After the terrible storms last night, not to mention the power outages, I woke this morning to glorious sunshine - this is much more like it because: glorious sunshine = lots of enthusiasm and I got my TTDWJIA list and tried to decide what would be the best things to tackle in these conditions.

By the time John reads this he will be back from the UK which is just as well otherwise he would be on the phone giving me advice or trying to persuade me to STOP!!!

We have Jane and John coming up to stay the week after next so I took the opportunity to get their bedding washed and out on the line.  We have several regular visitors and so that I am not washing the sheets after a single night's stay in the Winter (Summer is not an issue) I have allocated each of them their own set so I can remove the bedding and wash it if it needs it otherwise it can be folded up and stored away in readiness for the next time.  There is a set for Mum obviously, a set for Nicky and Mark, Laura and Mark, Wendy and Bill and Jane and John - I just have to remember whose is whose - I could do with some different coloured laundry bags to store them in so I shall either find some on tintyweb or jumbos or get some material and make my own but that is a wet weather job and I am in sunshine mode so that can wait!!!

 One of the jobs on my list was to give the Solanum outside the back door a bit of a haircut.  This was an original plant in the garden when we moved in - one of the few remaining and it has survived the ravages of the winter weather really well but having had a severe haircut a couple of years back it has now grown so that I can no longer cut it on my own so I decided that it needed to be reduced in size quite considerably.  I have learned that severe pruning is a good thing for lots of the plants over here and it is something I am not good at, to my cost actually, as too many of the plants have become woody whereas if I hard pruned every year they would come back with fresh growth and look better and last longer.  It seemed a bit of a shame to reduce the fine green ball on top of the solanum to a mass of naked branches but it will survive and be all the better for it - I just don't like the way it looks at the moment.

Some years ago John sprayed the drawer knobs on the furniture in our bedroom which is stripped pine which we brought from the UK - it is great because it is rustic and takes whatever is thrown at it but it is a bit boring so the painted knobs added a bit of interest so it looked a little more shabby chic than just shabby!!!

I decided to do the same to the knobs on the furniture in the other bedroom - the furniture is exactly the same stripped pine.

The first three I did were new knobs which John had put on the drawers of the bedside cabinet and they covered with one little squirt of the spray paint.  The others however were a nightmare - I guess that they have years of grease and oils from the hands of people using them and although I cleaned them thoroughly with white spirit beforehand the paint was loathe to adhere to the surface - I checked the ones which John had done previously and see that he had much the same problem so these have a 'distressed' appearance - mine are more devastated than depressed!!!!  Undeterred I will get them finished and at the end of the day they are only knobs!!

I had to nip out briefly - the landscape is looking stunning as everything is so lush, I cannot say green because the local yellow wild flowers are everywhere - I am not sure if it is rape or mustard and there is also a pretty little yellow flower which emerges on a tall stem from leaves which look like shamrocks which is Oxalis pes caprae or Bermuda Buttercup - I have it in the garden because it offers some welcome early colour but it spreads like wildfire - but in a couple of months time will have died back completely - apparently it is toxic so maybe I had better try and pull it all out although that may not be enough as it produces hundreds of tiny bulbs from which new plants emerge.

Inevitably they have had to close the main road down to Polis and Latchi as the road has collapsed again - this means that all traffic is diverted through Droushia.  This is the third time since we moved here that this road had collapsed.  Not sure how long this diversion will be in place but last time when they did what was to be the job that would fix the problem good and proper it was over a year and as they have now found out that did not do the trick.  This may be good for the Droushia Heights as people will pass by it when otherwise they might not have done.

The weather was so beautiful that I decided to spend the afternoon sat outside making some more Birthday cards.  I am gradually sorting through everything so I checked out every tube of water colour paint I had in the box and threw out those which had leaked or gone solid and then got out my box of Sharpies to see which ones were still usable.  Sat in the front garden I actually caught the sun!!!