Sunshine and Warmth.

After a week of miserable weather it made a lovely change to find that summer has returned, even if only for a few days. It's been a day of sun and warm winds with an afternoon temperature of 19C/66F.

I had a dreadful night with my ribs reaping the consequences of lifting heavy stones (when will I ever learn?)  but as soon as some reviving tea had done its work I was throwing washing in the machine. Everything apart from one towel dried nicely on the line and has been ironed and put away. The tea got me out of bed and once I'm moving around I feel a lot better. 

First set of jobs done I was able to go to my happy place ie out on the terrace with a mug of coffee to watch the world go by and think..

Much garden planning takes place out on the terrace. This week it's mostly been about deciding on the plants for the raised beds by the steps. The temptation is to throw in lots of plants but realistically the lower bed only needs three plants. So which two plants, either from the back garden or the garden centre, will compliment the caryopteris? Do I factor in the yellow flowers of the hypericum? Not my favourite colour but so loved by the bees. So far I'm thinking about taking cuttings from the rockery plant with the daisy flowers (can't remember its name) as the blue grey foliage contrasts nicely with the grey leaves of the caryopteris and then maybe a lavender.

It hasn't all been just sitting and dreaming. I mixed up a small batch of mortar and cemented in the last block on the other side and the coping stones on top. There were a few of the original blocks that needed resetting too. I also took my secateurs, and loppers to a small leaved escallonia growing in the bed on the other side of the steps. I feel really sad when I chop back something that has taken so many years to grow but I've left the main plant and just removed the longest branches.

Still plenty of colour in the garden.

 

Grey and windy again with the view looking much the same as yesterday.

Being Friday I was up at a reasonable time to drive down to the stables for my riding lesson. I got to ride Cadno again. (His ears are turned back not because he was in a bad mood but because he was looking at me.) There were only four of us in the lesson one of whom was one of the young instructors on a novice horse as somebody hadn't turned up. This time we were taught by the riding school owner but continued with the work we had done last week on getting the horse on the bit, lengthening the stride in trot and some work in canter which for most of us meant keeping the canter going and not falling back into trot when the horse felt like it. I felt I made progress and was able to stay sitting stuck to the saddle and to keep Cadno cantering on until I asked him to trot. I also had a lot more success in getting him to work with a more rounded neck which gives better and gentler communication between the horse and rider. 

After the lesson I headed into town calling first at the dump to get rid of more bags of garden waste and then on to the supermarket. There I bought four pots of bright pink thrift and then two more of the pale pink ones from Charlie's. Being a native cliff plant they are perfect here. The plan is to plant them along the path through the shingle when that gets done. In the meantime I've already planted them up into bigger pots for the winter. I also bought a caryopteris for the latest raised bed. I just can't resist any plant that has grey leaves and blue flowers. 

On the way home I called in at Huw's and ordered a dumpy bag of topsoil which is going to be delivered on Tuesday. This afternoon I threw some large white beach stones into the raised bed. Even when they've been smoothed down by the sea they don't form beautiful shapes so I didn't want to save them for the garden. Most of them had been used as fillers in the cross wall that I took down and are stained by the coals and ash that had also been hidden in the narrow raised bed.

The sedums in the planters are only just beginning to flower. I'm not sure if that's due to the odd weather we had this year or because I planted them quite late in the season.

 

Grey.

And yet another grey day. Very heavy rain in the morning and the occasional dry spell in the afternoon. Still I'm sure we wouldn't appreciate the good weather if we didn't have the not so nice weather. A while back I heard somebody (on the radio) who came from a middle eastern country with unremitting blue skies say how wonderful and interesting the cloudy grey skies she experienced in the UK were.

We also have a strong warm wind blowing. I've always loved grasses especially when they blow in the wind. The stipa tenuissima moves so gracefully in this windy garden that I could watch it maybe not for hours but definitely more than minutes. If it survives the winter I'll be planting one or two more in the shingle garden. I managed to get out in the garden this afternoon ignoring a brief shower. I'd bought some synthetic sisal rope (the natural rope would eventually rot in this wet climate) and I've used it to hold back the montbretia which I'd moved to under the hedge which had been flopping over the fuchsias. (Wow, never knew there was an extra s in there.)

