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.