General Chat

It’s good to hear from you Joan, even if you aren’t feeling well. Hopefully come the better weather, you will be able to get out in the garden more and pass the day on.

I went to play with Esme this afternoon as her mum had another work call. We had a washing up bowl of water on the table which was doubling up as a swimming pool for Barbie and Ken. We played for about forty five minutes with that before her ear was hurting her again and it was time for more pain killers. Unsurprisingly they had a bad night with her last night. It can take a couple of moths for a perforated eardrum to repair itself, I hope the pain subsides faster than that.

Afternooon everyone.
Florence, the weather hasn't beeen nice at all this week, bright but cold, & windy & of course rain every day at some point, so no gardening for me.

I did pop out a couple of times on Wednesday & cut back some more off the hedging but I couldn't get much done as the wind was annoying & my hands were so cold even with some gloves on so I gave up.

I have felt rather fragile this week,& shed a lot of tears for one reason or another !
I am not coping well just now, & I can't get motivated to do anything, be it my Crosstitching or housework, our daughter took me for my weekly shop on Thursday but my heart wasn't in it & i just wanted to get back home.

Daughter had to telephone the Tax Office yesterday as the re-issued cheque had not arrived, it was supposed to be here by the 17th !!
After being on hold for yet another good hour we were told the cheque had been re-issud on the 17th & should be with me within 10 days !! Let's hope so.

Well I think I should make a start on my tea, I am making the usual Fish & Chips today, not really hungry but I have to eat but it's not the same eating alone !

Linda, your house renovations sound lovely, you will be upside down atm but it sounds as though you will have a really lovely home once evrything is finished.

Florence, I hope your Red Robin replacements grow well for you this time, it's not a plant I am familiar with but our eldest son up in the Forres area has a hedge of Red Robins which he planted up 2 winters ago & have done really well with just one plant failing.

Bye for now.

Joan.

Afternoon all.

What a beautiful sunny and pleasantly mild day here about 14 degrees. Washing is out and drying the breeze.

I replanted my Red Robins into bigger pots and now hope they grow better than the last plants. I planted what I thought were lavender seeds and the plants that grew...well they are some sort of trailing plants :-S :-S :-S
Im so sure they were the right seeds but I thought lavender grow tall??. Anyway I managed to untangle the straggly plants and put them into a larger pot and shall have to wait and see what flowers if any it produces, bit of a mystery that one!

Linda, hope Esme is feeling better and not in so much pain with her ear, poor wee thing. Ear ache and tooth ache are just the worst pains you can have.

Joan, hope you are having this nice weather and busy in your garden. When you get outside, the day passes so quickly doesnt it?

Well I am going out for a wee walk round to get some lovely fresh air and get my leg muscles exercised. Hope everyone else looking in is having a good day,

Florence in the hebrides

It is very chilly here this evening. We have had a bit of an odd day. We decided to have a day off and drive to Ikea which is about forty minutes away. Just as we were leaving my daughter phoned and said that Esme was off school because she had earache. She had a GP appointment in the morning, but wanted to know if I could help out in the afternoon as she had online meeting from 2.30 to 4:30 :-(
So we decided that we could still go to IKEA but when we got there, the store was closed because all of their servers had gone down. They were trying to fix it, but didn’t know how long it would take. So we looked round some furniture stores and had a very early lunch. Luckily Ikea reopened in time, so I was able to get the things we wanted, plus things you didn’t know you wanted which always happens there :-

OH. dropped me of at 2pm so I could play with Esme. We played for an hour and a half, but then her pain killers were wearing off, so her ear was hurting again. The poor thing has a burst eardrum probably caused by an infection from the awful cold they have all had. She has some antibiotics, so hopefully will feel better in a couple of days.. She snuggled up on the sofa and had some more Calpol, but she wasn’t very happy until it kicked in. I foresee a bad night for my daughter and Esme if course.

Afternoon all.
Ann, they came in small pots but I left them in those overnight and gave them a good drink. Haven't managed yet to repot as have been too busy but another day wont matter to leave them.

I had a query on a tree I had thought was finished but with some help think the query got solved but also has now given me new info and so I shall have to create another branch to enter the new info.

Well the sun came out and went back in so one of those days with a few showers as well. But I have the heating on as it is pretty chilly.

I have made a pan of lentil and veggie soup for tea with some par baked crusty rolls that need using up. Daughter is on route home so I'm sure the washing machine will be earning its keep.

You sound like you had a lovely walk Ann, it really lifts ones spirits when you can get out and about :-D

I have a trip out next Tuesday with my good friend so we are both looking forward to it. Bit of browsing, lunch, etc and I want to look in the supermarket too but it will be sooo good to get out of the house as its been months except when i went out to Glasgow and that was a disaster as I became very unwell the next day!