Gardening of course came after our Welsh class. Today we were learning to use the future tense I will/he, she will. (no it as everything is masculine or feminine.) In Welsh all verbs conjugate and this threw up a Welsh quirk where the pronunciation of Y (apart form a number of exceptions) changes depending on its position in the word. In the final syllable it's ee, elsewhere it's uh. So I will be is Mi fydda i - [me vuh-tha ee]. Fine but for she will be it's Mi fydd hi -[me veeth he] because there's an extra syllable on fydda.

After working my brain so hard it was good to simply enjoy the beauty of the flowers still blooming in the garden. The Michaelmas daisy at over 5ft high will be going down into the front garden this winter. It's a real stunner which I'm sure came from the supermarket.

Off in a moment to aerobics and for supper afterwards Peter has made our favourite sauerkraut, potato and sausage casserole using some of the potatoes I dug up yesterday.

 

"Taters, what's taters?"

Grey again today. Very windy too. I had an early start again so got to see the birds making their way down the coast to wherever it is they go. This morning, instead of keeping a constant height they were going up and down as if they were on a rollercoaster as they flew through the turbulent air. 

As I sat outside at the break of day clutching my mug of tea I thought it would be a good drying day but the clouds rolled in giving the occasional shower. Getting things dry at the moment is a bit of a problem. Putting stuff on the line on the days when it isn't raining gets them nearly dry which is fine for the sheets as I like to iron them anyway. The rest goes on airing racks in the utility room but the well insulated house is keeping a cosy 20C/68F without the heating being on. That isn't quite enough to get things really dry so I have to run the iron over them to drive out the majority of the damp and then hang them up on the rack. On the other hand at least we aren't having to use the boiler to keep the house warm. Worst comes to the worst I can run the damp stuff down to the launderette and use the dryers there.

Having done all my regular jobs before breakfast I was able to head straight out to the garden after we'd eaten. I tried to get as much as I can into bags to take to the dump after riding on Friday. When I cleared one of the veg plots where I had planted butternut squash, spaghetti squash and a courgette the total crop was one tiny 2"? and more than 40 potatoes. These had appeared from the potatoes I had overlooked when I dug up the  minimal crop last year. Potatoes have also sprung up between the tomato plants in the other bed but there are still tomatoes on the sprawling plants so it will be a little while before I dig that bed over.

Down by the steps in the front garden I gave the hypericum a serious trim. I've left some of the stems tall enough to cover next door's side wall, cut down the other stems so they will shoot up about 1m next year and taken out about a third of the bush from the front to avoid getting hit in the face by wet stems when we go up the steps.

On the other side I took out another hypericum and an elder stump and used one of the last blocks to tidy up the low wall. I'll finish it off by cementing on the coping stones over the top. All I've got left are a 6" piece of coping stone, two full blocks and five half blocks. I wonder what I can do with those?

To stop myself carrying on gardening and overdoing things I threw all my work trousers in the washing machine. They're blowing in the wind at the moment and I'll try not to forget to bring them in before I go off to choir.

(Post title - JRR Tolkien.)

 

Reinforcements.

A very windy day with a bit of sun and the occasional blue sky.

After having missed out two weeks of going to the zoo I was glad that it wasn't raining again today. However I did take the easy option and drove rather than cycled. And after almost four hours of weeding I was glad that I wouldn't have to be cycling back against the wind. Even fours hours wasn't quite enough to get the whole of the large play area weeded but I managed to get at least three quarters done. Hardly any visitors today but there is usually an increase in numbers during the half-term holiday.

Remember those rhea chicks I photographed at the end of last June? Now they are the size of a flamingo or a goose with very long legs, and can watch the world through the window of their hut.

Back home I found the postman had brought me some reinforcements to work with the other ramshorn snails. With all the recent warm weather the algae has continued to grow so more snaily mouths were needed to keep the alga under control.

The rest of my afternoon has been spent sitting on the terrace and planning what to grow in the new raised bed. They had some caryopteris in Charlie's which I'm tempted to get and maybe put in a lavender and an artemisia. 

