Confined to barracks....

I was confined to barracks today and John was doing the shopping.  I was staying at home because I had arranged for neighbour Richard ("I am not the quickest") to come and clean my windows - which is not before time but we are hopeful that the sand storms are over now - having said that it will probably rain now!!!!  Whilst Richard was working around the house I was doing a bit of gardening.  Some of the plants have gone mad - I like to cut them back in stages so that they don't all need dong at the same time.  Today it was the turn of the sage.

I think I had been a bit overly optimistic with the size of my waste bucket - it needed emptying on several occasions but at least the sage is now a more manageable size.  I tried to do a Bobby and pick up all the clipped leaves from the shingle but failed miserably not least because I managed to cut a nice 'V' shape out of my little finger with the bloody snips.

The garden is moving into its next stage of flowering with more 'English' plants coming into bloom - I am delighted that this year my Clematis has come back twice as good as it looks normally - in fact the eagle eyed amongst you will have clocked that there are two different flowers - there are two different clematis plants but they are unfortunately the same colour even though the London Road Garden Centre insisted that it would not be!!

Although I did not think that it was so hot today poor Charlie is still struggling - at one point he tried to haul his bulk into the inside of our chimnea which would have been ok if (a) the chimnea was considerably bigger and (b) we had not planted up the inside with succulents!!!  

When John came back from shopping I took the veg box out to fill it and Charlie eyed up the space and decided this would be the coolest place to sleep so I left him there as he wasn't doing any harm and he is being a good boy and letting me brush him twice a day - I have managed to get enough fur out of him that I could spin it and turn it into wool (apparently some people do!).

It was good to have the day at home - although we have had plenty of late as it gave me the opportunity to do some little jobs - pretty unimportant and pretty unexciting jobs but ones which John would prefix with the question "you are not going to do that now are you?" and yes, that was exactly what I had planned!!

We stopped for a sandwich and rescued Richard from his labours and asked him to join us - it was getting pretty hot so it was good that he had started in the pressure cooker that is the conservatory.  He was happy to do so.  We sat and reminisced about the first and only other time he has done the windows and that afterwards he left determined to buy a property here and ended up buying two, one for him and one for his mum.

Richard was nowhere near as long this time - probably because he had cleaned them all relatively recently and probably because we didn't want the conservatory roof done this time as John has some silicon to remove from up there after a repair he did earlier.  It was lovely to see them clean and to be able to see through and to have everything beautifully reflected.

When I was watching Richard work through the kitchen window I realised that the Polygala shrub had grown massively and although it was about to flower it really needed a bit of a haircut so that was my final job of the day - good to get these things done!