Rain.

I woke up this morning to light rain and almost no visibility. That scuppered my plans to take Peter on his 'Mystery' afternoon out. Instead he went up to run the camper for a bit to keep the battery charged and I got on with the next step in making the cupboard in the utility room usable. I cleared all the rubble and damp plaster debris from the floor and then removed a couple of inches from the bottom of the plasterboards the builder had used to part line the cupboard. They were held in with screws but the boards had been put in before the front of the cupboard was built. I took the screws out only to find that the boards were held in fast so instead I used a Stanley knife and an old screwdriver to hack off the bottom strips. That wasn't too difficult as the damp had softened the boards. The last thing was to wipe down the boards with bleach to kill any mould and then leave the doors open to air out the cupboard. There is some pipework in there and the bathroom stopcock but I think I can see how to fix in two shelves and then maybe screw some wire baskets to the insides of the doors.

 

By midday things were brightening up though Peter found that it was still raining at the top of the hill behind us. That gave me a chance to do a bit of gardening. I planted up the new medium sized planter with the last of the succulents from the utility room. The whole thing will have to come in for the winter but it's not too heavy for me to carry. I also moved the two blue flowered scabious plants from by the pond to down under the bright blue hydrangea (which has now faded to a moody mauve) at the bottom of the garden. I will confess to being very particular about the way colours go together in the garden. In their place I put a stipa tenuissima which will wave gently in the wind all year round. Another plant moved from the shingle was a fennel that I had planted thinking it was an artemisia grown from a cutting. (They do have very similar feathery leaves.) The fennel has been put near the  boundary wall to hide the neighbour's wall in the summer.

Later in the afternoon I could hear a lot of helicopter activity somewhere over Snowdonia. Eventually I spotted a helicopter first flying above the hills and then coming into land on the beach near Tywyn. The air quality wasn't good and it was five miles away but my photo shows the coastguard helicopter on the beach (on the left) and the air ambulance taking off (on the right). I'll get the details from Dave later on. One of the problems about living on the coast in Snowdonia is that it is at least 30 miles by road to the nearest hospital which is why we didn't look for a house there. Our lifeboat was called out yesterday to rescue 4 people in the water at Ynyslas. It's a nice sandy beach but not suitable for swimming due to the strong currents around the mouth of the river.

Something for me to look forward to - the stables posted another two and a half hour ride next Friday which I have managed to get on. I'm hoping I'm a little bit fitter than last time. I won't know until I try.