No Pilates tonight as they're doing blood donors in the hall. 

 

47 Years.

That's how long we've been married. It was our wedding anniversary today and Peter gave me this lovely bunch of roses as well as sweet treats. I gave him a quirky wooden oystercatcher and some fancy local beers from the craft beer place in town. I let the chap choose the beers for me, malty not hoppy and not high alcohol content were what I asked for so hopefully Peter will enjoy them.

We never actually do anything for anniversaries or birthdays but we will be having a 'special' dinner of oven baked salmon parcels with new potatoes and peas. We both prefer to eat at home rather than go out for a meal though of course my favourite is anything eaten outside in a wild place with a wonderful view.

We did go out together in the morning as I had my appointment at the hospital. It was with the registrar (junior doctor) and it was a good appointment. The x-rays show that the cyst is a separate ganglion cyst and all the toe joints are fine. I was shown the bloodwork and everything was normal apart from one result which indicated a response to a viral infection. No surprise there as I've had a sinus infection for as many years as I can remember. With those results I was told that they would put me on the list to have the cyst removed. Wonderful. I said I'd be quite happy to have it done under a local anaesthetic so the doctor went off, had a talk with the consultant and yes they will do that. Less use of resources and possibly not such a long wait. Ah yes, the wait. I can expect to be waiting for up to eight months so who knows how big the cyst will be by then? But at least I know it will be done. Pre-op checks have already been done too.

The weather has been dry-ish in the morning and wet in the afternoon. That didn't stop me from going out to mix up enough mortar to stick on the coping stones. That's the walling done. Next is to tidy up the other raised beds by the steps and order a dumpy bag of soil to top those beds up.

 

A Walk from Glaspwll.

Another wet day.

The rain didn't stop six of us meeting up in the hills for a walk from Glaspwll (Blue pool). (LL is a Welsh letter that has no equivalent in English phonics, kind of a blown sound with a little bit of sh in but not a lot.) Although I had blue lined the route using Google Street View I didn't have to find my way to this hidden valley just a few miles off the main road to Mach as I'm finally on the car share What's App group and was being driven by somebody else. So now I can phone, text and use What's App. (For everything else the PC is so much better.) I also inadvertently found the voice to text thingy  when I was asked to send a message to our walk leader while we were driving along. That was a bit of a surprise when I saw my speech suddenly being converted to text. Quite handy that.

Our meeting place was by the tiny Penuel Chapel built in 1822. An interesting account of the church history of the area and Penuel in particular can be read here on Welldigger's blog. That's D'Arcy the dog who came along on the walk too.

It wasn't too wet to begin with though as we walked up the hill into the woods we hit the cloud level. The rain became a lot heavier after that. Hence not so many photos as I put my camera away in my backpack. On went my waterproof over trousers as well as I opted to be a little too hot rather than completely soaked.

Through more woods and fields with a rainy stop to eat our lunch then we crossed the River Llyfnant which was in full spate. This short river flows from the waterfall at Craig y Pistyll, the highest waterfall in North Wales that we climbed beside back in February.

Even though it was still raining, note our leader's battered brolly, I had to take out my camera for some photos.

Near the end of our walk we called in at one of the sites of the West Wales bee Breeding Project, a collaboration between the university and a local honey producer. They are attempting to breed, by natural selection, bees that are hardier and more resistant to disease. After all minus pollinators and bees in particular we would be without most of our food crops. What we had come for was the chance to buy local honey at a reasonable price, much less than in the shops and garden centres where it is sold. All on a trust system, help yourself to honey and put the money in a jam jar.

I bought a selection of honeys which will make nice presents especially with the sloe gin which already has turned a rich ruby red.

On the way home when we stopped to drop somebody off a chap who trains sheepdogs and keeps a dozen sheep had half the sheep running down the road. One of his dogs flew down the road, got past the sheep before they reached the oncoming cars, turned them and brought them back all to the farmer who was still standing around the corner.

Even with my raincoat I was a bit wet when I got home so it was straight into the shower before some Duo Lingo and an evening of Strictly.