Random Thoughts

There are days when time plods by and I don't really achieve much.   I had one of those days this past week.   Hubby felt the same.  He was lying on the settee when I went downstairs to find out where he was. He never lies on the settee.  Ever!  'What's wrong I said.  Nothing, why?  You don't usually lie on the settee, well, I was sitting here feeling at a lose end and thought I'll lie down instead of sitting here and falling asleep.  It's very comfy!'  Yep, it was one of those days!  I think because we've both been very busy doing stuff outside for the past while that when the sun disappeared, we slumped and haven't quite got going again!  Also, my back is still niggly.  It's healing slowly but surely and I'm being probably over careful so as not to aggravate it and set it back again!  On the plus side I've read two books, both of which I loved.  Everything is Beautiful by Eleanor Ray is a lovely book about a woman who becomes a hoarder and I love how the explanation for the things she keeps is at the end of each chapter.  I had serious thoughts of decluttering my house after this book!  Another I read was The Little Brooklyn Bakery by Julie Caplin.  A very light and airy book which was pretty predictable but I loved her descriptions of Brooklyn, it sounds like a place I'd love to visit one day.

We picked apples last week.  It was very hot recently and as rain was forecast for the end of the week I thought we should try and get some apples down before they fell.  I can't believe how enormous some of them are!  They are also absolutely deliciously sweet!  I wish I could keep them going all winter but they don't store well and to be honest, they are not as nice cooked as the cooking apples are.  I'm going to try to dehydrate some of them although I'm not sure what I'll do with dehydrated apples!  Apples tend to give me indigestion these days but I'm trying to eat as many as I can!  It's a hard job but someone has to do it!

Most of the stuff in the garden has gone over now.  All the beans have been picked and frozen or eaten; the corn has been eaten and delicious it was too, I only wish I'd known what a lovely summer we'd get and I'd have planted more! I've picked millions (no exaggeration!) of tomatoes; I have loads of peppers which are green and I'm hoping may turn red yet; we've used quite a few chillis and have a few more to pick and I've got lettuce from the second sowing and some spring onions on the way. 
I've one more pot of potatoes to pick and some carrots and thats it for this year.  I've planted some new daffodils and tulips and I've removed quite a lot of the perennial geranium (cranesbill) which was taking over the garden.  I've removed a contorted hazel tree as it too was getting too big in the garden.   

I've started putting my tiles on the outside wall.  I picked up the blue ones during the week and the picture ones have arrived and I love them, so hopefully the weather will stay dry for another few days.  Tiling is much harder than I thought it was although it's probably not helped that I'm being closely supervised by Mr Perfect!  Hubby is super meticulous which is no bad thing but when he said, you'll never look at walls again that are done by a tiler and think they look perfect, they are usually all over the place!  I've no reference for this yet as he's tiled the walls in our house so they are pretty much perfect!  I'd be more of a if they line up and look straight we're good kind of person but I'm not getting away with that this time!!  Hubby is not great at remembering to take photos so please believe me when I say that I did some tiling even though the photographic evidence says otherwise!!

 

I have some tentative plans for a new path in the front garden for next year.  I've been looking on Pinterest at some decorative paths!  I'll have some tiles left over and have some random ones lying about from previous projects so I'm looking at using them in my path in the front garden.  No one walks on this part of the garden but me when I'm gardening so I think the tiles would be ok.  If not I'll just replace them with something else.

These are the kind of things I'm looking at.  I'll have a few of the blue tiles left over and a few I've collected in the past not to mention my daughter gave me a large outdoor tile she found in her garage.  Now all I need to do is find out where I can get quite a lot of broken slabs or at least small slabs from!  But like I said, this is a project for next year (at least!).