Showers.

Apologies for going into so much detail about my back yesterday. I remember well how tedious it was to listen to every single detail of my mother's state of health when she made her daily phone call. Let's just say that right now I'm focussing on making every effort to improve my health. We are lucky enough to have our free at point of use health system but it's not without its problems. The main one appears to be that although GPs are paid according to the number of patients they have on their books the hospitals aren't. The government keeps telling us they are increasing the amount of money allocated to the hospitals but that increase is only keeping up with inflation. No account has been made of the vastly increased numbers of patients needing hospital care and the system is at breaking point with simply no beds to put people in. Then there's the problem of greatly decreased funding to the local authorities to provide at home or residential care to our increasingly elderly population who can't be discharged from hospital to look after themselves. That's another reason why we try and follow the guidelines for a healthy old age. (Not that I consider myself old but it is creeping up.) Following the exercises set by the physio will hopefully restore me to a state where I can work on my fitness. Together with keeping my weight down and eating a healthy diet I should live to at least 200!

We've had sun today but an awful lot of showers as well. The osteospermums decided the light levels were too low and stayed shut all day. In spite of the rain I feel I've achieved my goals today. Firstly I put more sealant on the inside of the conservatory roof as it has been leaking a little in the recent very wet weather. Then in a dry spell I tidied up the area between the back of the house and the stream, weeding and removing leaves and twigs. Now it looks a lot more cared for.

Finally I went up into the loft to see how much more there is up there besides my mother's art works. I found a box of small glasses which I haven't unpacked yet and a large box of ceramics. This was so big and heavy I had to hand down each newspaper wrapped piece to Peter. These would all have been the things my mother found in local junk shops. In those days junk shops would mainly have been filled with items from house clearances most of which would have been junk and an occasional treasure. I pulled out a picture frame and a glass cake cover to keep but we haven't decided what to do with the rest. I'll check that the boys don't want any and then either sell some items or give the lot to one of the charity shops. They have specialists who make sure they value stuff properly and it would be going to a good cause. Have to think about that. 

I was really pleased to see this flowering clump of irises. Last year there were only about 6 buds and before they could open snails or slugs had eaten through the stems causing them to fall to the ground.