Hope everyone else looking in is well today

Florence in the hebrides

give them a soaking first Florence.

The sun is shining here and blue sky with white clouds. Warm in the sun but a nip in the air when the clouds cover the sun. 11 degrees.

I have just been for a walk round the estates and through a small local copse. Took me 40 minutes walking so good exercise. Not many people about, just people with dogs. I did see a very small baby grey squirrel and the birds were all singing in the trees which are now in leaf and some with blossom so an uplifting walk. :-)

Morning everyone.

Well the lovely sunny day we had yesterday didnt last as its raining, misty, cold and windy so back to normal i guess :-(

My replacement Red Robin plants have arrived and so they need to be transplanted into bigger pots today so that's one job to do.

No update on my Aunty last night so not sure if thats good or bad.

Hope everyone looking in is well and if you have the sunshine , can you send it back here at once please ty :-D :-D

Florence in the hebrides

I really want to start buying plants Ginnie as this garden is totally empty, but it needs a lot of work putting into it and the inside of the house is more important at the moment.

We went to the bathroom showroom this morning and they had actually taken out the display we are buying yesterday, so that is going to be delivered next week. It is amazing value, we were so lucky to come across it. We have ordered some different taps for the bath which have a shower attachment. Stupidly they cost about the same as half the whole suite.
We have also chosen everything for the en-suite., so they will send us a full priced quote for that.
We decided to go out for a short walk this afternoon , but had to wait for a shower to pass over. Down one side of the house is a pathway with trees on each side which goes through some woods. We ventured down there, it comes out into a lovely country lane by the river. In the summer we can go to a nice cafe by the river. We did a circular walk coming back through an estate which obviously isn’t as pretty. If we turn the opposite direction on the country lane, it Leeds to a nice pub,so we will try that out one day.

Hello all,

Was very sunny here earlier but has clouded over now, not quite as windy today as it has been but quite cold.

Linda we have those boards in our shower and they are great for cleaning as you say no grouting . We have the ones with small speckles on of different colours.
Hope you find a plant you like when you are out and about.

The little roses I bought have perked up already and have some new shoots on . They are very small and I might get 1 or 2 flowers later but hopefully they will be good when fully established . I always look out for bargains like this from poundland as they don't look after the plants well and they end up being thrown away.

OH got his email to book for his covid booster he can go to the nearby pharmacy which is only 10mins walk away.

Take care all

Ginnie.

Afternoon all.
Well finally its a dry, sunny and lovely day with little wind....yay :-D

Sadly, I got word yesterday from my cousin to say my late mum's eldest sister is unwell and in hospital. She has a serious infection which led to her having fluid in her heart and lungs. Stronger meds helped but she is very up & down and the outlook isn't very good. However she is very strong and stubborn and this may pull her through even though she is 89!! So the family down south is all on tender hooks.

I have been busy with family tree research and now discovered something that has thrown me completely so having to retrace my findings to double check my results.

Im home alone until tom eve, so at least i have peace and quiet to get on.

Linda, you do make me laugh :-D :-D :-D hubby sitting in the bath in the garden oh my!! Hope you get on with finding a suite you like for your en suite, how exciting..

Right Im all behind today so off to get a coffee, some toast and take my meds.

Hope everyone looking in is well and ok.

Florence in the hebrides

Good morning everyone.It looks sunny out there, but it is supposed to rain this afternoon.
I took a photo of OH sitting in the bath on the driveway, our daughter suggested we plumb it in as a hot tub :-D. It is currently in the garage with some very large wall boards which the previous people had put in instead of tiles. There will also be the sink and toilet to add to that. We will have to get a man with a van to take everything to the tip.
We are going to go to the bathroom showroom today to arrange delivery of the new things, we also need to choose some new taps. We aren’t having a shower over the bath, we are just having a hand held shower on a cradle on the taps. Not having a shower means we can just have a couple of rows of tiles around the bath to the same height as the basin. OH will do those once we have chosen some.
We are also going to choose everything to redo the en-suite, yet more pennies :-(. The current shower has the wall boarding as well. I think that is a good idea because there is no grout to go mouldy. The current stuff is white with a very feint grey mark which you can only see if you are really close to it. From outside the shower, it just looks like a plain white wall, so that is going to have to be replaced with something better.

Neither Linda. Well I did actually plant on some tomato seedlings but then decided to walk down the road with a few things for the lady who collects all sorted to disperse to various charities, then when I got back it started to rain. since then I have not really done anything, just messed around on here, done a bit of admin and had lunch. Sun is shining now but the urge to garden has left me.

