Mothering Sunday.

It's Mothering Sunday today otherwise known as Mothers' Day. I used to think the day had its origins in Victorian times when household servants were given the day off to go and visit their mothers. In fact it dates back to medieval times when labourers were allowed to return home so that they could go to their Mother (local) church in Lent. It was only later that it changed to a special day for mothers. I have been making myself feel sad thinking about Mothers' Day as up till 10 mins ago I had heard absolutely nothing from any of my 3 boys. I have just had an email from Romas apologising for not sending a card, (duh, hasn't he heard of free e-cards), but that has been the sum total of my special day. Peter used to buy some croissants and flowers so that the boys, usually Romas, could bring me breakfast in bed and sometimes I would get a card but that was mostly it. I'm not sad because of not getting a special breakfast but simply because of the fact that to the boys I'm just the person who runs the house and provides them with food, transport and cash. What happened to those 3 little boys who in church would fight over who was going to sit on my lap? Grown up and only interested in their own lives. Somewhere my parenting went seriously wrong. I wanted them to be independent but I have expected them to help around the place when they are at home. Nobody is born to be someone else's servant which is the role I feel a lot of mothers still take. There would have been a lot more harmony at home if I hadn't tried to get the boys to help around the place. Romas has been the most helpful but even so leisure activities come first and chores only if there is time. On a positive note at least the boys are all healthy and I've a good day working outside in the garden.

Everywhere I find plants almost ready to flower. This little saxifrage growing in the wall will have bright red flowers very soon.This is the 'before' picture from yesterday of the second half of the wall. The gap in the middle was originally a set of big stone steps but when the swimming pool was filled in the tractor used the gap for access and some of the stones were placed to the side and the rest covered with soil to protect them. Rebuilding those steps may actually happen this summer.

And now the 'after' picture. The poorly rosemary is between the santolinas and the lavender looking rather sparse. The best bits are the branches that are hanging almost to the ground. It may not look much but the wall is tidy and soon will be covered with flowering saxifrages, campanula, London pride and other small rockery plants.


I'm just about to go out and see how much of my bramble/branches pile I can burn without setting fire to the surrounding trees.
(Later) The 5ft pile is now a heap of glowing embers. I forgot to take my camera up with me and once I'd got the fire going I couldn't leave it because it was surrounded by trees and needed constant adjustment. Just before I went back outside Vytas phoned to say Happy Mothers' Day and chat which cheered me up. Having a wild supper of 2 low fat yogurts but I did treat myself to a small bar of chocolate after lunch.

Oil Price Shock.

I'm trying to be more positive and it certainly was good that the sun was shining and the temperature 11C in the shade. Perfect for a day's gardening and also warm enough to turn off the central heating. We had to have another oil delivery last week. That's £550 worth of heating oil used in just 7 weeks ! You'd think we'd been luxuriating in a toasty warm house, wandering around in t-shirts and bare feet for that kind of money spent. But no, our bedroom has been lovely and warm and 2 other bedrooms as well as the corridors and stairs but the sitting room, kitchen and the rest of the bedrooms do not get any heat from the central heating. The kitchen is kept warm all year round by the oil fired rayburn which is on 24/7. As well as heat, (and keeping the damp out of the old part of the house), the rayburn provides copious hot water and heat in the family bathroom. It has been the all the exceptionally cold weather that we had which forced us to keep the central heating on. Needless to say it is now off, apart from a few hours in the evening as Peter is still stuck in bed with his hand.

This is not the first flowering primrose in the garden but it looked so sweet nestled in the green moss on a stone wall.

This is the 'before' picture of today's job, tidying up the 2 stone walls that border one side of the scree garden. I had saved this job for now as it involves much less bending and puts less strain on my back after the spinal injection, (which incidentally is having some effect though whether it will be enough to make surgery unnecessary is yet to be seen). The primrose was in the wall on the other side of the water butt. Said butt is actually full of leaves, an idea I had some years ago to make leaf mulch as I have no need of a water butt. I suppose I ought to investigate what is happening in there.

And now the 'after' picture. I know it doesn't look that different but all leaves and weeds have been taken away and every bracken plant prised out from between the stones with my trusty 12" screwdriver. I did also manage to tidy about 3/4 of the other wall and should finish it tomorrow. I was a little sad to see that my prostrate rosemary is in a bad state. My plant pathology training tells me it is not just old age or cold damage but probably a fungal disease. I had 3 other plants grown from cuttings from this one and I had to get rid of 2 of them last year. It is a shame because as well as having a more interesting shape, the flowers are a much brighter blue than ordinary rosemary. I've cut away as much of the affected stems as possible and will see how it goes but I may have get rid of the whole plant.

I also did some repairs to the wire netting in the hens' run. For the last few days I've been coming home to find 2 of the hens scratching around in the garden. I had assumed they were flapping over the top of the netting but today I discovered a spot where the nettting was loose and they were squeezing out there. First I did a 'lazy' repair, just shoving a bit of wood over the gap, but then my conscience got the better of me and I went and found a hammer and nails. I not only fixed the netting there but secured the netting on the gate because that was a bit loose and could be the next potential escape hole. And I only hit my thumb once.

