Sunday...

This was our view of the sun this morning - hidden behind clouds that were laden with dust - it was a horrible muggy sticky day and periodically we had a smattering of rain which just made everything messy.  We will have a covering of red dust over everything tomorrow and if the heavy rain forecast later comes it will be a right old mess.

My cold is past its worst thank goodness but I am now in the thick snot stage so I have to keep apologising for sniffing.

We were having most of the day at home today before going down to Mum and Dad's for dinner this evening.  This meant we had the opportunity to get the house back to normal after Debra's visit which for me meant getting two or three loads of washing done with the help of our headless cat!  John was able to move all his clothes back in to the spare bedroom, sheets were changed, rooms were tidied and that felt good.  It's lovely having people to stay but it is the one time we realise that we are just more than a bit pushed for space and boy would a second bathroom come in handy but we have what we have and we have to make the most of it.

John is now keen to start the conservatory tiling project and brought in a few tiles so that he can start to work out the best way of laying them - this isn't going to be particularly straightforward because the conservatory is a strange shape and none of the walls are square and John is keen to make sure that it looks good but he has the least amount of awkward cuts as possible.  I am keeping out of the way of this!!!

Out in the garden I am amazed to find that I have a rose in bloom.  I think this must have come from Elaine as I have a poor track record with roses and looking at the plant closely this one doesn't look too good either so I am surprised it has managed to flower.  At the base the leaves seem to have rust or mould or something so I would probably be wise to cut it back once it has finished with this bloom.

The sticky sultry weather is affecting the cats and all four of them were in today trying to find somewhere cool to sleep.  I found Boo in our room cuddling the hot water bottles!  They were empty of course!  I had put the new cat-bed I had purchased or rather bid for and won from Tala Monastery Cats into the spare room.  This is the coolest room in the house but we want to discourage the cats from sleeping on the bed so I thought I nice new cat-bed on the chest of drawers by the window would be a good place for Minnie to sleep except that Charlie got there first and claimed it for himself.

He didn't get it all to himself for long because when Boris got fed up of cuddling the hot water bottles he mooched off next door and joined Charlie on the new bed - not sure that Charlie was overly impressed and as Boris got increasingly more comfortable Charlie got pushed further and further off!


I took the opportunity to give our big solanum a hair cut.  You can almost see them growing this time of year as they seem to put on several inches of growth every day.

I opted for a bit of a radical haircut this time and shortly it will have its annual shedding and look a bit scruffy and then it greens up and starts looking good again.

On the subject of the garden I am pleased to announce that the clockvine is now putting on tremendous growth which is good news.  I have a couple of other places where I would like a climber to go and I am looking out for what I think is called a snail or corkscrew vine if I can find one, failing that I am hoping that Elaine will have a seedling I can have in due course.


This evening we were down at Mum and Dad's for dinner.  We were having steak this evening - I had made a sauce and John was doing the cooking.  It was very nice but unfortunately Dad wasn't feeling so good so he didn't seem to enjoy his meal.

We think it was probably just down to the sticky horrible weather but when it is like this his blood pressure plummets so Mum is going to keep an eye on him.  Dad's move wasn't improved by the fact that I suggested we play partner whist this evening and we never picked up a decent hand between us.  That has now been firmly struck off of our list of games to play!



We always leave Mum and Dad's with some gift or another and today we had about a half hundredweight of freshly picked potatoes from the field next door to them.

These potatoes are absolutely enormous and there are so many of them - I shall be contacting just about everyone I know to see if they would like any!

By the time I got home I was beginning to feel a bit better at last - this is good news as I am hoping to go to Art at Sheila's tomorrow as I have missed the two previous weeks.