under another sun

A sore throated weekend, feeling wan and deeply attracted to the gold sofa. Luckily the European Nations cup finals had started, and so I was able to simply able to watch football most of the day.  Sunday, a lovely text to start the day from Beth wishing me happy stepladders (aka stepfather's) day.   I was still wan and sore throated but simply got on with light stuff in the garden with Lorraine, potting seedlings and deadheading roses and filling a feeder pool for our fishpond to see if it is leaking and so on.  We spent an hours tidying up the house and we went to Morrisons. Then Lorraine went off to help Beth, and I had more gold sofa action with England unconvincingly winning their opening game against Serbia while tucking into roast chicken and assorted veggies I'd sorted out, in a cheesy sauce Lorraine made.  Spoke to the Tobster, whose birthday it is tomorrow. He is spinning many plates, finishing up the school year, which is in itself stressful, while having ...

A lovely sunny day, and after getting up for breakfast and calling both mums, we plunged into the garden and spent the next eight hours outside. I mowed and strimmed the lawn edges, and with a spade and shears, cut back the overlapping grass back to the path, cut the big hedge, finished building bits of the pond, tidied up the fish pond, we moved one of the big plants  hefting sacks of earth around, and generally tidied and made good. Lorraine replanting, hefting rocks, digging up a suffering acer and re potting it, and wobbling precariously on the island rockery thing getting into the difficult nooks and crannies and doing a hundred other jobs in the greenhouse, clearing paths and so on. We broke for lunch. Lorraine brought some food out, and I was just finishing cutting a path through long grass and Lorraine popped in to get her drink, when Robert made off with the lump of cheese from my plate. Thieving wretch. Despite this, lunch was lovely, and we continued working till almost ...