harelady: Good luck with Bishop's Stortford.  Hope you find a good Indian restaurant.

OG: If I'm reading it correctly, cream teas are ending in Waterbeck and starting in Middlebie? Is there a rotating cream tea schedule among Scottish villages?   If so, sounds like best idea since sliced bread (or scones anyway)  :-))   We get water main troubles here too, but we have soil that contracts and expands to a fairly dramatic degree due to the climate (and also gets jerked about with the occasional earthquake), so not sure if that causes premature failure or maybe it was all shoddily constructed in the first place, it's certainly inadequate now.  Thanks for explaining degrees. Sounds like "posh" girls' school was a bit too rich?   I LOVE the deck, especially the plants along the walls. You've done a fabulous job of softening up the area.  Bravo!  Will you continue adding to it?

Heather: I think we've all got difficult family members lurking somewhere to stir things up. They can drive you up the wall. Let's hope the funeral will end one chapter at least...   I'm scheduled for a trip to the UK late September to see my sister, but in the meantime, our favorite cousin is now in a hospice. Favorite cousin's youngest sister tends to be chief mourner at anyone's funeral and cousin's daughter (who's at her Mom's bedside full time) has just sent that sister off to middle sister's coz she can't cope with all the drama and upset she's causing.

Cloud cover from the beach here this morning, so must rush out and do some work in the garden before it heats up.

Have had a traumatic day since writing on here, last. We went up into the hills for what we hoped would be a gentle walk, with distant vistas of the sea. After only fifteen minutes, Bonnie suddenly bolted through the gorse and over a rise in the land -- we could hear her barking, and were horrified to think that she'd found some sheep, which we'd been avoiding. We couldn't see her at all, but could tell that she was getting farther away.

My OH sprinted off as best he could, and thought he could tell where she was even though we couldn't see her. I ran down a lane and stood on a boulder to get a better view over the hedges - frightened myself to death as my balance has not been good lately. I could see neither of them, and after five minutes of furious barking it suddenly stopped. I somehow got down, and then tried to get into a field where a white horse was viewing me with curiosity.

There didn't seem to be a gate anywhere and I'm past scrambling over stone walls covered in brambles. Meanwhile, my OH decided to ring my mobile phone: he couldn't see her but thought that if I found her I had better have the dog lead in case I did. We managed to meet up in the lane. He looked very tired, as he'd been up and down the valley and and had climbed walls, etc. He went back to the search....

I've now discovered that I can no longer run! I trudged back up the hill to where we'd last seen the dog, calling her name at intervals. By now she'd been missing for more than half an hour. I was convinced that she would be a long way down the valley. At a junction in the tracks, a brown, dirty dog ran past me, then turned back. She'd heard me! She was wet through and filthy dirty, but pleased to see me. Thank goodness for mobile phones. I rang my OH and he toiled back up the valley, which took him twenty minutes. I sat on the grass with the panting dog.

By the time we got back to the car, we were all three of us exhausted. Instead of going for a pleasant coffee in a cafe by the sea, we headed back to base, where we managed some lunch before collapsing in heaps on the sofas. We know that sometimes farmers exercise their right to shoot dogs who worry sheep. Most of the time, we couldn't even see her or what was going on, but she does get excited when sheep appear on the path, so I guess she might have been chasing after them.