On Monday we returned home from eleven wonderful days in Italy, visioning the Amalfi coast – staying in Salerno as a base – and then taking in Capri and Sorrento before finishing with a few days in Napoli …
Since our return, I’ve not done a lot – pottered around, making some attempts to chop back and tidy up the garden. The tulips are in bloom and looking good, both back …
and front…
I also cleaned the windows on the outside, and then gave them a clean inside, as you can see below
I did an oil change on the Micra, and have bought two new Kindles to replace mine and Becky’s from 2011 which are going to cease being supported. Weather has been a mix of rain and sunshine (typical for April), at times cold, but yesterday was lovely and I spent much of the afternoon sat outside reading (and snoozing!) Have run a couple of times since our return – my first runs since February, and my legs let me know for the rest of the day. and refereed today – so much more enjoyable on a warm spring morning.
Back to school tomorrow, but the summer term is always the best!
It has been a lovely week, weather wise, particulraly from about Wednesday on, when the sun has shone and temperatures have been warm, in the mid-teens. Everything is beginning to bust into life, trees are greening up and the front trugg is looking good,
No refereeing for me today, and I had planned on running, but I still felt a little tired when I woke up, so I didn’t run. Instead, I had a full morning in the garden, planting up an Abelia Grandiflora that will hopefully grow over the years to fill the hole left by the blighted box bush that I cut down last year.
It looks small at the moment, but hoping it doesn’t take too long to grow.
And in the back I tackled some of the ivy from the back wall, largely at the behest of Becky in her battle against her nemesis …
To be fair, the ivy is significantly above the top of the wall, so over the course of this spring and summer I intend to cut it down quite significantly
Sam has an interview on Thursday – for a trainee manager post with Enterprise rent-a-car in Bristol, having had a successful phone interview, and then a video interview. So we’ve been trying to kit him out in “business attire” for Thursday: I remembered I had some suits that I no longer wear as they are too big for me under the eves. Fished them out and they fit the boy! (Have since washed and ironed them so he won’t look so crumpled …)
Today is Mothers’ Day and Sophie and Becky have travelled up to Birmingham to see Benson Boone. Sophie came home on Thursday and its been nice to have her around for a few days (she plans to return early Tuesday morning) and so this morning we we all home together, which was nice. Sam has now gone to work, and I went to Bridgwater to referee a football match.
It was my fourth game in five days (and my third in three) and I am really starting to enjoy it again. It helps that the weather is warmer, and dry – Wednesday and Saturday were both beautiful days, Friday and today less so. March is oscillating from sunny blue skies to cold windy days, with the odd rain shower (which fortunately I have missed) Being on quality pitches – Pitch one twice, SGE once and BCA astro today, helps, both with the quality of the football, and the ease of running around.
I was a little worried on Wednesday as my left calf felt as though it had a tight ball in it – not a pull, but running wasn’t as fluid as it should have been. So I invested in a massage gun (£20) and it has been brilliant. Working the back of the calf, a spot, say 4 cm diameter, was painful, but by repeated use the pain has gone away, as if the problem has been “broken up”, and refereeing back to back games on Friday, Saturday and Sunday has been no problems, with no more than a “normal” post-exercise slight ache across all leg muscles.
With the light and lengthening says, colour is returning to our world: greens are vibrant with new growth, bulbs continue to flourish and blossom brightens many a tree. The forsythia on the way to school is a blanket of yellow
and the bulbs in the lawn and borders bring me joy, with grape hyacinths and the odd tulip joining the yellow see of daffodils.
I’ve moved my wildlife camera to a corner of the main deck and have begun to have some success – seeing sparrows hoping around during the day, and at night I’ve captured footage of a cute little mouse scurrying along its length. But the most exciting discovery was that we have a hedgehog!
I’ve captured footage of it rootling around on more than one occasion, a welcome member of the garden.
Hopefully you can see the video above. My camera captures video in AVI format, but this is quite an old and memory expensive format, but I’ve discovered they can be changed into the more useful MP4 format using (for example) https://cloudconvert.com/ which means I can post the videos here, and share them on Instagram. This camera was £35 well spent!
The garden and surrounding landscape is also greening up nicely, with lots of bulbs pushing through and bringing colour back into our world. Weather wise, after a beautiful start to the week, from Thursday it has gotten cold, grey and a little damp (drizzle, not the dreadful downpours of earlier in the year), but the vivid green foliage, and blues, yellows and whites of the flowers lifts one mood enormously.
Alliums (always later to flower) pushing through
This year (well, for this year, it was last autumn they were planted) I planted a lot more grape hyacinths and I’m enjoying their splash of blue amongst the vibrant yellow of the daffodils.
