Being but not seeing...

May 2018

Does that make sense?

My allium bulbs purchased at Gardener's
World last year are promising to open soon.

I often found

Deep purple flowers caught my daughter's eye.

Acers need a sheltered spot away from the gales that our garden currently
has because the gates are not stopping the crosswinds.

French lavender is one of the bushes that
were flattened by scaffolding poles.

myself drifting in the last few days and not understanding why everyone is staring at me. But it's often because a question has been asked of me and they're waiting for my response. I'm having vacant moments. It doesn't feel like I am in the real world but I am going to have to snap out of it or I am going to miss what I said we are going to do: spend more time doing family things.
We went off to the garden centre on Sunday and I snapped some of my favourite colours/plants beyond the ones I keep mentioning...

Nothing good...

Rosemary in blossom

29th April 2018

Life’s a b*tch sometimes?
I’ve spent the last couple of days getting my head around the hospital appointment I had on Thursday. I am not going to hold a pity party, I am just going to keep going as normal. It’s the only thing I can do and it’s the only thing my family will allow me to do. 

Thing is I’m not going to drop down dead tomorrow (unless I’m really unlucky...) but the diagnosis and recommendations are not easy to hear. The good news according to what I was told is that the biopsy discovered precancerous cells, but they’re contained, so not in random positions at the moment. The bad news I have to have another scan which will tell them whether to do a lumpectomy or a mastectomy. So you can see the jump here, it’s been caught early but I am still looking at getting bits of me cut off?

I will allow myself to digest that little bit of news and think of ways I can escape to the garden and shed a little self-pity. Hopefully, some of last years bulbs and plants will have a calming effect and it’s still a project to keep myself busy with. I’ve downsized some of my commitments so that I can focus on my health and family for now and I’ll keep posting the good bits of the garden. And my obsession with weeds is going to die down... bits of me are not currently desirable but hey ho! Life's a bowl of strawberries.

Hertfordshire closes its skips...

27th April 2018

You wouldn't believe it...
I really don't know what to think, but the winter lasted too long so everyone got to the waste disposal centres at the same time! (We didn't, it was a 'next' job, after the tiling and painting...) But officially Hertfordshire's waste disposal centres are struggling to cope with all our rubbish. North Herts are charging to take garden waste, so our compost bin is even more urgent than it was, so bits of the old concrete one have been semi-dismantled. And we are looking to see if we can get some friends together but that all takes organising and planning, never one of our strengths.
And driving around and avoiding/not avoiding the pot holes, I think the UK needs to take a leaf out of the Scandinavian book and recycle plastics into road surfaces because the tarmacadam is not working anymore with the weight of the traffic on our roads...
And I need to cut the grass... that was a job mentioned on GW last week! but the grass is littered with detritus so I think I need to put on my Marigolds and do some cleaning outside...

Bags of sand to avoid
with a lawnmower...

Queen of the Night?

Spring colours

Cherry trees all the way to school...

Wallflowers

Beautiful blossoms

Tulips are my favourites...

...and I love a deep purple.

Lucky snap!

25th April 2018

Spring has sprung!

Peony roses in bud

It only took a couple of days but all of a sudden the garden is a riot of colour. This garden has the potential to be colourful all year round and I came home from a glass mosaic class with strawberry plants to add to my planters. I've got hostas growing and protected by my slug pellets. Purple tulips of darkest hues and blue forget-me-nots. Dandelions are still my annoyance but I am inside decorating the kitchen with vibrant yellow tiles where I can't see them...
And my walk to school is a joy with blossom and flowers. There are benefits to living in a Garden City... a neighbour was telling me they even had certain streets which were planted with specific trees which was something I didn't know. Some research is needed, methinks?
But I'll have to store these pictures and memories as I've just been asked back to the Breast clinic this afternoon. I was going to wait until June. I was going to be patient...

Narcissi

My least favourite yellow flower...

Pink primulas

These red tulips look like poppies.

All different colours of cowslips...

Flowering rosemary

Quince flowers? Its a bush hidden by another bush...

Cowslips

Our paint job is needing a touchup

It's living in a virtual world!

21st April 2018

Virtually imagining living?

Butterfly resting on our path.

Blogging is offering me an escape from reality. I can muse on my laptop all I like, making up an imaginary world and peppering it with actual reality every so often so that it is a potted personal history.
My world is very much one of an observer now. My age is creeping up (even faster if you believe my consultant!) and in real life I am rushing about at a rate of noughts, simply trying to improve my house and family wellbeing while we are bombarded with images and blog news of everybody else having an amazing time. This also adds to the sense of being left behind, of building a sense of living in Alice in Wonderland's land of make-believe.
Television on a Friday night adds to this. We have Gardener's World now helping families aspire to tropical wonderlands in their identikit suburban semis, and BBC's One Show telling us about what celebrity features as 'actor' in the latest must-see movie. And I can't remember the last film I spent two hours to watch...

Marshmallows!

But I mainly 'multitask' at that too, sitting with several gadgets to hand, I rarely concentrate on one media. And that stops me from engaging with my children too, of which I am deeply ashamed. Making a resolution to try and get away from my media frenzy, I have toyed with us getting a dog, but we can even dip into that by "borrowing" a doggy, for the snapshot lives everybody seems to be living, that's all that is needed! Getting out into the garden, sitting round the fire a few times in the last few weeks, has awakened the urge to stop living virtually and all the family switching off tablets. Enjoy those gooey marshmallows!

Radwell Meadows

Getting away from gadgets!

Anenome colour...

Computer frustrations!