I expect you can pay the council to take away the bath etc. Good job it is not your only bathroom.

So why was it Ann, garden or bus?

I went to the enormous Sainsbury’s supermarket this morning, it took me ages to find the things I wanted

The plumber is here and has taken the bath and shower out if the bathroom, it is now sitting on the drive. I assume that we will have to pay for a man with a van to come and take it away.
The plasterer is not coming until next Monday to skim the wall, then we van arrange for the new suite to go in

:-D Could have been anything last time then Sylvia but still you obviously survived. How strange to do it there, obviously they had been taught that.

Nice bright wind free morning so far. Might potter a bit more in the garden, or might go in to town on the bus. I shall see. Oh the choices!!

We also received our invitations to get our Booster shot yesterday (Sunday). I booked mine online for next Friday at a pharmacy near us. OH phoned up and booked his for tomorrow (Tuesday), early afternoon, same pharmacy.

I just decided I would wait a few days until the end of the week :-D

We've had boosters done at this pharmacy a couple of times before, so we know them. Our shots last October were really strange ............... we were in a hurry because we were going away in about a week, so we went to one of the big chain pharmacies/drug stores that sell all kinds of things because it had the earliest vacancies. It turned out they were employing specially trained pharmacists to do the double vaccination for Covid and Flu. It was the strangest vaccination I think either of us had ever had ....... right on the point of the shoulder, both flu and Covid in more-or-less the same place so only 1 plaster was put on. Our shoulders were really quite sore if we moved them in the wrong direction, and that lasted for several days. Then we realised that she didn't give us any printout of what vaccines we'd been given, but it was too late to go back and get it.

I hope you enjoyed your dinner Florence. We had some left over chicken from yesterday. There is still lots left because the extra large size was on offer for only 30p more than the large size. I will make some soup tomorrow.

I just got an email to book my spring Covid jab. I had lots of choices for the pharmacies in town, so I am going to the nearest one in a couple of weeks.

:-D :-D :-D oh my god, really Linda!!! Who leaves their rubbish under the bath, that's unbelievable, Maybe it was the original plumber who put the bath in and he was having his lunch and was too lazy to put his rubbish in a bin..

Im gonna have to put the heating on as it really is chilly now in the house.

Hoping Masterchef is on tonight but cant remember tbh. You get some right characters taking part. Final of The Apprentice is also on this week Thursday so looking forward to that too.

Well, making a stir fry of something for tea to use the packet up otherwise by tomorrow, the veg will be not usable. I don't have any prawns though so better go and look for something in the freezer.

I am not surprised that you are tired Florence after all that work. There is some ironing to do in the cupboard, I suppose I had better do it :-(

Oddly when we were looking this morning, OH said, “ Do you remember when everyone had Swiss Cheese plants”. I know the sort of thing I want, I just don’t want to pay the exorbitant prices

OH is busy dismantling the bathroom in preparation for the plumber coming to take the bath and shower out tomorrow. There is a right mess under the bath and behind all of the boxing in, empty crisp packets, an orange tango can and lots of rubble. I know you can’t see it, but it offends his sense of tidiness

How about a swiss cheese plant Linda?

Well the hailstones keep coming and the wind is stormy. Its howling through the bathroom vent and makes a racket.

I re-potted my Coleus into a bigger pot and it looks good. However the other plants seem to have wilted after repotting grrrr. I hoping they will settle overnight and root. I have no idea what they are either as daughter put the seeds into this pot and I cant identify the plants yet :-D :-D :-D maybe if they grow and flower, I shall know then.

Some more supplies for my crafting arrived and between us we have just painted 200 pine cones with a gold paint and 20 large slices of wood for the large centrepieces.

So after all that and the ironing I did before, I am now sitting with a coffee and having a rest as feeling quite tired.

I hope that you survived the coffee morning without throttling any one Hazel :-D

We decided to go to a local garden centre for lunch because it had a specialist houseplant concession in it. The lunch was fine, if a bit pricy, but the plants were ridiculously expensive, so we didn’t buy anything. I did buy some garden clogs though as I am ruining my leather ones on all the wet grass. They had two brands and one fitted much better than the other one. Amazingly, it was the cheaper ones which were best. That doesn’t usually happen to me.

I decided that I had earned the lunch out because I had been very industrious this morning. OH had put some of the silver reflecting sheets behind the radiators on the outside walls. He said that the radiators were incredibly dusty on the back. I have a special duster to get in between the gills. He was right, they had obviously never been cleaned out before. That raised a lot of dust, so once it had settled down, I had to dust all of the rooms as well.

It is very cold outside, but the rain has stopped thank goodness. This morning, it was just constant showers.