And whilst I always think they are a bit of a one-hit wonder – blink and you’ll miss them – the magnolias, like this in a neighbours back garden, or our white one in the front garden, do look good right now.
To be honest, I could have titled this post ” F$%k off February” – I must confess that I am glad to see the back of it. Although its not seemed too long, it’s been wet and grey, and I seem to have been either tired or full of cold, or both!
But the good news is is that these week has signalled a real change – the weather is improving: some rain still causing misery, but in between we are getting to see some blue skies, and feel a bit of warmth. And added to that, plants are beginning to come back to life. The back garden is awash with daffodils, and in the front wooden trug we now have some colour.
I do love the little daffodils, but I am regretting my decision to not plant some normal sized daffodils in there too – a planter of this size probably needs the height for impact. Noted for next year!
And its not just the daffodils that are brightening our days. Bird life is returning and bushes and trees are beginning to green up.
This morning I answered the call to referee a game on the Bridgwater & District league – glad I did, the game was good, the weather was pleasant and it was nice to be out and about on an early spring like day. I saw Keith, and he was encouraging me give him the next six Sundays, don’t think I’ll do that, but my head has probably been turned …
Last week I had my prostate PSA test, on Monday I got the results: in the green I’m pleased to say, with a recommendation to be retested in two years, Fen ’28.
And so half term draws to a close. On the one hand, I don’t feel I have done a lot, but when I look back, it has been an important week. I do feel rested – although still a little snuffly: mid-week I developed a bit of a cold, and I am still not 100% – but I do think it has taken most of the week for me to recuperate after a long, wet, cold, dark six week half term. This week has still been wet, but it has been interspersed with pockets of brightness – like now: I awoke to rain, but by mid morning it had stopped and now we have a mix of sun and clouds with a stiff breeze. I do get the sense that the awful, depressing locked in weather we have endured since the start of 2026 has now moved on, and that the weather (whilst still not perfect) has changed. And this, is evidenced in part by the flowering of some spring bulbs. Above are the snowdrops I planted in March ’21 – they are looking good, perhaps I ought to plant some more? And the daffodils in the lawn, and some bulbs salvaged from last year are in bloom, there yellow heads dancing in the breeze and lifting my spirits.
Also this week in the garden, I used a window of weather to remove a couple of the Miscanthus from the bed by the fig tree, and potted them into three pots. I hope they survive and thrive. (For the record, cut down the Miscanthus staying in the bed to ground level, but left those in the pots uncut.)
I also tidied up the porch – ditching some junk, gave the walls and floors a good clean, put up a shelf and built a couple of shoe racks from Argos. It looks a lot better: cleaner and more spacious.
Before …
During …
… and after
On a different note …
Yesterday I had my PSA test at an event run by Somerset Prostate Support Association. I went to Wells for my booked appointment, the test itself took less than 5 minutes – they took a small blood sample from m y arm – and now I await the results, which I should hopefully receive in the next day or so,
Whilst talking of my health – I went for a run on Tuesday, but at around the 5K mark my calf went ping again, so I hobbled home, and have done no exercise since!
Back to school tomorrow for a five and a half week term, hopefully the weather continues to improve, and at the end of which we head of to Italy for nine days, which I am starting to look forward to.
Yesterday was beautiful – blue sky and after an initial frost, some warmth to the sun. It was wonderful. But today the rain has returned with a vengeance – I didn’t run this morning: I just didn’t fancy getting soaked once again, and the picture above is me looking forlornly out onto the street this afternoon as, once again, the heavens opened. Tuesday was a particularly tough day – it was House football: we kicked of in the pouring rain at 1.45, and I finished two and a half hours later, cold, and very, very wet. I wasn’t best pleased!
Worried by a lot of soil activity around my compost heap – at times there seems to be as much outside the bin as in – I have invested in a “trail camera” and for £35 I am pleased with the results. You set it up and leave it, and it will take both video and still pictures. My first attempts didn’t capture anything untoward, just a wren:
(unfortunately, I can’t upload the videos directly to my blog, so will have to do so via Youtube)
I moved the camera so it was on the ground, and one night I got a bit of rat action.
The videos show it/them much more clearly.
Its a good little gizmo – I haven’t caught anything else on camera since Thursday night, but will keep trying. At some point I’ll move it to different parts of the garden,
Three times a week, for the last three (four?) weeks, we have had a “don’t miss” appointment with The Traitors. Becky has been a fan since the first series, and she convinced – no insisted – that I watch this series with her, and I am glad she did. Its been like the old days – a TV event you had to watch at the time, not just streaming it on catch-up at your convenience. It ended on Friday with the two traitors, Rachel and Stephen winning, below are the the final six, posted to help remind me who they were when I look back in the future.
