Cooling Down.

It certainly has been a lot cooler today which I'm sure everyone is relieved about. The cool wind is even stronger than yesterday and has brought good surfing waves.

The sight of the lifeboat bouncing through the waves as the lifeboat crew went out on their training session confirmed Peter's fears that it wouldn't be safe to take the boat out on a row. (He is the safety officer.) However as there as there were a number of new people who had signed up for the morning's row they had a training session on the beach. Not as I imagined all sitting in the boat in the boat park waving their oars about pretending to be in the water but things like wearing the life jackets and the commands used by the coxes. 

I decided not to go on the group walk today. It was a perfectly nice walk in a river valley but one I've done several times before and with our friends coming next weekend there were things I wanted to be getting on with at home.

First off was the hoovering. Peter had been doing sporadic hoovering as well as the daily dry mopping of the laminate floors but somehow the hoovering hasn't been happening. Once I'd hoovered, and this is something I really should have done during the heatwave, I washed the areas of the bedroom carpet that were looking a little grubby. This I have to do the old fashioned way with a bucket, brush and cloth as the wooden floorboards under the carpet mean it is not advisable to use the Vax in carpet washing mode. Drat!

That done I prepped the skirting boards ready for the next coat of paint. But having done that I found that the tin of acrylic silk finish paint I planned to use has gone off and will need to go to the dump. But I shall buy the paint I need asap and get on with finishing that job. 

I found a couple of door mats that I could put in the washing machine and then took myself out for some gardening. Much as I love to see plants sprawling naturally the path to the garden gate was getting hard to find so the lavender and the curry plants got a trim. I cut so much lavender rather than chuck it straight into a bag for the dump I've put it in a bucket on the pavement with a sign asking people to help themselves.

I also did some general trimming and tidying up in the front garden. There a I saw a small brown grasshopper the same colour as the dry stems of a clump of blue fescue. It was only because it was  sitting on a green stem that I spotted it.