My garden in March

March was the month where suddenly working from home became the norm, and for the first few days it was also my only outdoors experience. A walk up and down the garden a few times a day became my walk to and from work, which was much shorter than they are in reality. But each of us are adapting, aren’t we? The occasional blue skies helped. It was on one of these ‘excursions’ that I took the picture of our neighbour’s new roof terrace - I bet he’s pleased he has that space right now.

Our plants are starting to spring back into life, and I was pleased to see the plant which I’d coaxed along the wire supports do this. While our neighbour’s work had been taking place this had been rolled back up on itself, so it was especially pleasing to see it much more comfortable.

Colour is starting to appear, though the currant berry (above) has a section which is dead, which is now in our composting bin and the irises below were short lived once MOH and the lawnmower passed over the top.

There’s plenty of cutting back to be done, and seeds to be sown. The relatively new pots were ready to go, and so along with some build-a-balls, a top up of compost and some actual seeds they were ready to go.

So far the spinach, turnips, beetroot and chard (not pictured) are showing, the others I hope won’t be too far behind.

My gardening bug is starting to reawaken, what about yours? Why not add your post to my monthly ‘gardening’ link party, which opens on the 1st of each month and stays open all month - everyone, and all gardening posts, are welcome.

Reflecting on my week #124

I’m not sure how a week has passed since my last blog post, though actually it’s quite plausible as right now I’m in that space where I have no idea which day it is anyway. They are all sort of merging and there is little separating each day, each morning I wake up and mentally have to check which day it is, but I don’t think I’m alone. It’s been another week with few outings, in line with government guidance.

MOH has been out for a cycle most days, but my trips have been restricted to the garden (which I’m not counting as properly outside), the local supermarket (which is walkable), the greengrocers and the butchers. I may even branch out next week and go to the bakers as well. It’s interesting though as I thought he was more introverted than me, but it’s him that’s struggling the most.

I’m fine being home. Even work aside (and he has plenty of that too), I’ve plenty to keep me occupied. There’s the garden - though I save that for when he’s around to empty my trugs, and crafting, whether that’s crochet, lettering, or there’s cooking and of course the washing. He has household tasks too, in fact trying to stop him clean is a challenge, but yet he’s still ‘bored.’

He worked Saturday - and it wasn’t a short one, and so I was happy to amuse myself. We were both tired though by the time he finished close to midnight and so, what makes our ‘weekends’ are slow starts to our days. A lounging breakfast, which is almost brunch and plenty of tea and/or coffee.

Our new barbecue is up and running, with its inaugural burgers being cooked Friday evening. Our timing was off though, and the days not quite as long as suits us, so they were also mostly cooked by torchlight. And very nice they were too, I’m hoping it’ll get plenty more use over the next few months.

We’ve been gardening, and filling our green bins - but not over-filling them, as requested by the council. We’re composting what we can, which at this time of our gardening year, isn’t much. And finally, our camellia is flowering - it’s worth waiting for, and this year it looks as if it has plenty of blooms to come.

The other thing about this lockdown period is the amount of times our dishwasher is going on. Clearly we don’t eat three meals a day at home very often and we’re getting through our crockery! Actually I think I might have a post brewing about the lockdown and our experiences, but not quite what you think - look out for that.

Lunches are my nemesis though, much the same as non-lockdown days. Though I’m calling tinned fish a win. Up until now MOH has turned his nose up whenever this is suggested, but we’ve had tinned fish twice now, and both times his plate was clean.

Yesterday it was the turn of our ‘1967’ (a good year btw) sardines, which we brought back from Lisbon last summer. They were tasty, and gave the perfect opportunity to use my picnic plates for the first time. I do like a nice plate, MOH was less sure about the plates - maybe that’s why the fish got a smoother ride, who knows? But also, MOH didn’t even know we had these plates…

On Good Friday I was due to join an online class to learn rag rugging - and yes, I know I said I didn’t need to learn a new skill, seems rag rugging is the exception! - but the materials for the class hadn’t arrived. Of course, they arrived on Saturday, a day late, and so I’ll join the class this morning instead.

I’m looking forward to it, and have already realised there’s much more to it - and much more that you can do with it - than you’d think. I’ll let you know how I get on, but in the meantime, please do feel every sympathy for Elspeth, who has the tricky task of teaching me, and remotely at that.

