14th December, 2017

Advent has started, builders are in, and gardening is far from my mind... or is it?
I fully planned to write a regular post but a lot has been happening. I have had all sorts of building work to arrange and the house had to have a whole new outside render applied and two bedrooms have had super insulated plasterboards installed to try to combat the damp and crumbling plaster in one bedroom and rising damp caused by a garden gate badly applied in the other.
When I said we had moved to a similar aged property before, I underestimated the differences in construction a mere 25 miles apart. Concrete floors and brick walls, and what should have been limestone render was actually a sandwich of concrete, lime and miscellaneous coatings from an almost 100-year life - how different will it be in 2023 after we've been here and made our mark?
And now I have to hold my tongue when the various builders plunk their equipment and size 10s on my newly planted beds and their bulb shoots coming up.
Next week we will have a digger attacking some of my hated concrete paths and starting to make tracks for the required soakaways (which happen to coincide with my plans for some planting schemes I have mentioned before... smiley face!)
Extra Smile were to come in and put my daughter's room right but the plasterer was held up by a permission from the local Heritage Society - can you see why I haven't posted? - and I better round up and get on with Christmas Card writing!

On my BULBS!!!

Measuring distances... to show where the new build doesn't go over our boundary...

Super smooth render.

PS Our new build is going to happen over the next few months so my comments on gardening might be a wee bit skewed to a construction blog, but I like the building side of things so I am not all that apologetic. In a previous life architecture and buildings were a keen interest...

Daylight savings do me in!

6 November, 2017

Is there an argument against the clocks changing?
I have posted before about Insomnia, but after a week where I have been catnapping and watching shadows moving across the ceiling in the wee small hours, I wonder whether the catalogues of accidents and near misses that occur the week after a clock change, can still show the change to be justified across the British Isles.
I've been irritable and fatigued to an extreme this week following the extra hour in bed on Sunday. The following week has seen me waking at 3 or 4 am and not being able to switch off and go back to sleep. Historically, the hour change was about agricultural workers having to get up in the dark, but the methods used, and the numbers of people affected have significantly changed, and it's not predominantly agriculture that form the majority of night workers and most get recompensed for the inconvenience of their labour.
However, it has been exacerbated by extra activities happening and it's incredible that November almost sees activities notching up a bit in the runup to Christmas festivities. For a country where a third of adults do not believe in God (according to YouGov), the festivities in December should be a lot smaller really. We are being told Brexit is putting the prices of everything up, so perhaps we need to rethink what this one day in December means to us, and step back from thinking that gifts mean more than spending time with our loved ones.
It really ramped up and I started taking a new medication for me, Tecifedra, and waved bye-bye to my injectors, and three nights a week not knowing if it was going to affect me adversely... Yay!
Pictures in November are a bit grim...

Early December saw snow
which has already disappeared...