Dragon Dance.

We had great fun this morning. First the children had to paint all the parts for the dragon costume. Then they all had a try at dancing as the dragon so that I could select one team for the performance. ( I let the children sort themselves into teams and it was all volunteers for the different roles in our performance.) We had a whole school celebration assembly where each class showed what they had been learning about other cultures. For our performance we had the dragon dance while some children played instruments to accompany the music I had on cd, others spoke a little about Chinese New Year and the rest showed the dragon puppets they had made last week. One child who has behaviour problems was not in school today and the rest of the class did really well considering that we did everything in one morning and had very limited practice time. My hardest job was assembling all the parts of the dragon at lunch time. Never has a stapler worked so fast. I enjoy doing art work with children and my favourite time of the school year is arts' weeks when we spend the whole time doing creative activities. I think we have one week coming up soon with the theme of 'Africa'. That will be good for the children as they rarely come across other cultures in this part of the world.

All Change In The Morning.

I drove to school this morning enjoying the first glimpses of sunshine after a frosty dawn. At school I stood in my classroom wondering how I was going to reschedule the morning's activities as the papier mache plates the children were going to paint were still very much at a paper mushy stage and needed serious drying before they could be painted, oops. That problem was taken out of my hands as I was then informed that I was needed to teach in another class as their teacher was ill. Quick change of room only to find that the class were due to go on a visit to the local church for a role play wedding. Oh and the photocopier was broken again so I needed to come up with some maths activities for the first half of the morning. Not too much of a problem as these were the children I had been teaching for the last 2 terms. It was like herding a flock of chattering sparrows as we walked 2 classes up Pilton High street, a far cry from the days when I was at boarding school and we walked in an almost silent crocodile for our Sunday afternoon constitutional. Our kids were really sweet as they acted out a traditional wedding especially as I had chosen one of the shorter boys in my class to be the groom. We even had some traditional music for the ceremony. The afternoon was all art work, Mothers' day cards and Japanese fans for the multicultural celebration assembly. Tomorrow I'll be in another class making a dragon for a Chinese dragon dance, I must be mad.Nno spectacular sunset this evening. Just a watery winter sun.
I thought I'd throw in this picture to show the seasonal brown hues of the country lanes and the squared off beech hedges. No buzzards sitting on the telegraph poles today.

Daft Patch.

It was rather grey this morning and for once I crept back into bed after feeding the hens. By the time I drove to work blue patches of sky were beginning to appear and at school the children were playing outside without their coats on. I took this picture of a silver birch in a supermarket car park after work.

Funny incident this morning. The cats often climb up to our bedroom window and 'ask' to be let in. I'm trying to dissuade them from doing this as they are just as likely to be banging on the window in the middle of the night so generally I try and ignore them. This morning the fattest of the cats, Patch, was out there and as I was already up I opened up the window to let him jump in. The silly cat took a step backwards, straight off the window sill and all I saw were his 2 front paws before he disappeared from sight. I rushed downstairs thinking I might be heading to the vet's for another big bill but he had landed safely and was climbing up the honeysuckle again. Daft cat. We don't have a cat flap as they would be bringing in dead things and leaving them around the house. Only a few weeks ago Patch caught several wood pigeons and left feathers all over the front yard. He probably just leapt on them and squashed them to death.

Poor Peter.

It's been a bit of a frantic day today. Poor old Peter has been having to do a lot of carrying at work and 2 weeks ago he dropped several pcs right on his hand. Then last week he slipped and really banged the fingers on the same hand which has set off an arthritic flare up. This is incredibly painful and by yesterday he was taking the strongest of his stockpile of painkillers, tramadol. This morning his hand was so painful I rang the on call doctor who gave advice on the combination of painkillers he could take. Luckily his rheumatology consultant was able to see him this morning and has given him some more medication as well as taking bloods and sticking a needle into his wrist to try and get some fluid out. Hopefully the new medication will take effect soon and he will get relief from the burning pain in his hand.

I had to teach in the afternoon which certainly took my mind off everything going on at home. It was a pleasant afternoon as I was making Japanese fans with some of the children. The sun has shone all day and this evening there was a lovely golden glow as the sun slowly set.

Almost Spring.

Once again it was blue skies and singing birds this morning. A little frosty, -2C but pleasant enough in the sun. I did a bit more garden tidying and made a start on putting in supports for those plants that need them. I'm more of a fan of leaving everything to grow naturally, that's my excuse for not doing too much, but each year I look fondly at some of the plants forming lovely bushy growth and then the rain comes, makes everything heavy and it all flops down in a big mess. That's when I think to myself that it would have been a good idea to put in some support earlier in the year.

I cleared away all the old fennel stems which have been making interesting winter shapes, sorted out the poles I use to support them and found the first early growths peeping through. On a day like today I can believe that spring is just around the corner.
(Later) I had the first of my spinal injections this afternoon. Not too bad though I can't say I am looking forward to the next 2. Feeling rather woozy so signing off now.