Footie...

Saturday is match day so I try and make sure that whatever we are doing John is settled and ready to put himself through the agony and ecstasy that is being a Blades Supporter and today he experienced both - the agony of being two goals down to Frank Lampards Chelsea at the end of the first half and then the ecstasy of an early Blades goal at the beginning of the second half and eventually near the end an equalizer - recorded as an own goal but that shot was going in deflection or not.  To say he is a happy chappy after four games in the top flight is an understatement - one win, two draws and one loss see them nestled currently in eighth place between Manchester United and Chelsea.  Stop the clocks and end the season now!!!

We started our day with a rather large helping of breakfast pancakes.  I had some mix left over that needed eating up and we drizzled them with some ginger jam diluted in a bit of orange juice and they were lovely.   I reckon I got a good 20 out of the recipe I didn't really want that many and planned to halve the recipe but it only required one egg for this amount and it's hard to halve an egg if you don't need the remainder for anything else.

My goal today was to get a bit of gardening done.  It is too hot to do too much but the olive tree needed to be given a bit of a haircut.  It only really needs it a couple of times a year to keep it in shape and John got me out the steps so that I could do it whilst he sorted out some skirting tiles for Lakis.

Our singing ringing tree is now fully coiffed and looking good and it will be the spring before I need to give it a haircut again.  It is so much easier to keep neat and tidy when it has been cut back like this although we will never ever get olives from it!!

We split our original clock vine last year and this year the 'baby' has come into its own - the flowers appear on the ends of the growth so the fact that this one has grown back on itself means that the flowers are more visible.  It is a fabulous plant.  I always wait with bated breath to see if it will return each year and then you get the first black stems pushing through and then you can almost watch it grow.

I thought you would be interested to see how the voracious caterpillar that poo's for the whole of Cyprus is looking at the moment.  It is still easy to guess the general whereabouts of the creature because of the excrament below but even in his new coat he is quite hard to spot.He or possibly she has turned from lime green to brown and will soon disappear to do whatever it is that he/she needs to do before emerging as a fully fledged Hawk Moth.

I did not get to do the watering last night - I didn't think the plants particularly needed it because the evenings are becoming more damp.  However I ddish shapedo the cat water bowls at the same time and Mr Boo's favourite was somewhat bereft of fluid so he improvised by using the pebble that is in the front garden which has a large bowl shaped indentation in the middle - he was able to get a drink out of that and reminded me that I needed to go and do all the other bowls we have dotted around the garden.

In amongst the post recently were the bits and pieces I had orderd to make oil lamps.  In the picture was my prototype but I think the wick was too long as we would have been in danger of losing our eyebrows with this one!!

The glass bottle is from a reed diffuser I got from Jumbos for a couple of euros and which had been in the lounge and was now empty.  I had some oil in a lamp which we leave in the garden.  The beauty is that the silver screw top fits and keeps the ceramic wick holder in place.  It isn't something you can leave unattended - that's for sure!!

I hate to throw the reed diffuser bottles away and wanted to be able to do something useful with them so this was just an idea.

As I said at the beginning of the blog today was footie day so I left John to watch it and busied myself around the house.  I have a mountain of ironing but it is just too hot to tackle it at the moment - I need a nice cool evening and then I will get it out of the way - I need to before my cousin Michelle comes to stay otherwise she will never make it to the bed.  We do actually hope to panel that bedroom before she comes but I am not sure we will manage that.

We were going to eat after the football but by half time John was feeling pretty despondent by his team's performance so we decided not to wait.  It was a bit of a fridge surprise concoction because we had been left some salad and some halloumi and I had some oranges looking a bit sad and some bacon that needed eating up so we had salad and then sat down to what ended up quite a remarkable second half of footie.

We completed the evening by watching the last two remaining episodes of Keeping Faith - we have thoroughly enjoyed this and think it has been left open for a Series Three.  More than anything I have loved the music of Amy Wadge.  I will now have to investigate if it is possible to get a copy of the music from Series One and Two.  Faith's song is my absolute favourite at the moment.  Check it out HERE - Faith' Song