A Heatwave?

This morning's view was an almost total whiteout with a sea mist bringing a steady fall of soft rain. Perfect for creating sparkling crystals on the many cobwebs I could see from the kitchen window.

All of a sudden at 4.30 the sun broke through and the temperature has shot up. It's not the best photo below but a close look will reveal a cloud bank (level with the tops of the tallest trees) that is covering all of the sea from Bideford on the left to Braunton over to the right. Checking the weather reports I see that we are due for a September heatwave with a 600 mile 'subtropical swell' of warmer air sweeping in  across the Atlantic and temperatures set to hit the mid 20s/70s. At least now I don't have to worry about the roof replacement happening in a spell of wet weather.

Busy 'work' noises started up before 8.00 this morning. As well as what sounded like drilling on the other side of the kitchen wall work continued on the outside of the end house where they are replacing the cladding on the upper floor. But something else was happening too. Yesterday I'd seen that most of the many small metal covers in the pavement, water meters and telephone boxes, had been covered with wide silver gaffer tape. This morning a chap was blow torching the covers and putting on more tape. This he was doing in the rain with his gas cannister in a customised wheelie bin. The reason for this became clear when another chap came and spread a thin layer of asphalt over the path. He only did two sides of the grass leaving our path taped over but not resurfaced. This may have been because the men working on the end house were having to go back and forth to a stack of paving slabs and a dumpy bag of sand that had been left on the grass just out of sight to the left. I had to go to get something from the car and they've done all the rest of the pavements on both sides of the close. Right now there are groups of neighbours standing by their gates and having a discussion about this work. 

Meanwhile during this mostly wet day I've been getting on with the packing. The challenge comes when you find things such as new curtain poles that are too long for the boxes. I washed out a tall plastic bin that I had my garden things in and am using that for all the too long items. 

Speaking of gardening, earlier when the rain had eased but the sun hadn't appeared I did some gardening in the front garden. I needed to dig up my favourite hardy geranium, Mrs Kendall Clarke which has lavender petals veined with white. I tried to bring two plants of each of the different hardy geraniums from Dingles but somehow I only brought one Mrs K. Clarke.  That one I decided to plant out in the flower bed in front of the sitting room window and hoped I wouldn't forget to dig it up when we moved. I swapped it over with eight orange primulas from a large plastic tub by the front door. I've seen hardy geraniums growing in the neighbours' front garden in Borth so mine should be all right. I plan to have a bed of geraniums at the far end of the front garden where they'll be sheltered by the hedges. I did tell the house buyers that I would be digging up a few plants because otherwise you are not allowed to dig up garden plants.

As Peter had run out of cookies I baked a batch of the usual peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies for him. Now the scales, trays and silicone sheets can be packed away.