Hello

I've just realised it's over three months since I last did a proper post (as opposed to the automatic posts from Diigo). How did time go so quickly?


While I've been MIA in the blog world, we've had the worst winter in my lifetime here in the UK. For those of you who get lots of snow every year it probably doesn't sound that great but for us it was lovely to keep waking up to snow. It almost became normal to wake up to a new layer of snow! Admittedly though we didn't suffer adverse effects of the snow because my husband works as a gardener so wasn't having to get out to work and we live in a well served village so can get to shops for essentials on foot.



Now that summer is on the way, I have been working on our garden. Last year it was more like a wild meadow (see the first photo on my "Summer Days" post) but now that it has been tamed I am putting in some vegetable patches. The plan is to do one 5'x20' bed this year, prepare another two ready for planting for next year and maybe do a fourth the year after. Plus a narrow bed along the fence. I've almost finished double digging the first bed and tomorrow will hopefully do the fence one (which will be about 1'x20') and plant my seeds (some direct and some in pots for transplanting once the frost risk is gone). We've also managed to remove the pampass grass visible in the picture below and currently that space is temporary home to two rhubarb plants. I'm so looking forward to eating rhubarb!


We're also currently in the throes of a general election here in the UK. (Not that it's much of a battle here - apparently I live in the safest Labour seat in the country.)

And I've been getting very annoyed about abortion. But I'll save that for other posts.

A Funny Old Week

Last week my husband had extra work on Monday and Tuesday which meant he finished his Monday shift at 0200hrs on Tuesday and then started his Tuesday shift at 1000hrs. So that he could sleep in on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, he slept in Little Girl's room when he got home and when I went to bed I took her to sleep with me. Unfortunately the first night she took ages to go to sleep and then by the time she got sleep I couldn't sleep so I ended up with only three hours sleep that night.

By Thursday we were all pretty much recovered from all the sleep disturbance but we didn't have water on those two days so we tried to go out in the mornings to minimise the time at home without water. (I say "tried" because we were unsuccessful on Thursday due to the car having a flat battery but we managed to jump start it on Friday.)

Between sleep disturbance, going out and not having water my menu plan got thrown out the window a bit although I did manage to use everything which needed to be used and make a nice big batch of lentils and rice. On Saturday I did manage to bake bread, fruit loaf and muffins most of which I somehow managed to jam into the freezer and amazingly despite the lack of water I managed to keep up with the washing.

Since everything has been so busy recently and the freezer is still somehow overflowing (despite the fact I've only spent £20 on food this month most of which was milk, eggs and fruit) I've decided to make this week a freezer meal week instead of doing "proper" cooking and a menu plan.

"I wonder what they do teach them at these schools"

or

A Belated Halloween Update

Since our computer broke the day before Halloween, I never got the chance to update on how it went.

We bought ten of these story bibles and we had eleven trick or treaters who called (aged around 5 to 9 at a guess) so the last one got a Bible colouring book instead as we have a huge stash of them.

Apparently though people don't get taught how to read a calendar these days as six of the trick or treaters called a day early.

They seemed to be well received and hopefully they will read them and God will work in their hearts. The only problem that occurred was when Little Girl got upset because she has a story bible the same as the ones we were giving away and she thought we were giving hers away.

Summer Days

Since I haven't written much since we moved house, I decided I'd try to get back into things by doing a picture post of our summer.


Our (wild overgrown) garden when we moved in:


It came complete with wildlife which kept Little Girl well occupied in observation.





A trip to Beamish. (This is an old coal truck used to bring mined coal up to the surface.)



Slowly getting sorted out after the move...


Sleeping in.


Waiting for the ferry to Skye.


Summer holiday in Skye.









Hmm... I must look up that flower.














Back home sorting out the tomato plants.


Playing in a tamed part of the garden.




Canning tomatoes. (Not our own, they're only just ripening now.)




"Helping" in the kitchen. (Unsolicited.)

Recovering

Little Girl is now recovering well from her chicken pox and seems to be feeling much better. We are also recovering from the lack of sleep caused by her being ill. Thank you to all those who have prayed about it.

Yesterday my brother e-mailed me a website with a family tree with links to mine and also e-mailed the owner saying I could probably give them a bit more information so since I am too tired to do anything energetic I thought it was a good time to do a bit of family history research online. Last time I did anything was nearly five years ago and there is loads more information than there was. I have even managed to find a photo of my great grandfather here (he is at the very bottom right) which is quite exciting for me as I don't have much detailed information about that branch of the family as my grandma couldn't remember much and he died when she was 12. I also found this picture of the house where my Grandma was born:


It's so amazing what you can find with the internet!