Whilst today has been dry – other than five minutes of drizzle here and there – it has been a very wet week, with rivers overflowing and football pitches either being unplayable or soon turning into mud. And there is little respite forecast, with rain expected every day next week.
But in the “dry” (ie rain wasn’t falling from the sky, but everything was very, very wet, I spotted the first snowdrops flowering in the garden.
And there is even one, lonely, somewhat forlorn, daffodil bravely flowering despite the wind and rain in the flower bed on the back deck, by the fig tree. (And for the sake of recording it, today I took the netting off the front trugg as bulbs are just beginning to push through, although it does still feel like it will be some time before we see them in full flower)
After Sophie’s birthday at the start of last week, this week ended (on Friday) with Becky’s birthday. The weather, though, was terrible, with biblical rainfall (which led to bad flooding in Monmouthshire.) On Saturday she went to Bristol to meet Sophie and see Mamma Mia, before rendezvousing with Sam and all of them coming home on Saturday evening.
The weather has been unseasonable pretty much all year, and that has continued with a very warm week, certainly it hasn’t felt like mid-November. Plenty of my plants are in still in full bloom, although next week the weather is set to turn, with the cold arriving and the possibility of overnight frost – and snow if you believe the hype. So today I took some time to move my geraniums from the front to behind the gate in the hope that I can over-winter them.
On Wednesday evening, Sam was sat outside and had company:
and the ‘hog returned again on Friday night:
I didn’t run today as I have a “tight calf” (left leg). I first noticed it whilst refereeing last weekend, and it was quite sore on Wednesday evening (having ref-ed that afternoon) Yesterday it wasn’t too bad until about 20 mins into the second half when my right leg slipped and I felt a stabbing pain in the back of my left calf. I probably could have run today but wisely chose not to (and went for a haircut instead!)
My war on the fungus gnats has definitely swung in my favour – too early to claim total victory, but certainly far fewer of the little buggers.
On Friday we headed up to see ABC at Cardiff Arena. I’m not really sure if Becky enjoyed it, but I did.
We travelled up to Cardiff that day, dodging (well, not really) the showers, crossing the bridge, and meeting up with Sophie, who very kindly was hosting us for the evening.
We had a nice meal at Honest Burger, before she left us to head to the show, and was waiting for us in her nice warm flat afterwards – was good to be “home” before 11pm having been out to a concert!
On Saturday, after breakfast of Lidl’s pastries (delicious!) all three of us headed back over the bridge to Bristol, Becky & Sophie going to the theatre to see the Book of Mormon (coming out after the show, they both said how good it was) and I was left to do some shopping on a Saturday afternoon in Bristol. The first couple of hours were fine – purchasing from Primark, and the perusing a few other stores, but then my enthusiasm began to wane and I wandered aimlessly before rewarding myself with coffee and cake, and then just sitting on a cold stone bench in Cabot’s Circus waiting for the show to end. It wasn’t tooo bad, but I don’t think I shall be rushing back to a shopping mall any time soon!
Before we went to Lisbon I dug up the front bed, so that on our return from Lisbon I was able to plant up all my spring bulbs, now we just need to batten down the hatches, endure the dark, cold winter to come, and await their colourful arrival next year.
Inside, I’ve been waging war against a legion of fungus gnats that have been plaguing the house – bought in, I think, when I re-potted all my Monstera plants. Although harmless, they are a bloomin’ nuisance, buzzing around your head. I’ve employed a three pronged plan to eradicate them: I have bought a load of yellow sticky traps -it is quite amazing (not sure that is the right word) to see how many of the little flies get stuck to these, I’ve applied a physical barrier of gravel on the tops of each worst affected plant, in an attempt to stop the adults reaching the soil and laying their eggs, and, most recently, I have tried biological control by watering Bacillus Thuringiensis Israelensisonto the plants in an attempt to kill the lava in the soil. I think I’m winning with the plants in my room, the verdict is still out on the infestation in Sam’s room.
On our trip to Cardiff, we had hoped to dovetail in a visit to the house she is buying, but we couldn’t be accommodated on that day. However, the day before, she had had her info back from the solicitor, and it stated that the garden was at significant risk of flooding, so after much heart ache and discussion, she is pulling out of the purchase. That does leave us with a big box of loo paper that she had purchased and delivered to our house – I do like the picture above of Sam taking delivering!
