Valentine's Day...

Bobby the missing blog post is below this one - not sure what happened to it - I did post it but it didn't appear when it should have!!!

A week ago it was Valentine's Day and John brought me a beautiful bouquet of roses.  I maybe never told him how much I appreciated the gesture but I did and they were beautiful and continue to be beautiful.  He is my rock and he puts up with a lot from me so those flowers really mean a great deal - it is a bit of a difficult time at the moment and he continues to try and bolster me up and make me smile.


Today when we got up the sun was shining and we were full of enthusiasm.  I wanted to continue with the gardening.  I have been posting some old photographs of the house and garden on this blog and there is part of me that loves the clean open lines which the garden used to have and part of me likes the little areas we have created and the greenery so I am trying to reach a happy compromise with a little taste of both.

John wanted to give the barbeque a clean and a bit of maintenance - this is the gas one we have not the traditional Cypriot one and in so doing he thought it might be a nice idea to have a late lunch/early tea by way of a barbeque and went to see what the freezer would yield in that respect.  I was quite happy with that idea for our main meal!!!!

Charlie was taking advantage of the sunshine this morning although the place he had chosen to sleep was a bit inconvenient as it was directly outside the kitchen door.

He doesn't seem to be making any progress in relation to the damage he sustained to the facial nerve on the right side of his face and recently we noticed that he has lost a tooth on that side of his face as well as losing part of the fang on the left hand side of his face.  This doesn't stop his desire for food which is good because when he doesn't eat we know he is very poorly indeed.  He used to be such a robust cat but now he is a cause for concern - we watch him much more closely - his accident has changed him which is a shame but on the plus side he doesn't venture very far from home any more or at least not at the moment.

We left him to enjoy the sunshine, as we were and the thought of that barbeque which was to be the first of the year for us in 2019!!

Today I was working in the garden around the back of the house and taking advantage of the fact that some of the shrubs are a bit lacking in foliage so it is a good time to give them a trim as it is easier to see what you are doing and there is less waste to get rid of.

We have the orange trumpet plant here which is an original plant from when we moved in.  We use it to separate the decking and eating area from my shed and hid some bits and pieces behind it which don't have a home anywhere else.  When it is in full foliage you cannot see these things but at the moment it looks a bit sad.  When I started chopping I could see that there were areas of growth that were probably four or five feet long so the shrub was getting way out of control.  It got a severe haircut and I was just beginning to tidy up the rubbish when we started to feel some spots of rain.  Looking around there was plenty of blue sky in evidence so we thought it would be a passing shower.

The cats love it when we are home and in and around the house, they are constantly nearby and within shouting distance.  We couldn't find Chivers at one point but he was only up the mock pear tree the other side of the wall!!!  Not having art this week has meant I have been home with John every day this week and he reckons that is the first time since we moved here and we have got quite a lot achieved and we haven't argued so that is a bonus!  Actually it has been great to be able to set ourselves tasks we want to complete and being able to do so.

The passing shower turned out to be quite a major storm which meant that we had to abandon any idea of barbequeuing outside which was such a shame and I sustained an industrial injury due to the fact that my ratchet secateurs are a bit hit and miss so I ended up with a terrible burst blister on my middle finger which was very painful.

By the time the weather improved we had given up on eating outside as everything as soaking wet and the moment had passed - there was a little sunshine after all the rain but it was too little too late.  We had packed everything away and were heating up the house rather than anticipating sitting outside.  This winter has been long and wet and miserable and we cannot wait to see the back of it but currently there is little sign of any settled dry weather on the horizon.

We may have eaten inside but we enjoyed our supper nonetheless!!! We had some lamb koftas from Lidl served with my homemade caramelised onion chutney, a sausage, sweetcorn, coleslaw and hasselback roasties!  Rather more by luck than judgement it would appear that we are following a reasonably healthy eating regime because we do not eat for a period of 12 hours - this is only because we go to bed early!!!