18th April 2018

Passwords, Bl**dy Passwords

I spent the day away from the computer today by tiling the bathroom in our new extension. And then later in the garden, where it is warming up, I felt a pang of frustration for the garden I wanted to create but if I sit in a certain way I can be oblivious to the rubbish we still need to get rid of. I can also choose to ignore the random dandelions poking their heads up to taunt me by persuading myself of the benefits to the bees. Bees we are not short of this year, in fact we seem to have attracted some of the biggest bees I've ever seen. And someone with knowledge can probably tell me that those bees are European invaders or something...

It had been a day away from computers largely but the last hour or so I tried to get a couple of online things done. That was when my anger levels became unhealthy.

I have been using computers since I was 15 and had various jobs using high-end computer systems but I object to the way using a computer now leaves me feeling exasperated, cack-handed and useless. Trying to book a sports club for my daughter after school and booking online will save me something but try as I might I can't get on to the right portal. Is it the company's website or am I doing something wrong?

I have been an Apple user for decades, and I can use PCs (all my invigilating jobs are PC based) but now all my ancient (they are being kept alive) gadgets (Phone, Tablet and Laptop) should be able to talk to each other but the bleeping passwords don't work. My mindfulness is not at my fingertips!

It gets me down and I do have an IT specialist living in the same house but he hates Apple with a vengeance and there is part of me wondering whether it is time to leave Macworld for another (and vastly cheaper) computer platform...

Amazon apparently charge Mac users more to order things, which I proved by ordering a pair of shoes online. On my iPad the shoes were £15 more expensive than on my husband's PC. Go figure?

I am talking myself into this by the minute, but again it leads me back to the fundamental problem of having to consider the way to increase my monthly income. 

Fairy Godmother, Where Are You?

Drama queen? Not!

Fritillaries

Anenome

Firepit

17th April, 2018

Gardening is far from my mind, but the fire pit has shown us using the garden in April!

Having got used to the idea, I thought I should share the latest drama chez moi... I found myself sent to the Breast clinic when I mentioned, in passing, at a GP's appointment for something else, that I had a large mass. I was seen in under 2 weeks bang in the middle of school holidays and I’ve had everything prodded and scanned and I go back on Thursday (suitably sedated) for a biopsy and a further chat with my very reassuring consultant. It makes me wonder about whether everybody gets seen this fast for these things or was it a fluke? (I’m not complaining but wow!)

And various comments/thoughts I have had made to me in the past, like ‘it's your MS’ or ‘you can’t have something like that, don’t be silly!’ might come back to bite me/others. I feel very glad of the well-oiled machine that is the British NHS, for making me feel everything is going to be ok and I’m not being dismissed as a time-waster. 

And I am aware of a friend locally who was not taken seriously for raising her symptoms as worrying over nothing, who currently has cancer spread through her hips after undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer a couple of years ago. So I am right that it does depend on who you see? She is currently looking to change her GP who dismissed her several times.

In between hospital visits and kids holidays I have been painting and tiling the last couple of weeks so the garden hasn’t really been looked at apart from photos of bulbs and flowers and our fire pit has been warmed up a couple of times. We do need to redo the garden seating/patio areas but it’s going down the list, and is going to become a lifelong project I think!

* UPDATE I won't be seen by the boobie consultant for results until the afternoon of April 26th, so I will hold the positive remarks close until I get results and put off ideas of perimenopausal patches...

Trying to sift the rubbish,

Can you see 10?

.

5th April 2018

Not much of a holiday!

April Fools Day is over. But being called my daughter’s granny is no April Fool. The garage guy was very apologetic when he realized his assumption was incorrect but severely dented my self-perception as a slightly older mum. Get me some hair dye!

And I have attempted this morning to renew my green credentials by sorting some of the building rubbish into plastics, wood, plaster, gravel, concrete and metals for their trip to the tip. My youngest happily helped me as it was a rare sunny day and actually quite warm, which meant that we achieved quite a lot. There are currently piles of metal, wood, plaster and gravel, as well as a huge bag of plastics and polystyrene. I am hoping this will mean we can easily dispose of it all at a refuse place which doesn’t involve too much queuing... but then it’s the Easter holidays so that would be the worst time ever to not plan such a trip... so I shall just have to see whether the builders are willing to help? We also have not had to do this in our newish neighbourhood and I have no idea what the local facility offers...

It’s funny though as we wandered around the garden later and my daughter kept pointing to flowers and blossom in every corner that reminds me to see beyond the pile of rubbish in the way that only a small person can.
Trees and bushes were actually very pretty and an excited shout brought me over to see ten ladybirds on one bush! I don’t think I realize how much it helps to have long sight over short sight and being a good deal closer to the ground.

This is a plant I don't know:
it was under one of the apple trees.

Purple anemone.

In front of white blossom.

Afternoon sun through yellow blossom.

April Fools?

1st April 2018

All happening at once - Easter to April Fools?

Bulbs promising colour...

Is anyone feel like this year has all been happening at once but very little seems to be achieved? Our extension is finished but it's not, as so much needs to be actually finished to be able to use it.
Easter weekend has supplied days off to paint and tidy and move things around.
But that didn't involve me spending any time in the garden but even I can see the efforts I made last year poking their heads up and even the daffodils are a little less predominant with tulips, anemones, alliums and irises. all things I bought at Gardeners World last year from the Dutch growers.
I've started looking at what I can do for this year to feature on the blog, and have been told on my Facebook page about a few requests.

Last years daffodils... that bed has changed
too but it has a fish tank propped up in it...

This features a few less
full-size daffodils than in previous years.