Reflecting on my week #123

Right now I feel that I could start every post exclaiming what a week, and each is more of a week than previous. I’m now sat here in front of the tv typing this post and learning that Boris has been moved into intensive care. Everything right now seems on its head; the coronavirus situation, social distancing, lockdown, our new normal, our political landscape (though to be fair, that’s been incredibly bonkers since the middle of 2016, hasn’t it?) Whatever your political views, let’s hope for a speedy recovery.

My week has involved lost photos, working until almost midnight, finally venturing out, picking my crochet up again, some gardening and getting my sourdough back on. I mentioned in yesterday’s post about the posts on social media about learning a new skill, or a new language while we’re in lockdown, and to be quite frank this is absolute tosh. My working days are actually far harder, and longer, than if I was in the office. What our team has noticed, apart from the increased workload that all comms teams are experiencing right now, is just how much we share just by being co-located, and so building that into our remote working days takes effort.

And when a process hiccup materialises as a technical oversight and out of office hours, it makes for a long night, for a lot of people. It was fixed, but not without a fair bit of angst all round. Ironically that day I’d had the morning off in recognition of the hours I’d worked. What’s more, I missed the virtual bar with friends and our online shopping delivery happened the same evening too. Overall it was quite a busy evening in this household.

I have though been making good progress with my Vintage Hearts crocheted blanket too. Above are most of the Granny Marion squares, which give a hint of just how colourful this blanket will be. I think there’s something about the rhythm and repetitiveness that’s calming, the concentration and the constant colour changes also help - though I’m currently ignoring just how many ends there will be to sew in.

We’ve been trying to make a real effort for our weekends to be different to our working week days, which isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially when MOH worked on Saturday too (it was planned, he didn’t forget what day it was). The weather helped and we spent most of Sunday in the garden, though there too the current situation is tempering just how much we do. Usually we’d be cutting back as many of our bushes as we can, and while we’d still like to do that, it doesn’t make sense to overload the council services. We’re composting what we can, though much of the woody stems and weeds which we’re currently disposing of aren’t suitable for that.

It’s good to see the garden coming back to life. The potted rhubarb’s bright pink stems were a very pleasing sight, as was the blossom on the cherry tree. The pear tree which we pruned quite heavily last year has also sprung back into life and is looking a much better shape for its haircut.

The insects too are out and about and keeping busy. I managed to snap the bee above as it made the best use of our flowering berberis; I tried, and failed, to capture an orange butterfly which kept threatening to land on our new barbecue which MOH was building. Our garden furniture is now uncovered and the barbecue is built, with just one piece left over.

Sunday night saw us lighting the fire pit and trying some star gazing. The skies above London are noticeably clearer - this photo was taken just before 8.30pm - and while not many stars are showing, it was great to be able to sit outside instead of in front of the TV, even though if it was a little more smoke-filled than usual. Let’s hope there’s more warmer weather to come, but also that people manage to stick within the social distancing rules - if you’ve been following my Instagram stories you’ll know my feelings on this.

This post is a day later than usual, that’s partly because of a self-imposed break from looking at my screen, but also because we took the day off. We didn’t achieve much, and didn’t really go anywhere - other than finally timing it right to pick up my prescription from the local chemist, but we sat with a different view, ate well and generally pottered around. Him cleaning his bike and me getting my sourdough back on. It’s been a while, but bread is the least of my grocery worries, which in case you’re wondering are fresh vegetables and dairy.

We’re doing ok getting both, the green grocers in our local parade of shops is well stocked and we’ve had a delivery from the Very Green Grocer too, and we’re using our local M&S to top up our usual monthly Ocado shop. I am a bit peeved with Ocado though, I know they’re busy and their delivery people are great, in fact our delivery on Thursday came almost two hours early, but I disagree with their latest position. On their website they’ve prioritised some customers, including the most vulnerable and those shielding (which is fair enough), but also some of “our longest-standing, most loyal customers”.

Now I’ve no idea of the criteria they’ve used here, but having been a customer for easily fifteen years, maybe more, I’m a bit peeved. People have been asked not to over-shop, and I haven’t, but now that I can’t even login to the website I’m wondering and reassessing where we do our regular. monthly shop. I’m also pretty sure, we won’t go hungry, so while I’m peeved I can’t really get too aerated about it, or where I choose to shop in future.

Though one other observation about this lockdown, is the amount of times the dishwasher is going on! Clearly it’s not that often that we eat three meals a day at home. What are you noticing most about being ‘locked down’?

Oh, and those lost photos? They’re now found and have prompted me to reevaluate how I’m using iCloud for my photo storage. I’ve no idea what happened to my photos from our holiday to Portugal last June, but I was very glad to find them on my old iPhone.