Getting things done

 

Our evenings are so much cooler and damper now so this morning when I did my early walk around to see how things are doing Hadge's rose was covered in fine droplets of dew.  There are plenty of buds appearing so John's mum will see it in bloom.  Today, being Friday we were having a date night - John had requested crispy chili pork stirfry with noodles and we were going to attempt to watch a film - all the way through!!!

Before all that though I had a few things I wanted to get done around the house and garden.  First off was to find a suitable place for the passion fruit plant.  This is a sheltered spot in the garden and the plant to the left of it as you are looking at the photograph needs protection in the Winter so they can be tucked up in fleece together that being the case.  I had thought during the night to use the metal 'spike' we have and sink it in the ground and then attach a number of strings so that once we had unraveled the plants growth we could encourage the runners up the strings which is what we did.  As Dad would have said - it has two chances and if it survives and fruits then all the better.

I then turned my attention to a bit of sewing.  The two chairs that will sit in front of the passion fruit have cushions on them which I bought ages ago in Jumbo.  They are covered in a slightly waterproof fabric but have faded in the sunshine so I had bought a fabric shower curtain in there some weeks ago and the plan was to make new shower-proof covers from - I think the curtain only cost me a few euros and was big enough for me to double up the fabric and cover the two cushions with some material left over.

So here is the area with the newly planted passion fruit and the newly covered cushions!  They look great and super easy so I shall get some more curtains and cover the steamer chairs at the end of the Summer so that they will last another season.  Currently they are sewn into two towels which have begun to see better days.

Today we heard the unmistakable sound of Bee Eaters and looked up to see them circling overhead - that sound means they are back on their home journey after migrating for the Summer so we always say it is the first indication that Summer is coming to an end.  The weather so far for September has been unsettled and cloudy up here in the hills - we hope it will settle down a bit by Wednesday when John's Mum arrives with Jackie and Stan.

We managed to catch up with Nicky and Mark for a coffee today.  We haven't seen them together since Nicky's Mum's birthday bash.  It is their wedding anniversary on Monday so I was able to give them a card.  

Boris decided to let us down by demanding some love and attention from Nicky by sitting on the table!!!  Boris has been in a fight again.  Today he was sporting a new scratch which went from just above his left eye right across to his ear.  Fortunately it doesn't seem too bad - just a bit worrying it was so close to his eye.  I think it is the black cat which has pitched up that Boris has taken exception to.

On the subject of cats Das and Belinda got their five back from being spayed/neutered today bless them.  They are quite young and I remember distinctly how dreadfully out of it Minnie was when we brought her home after being done.  John sat up with her all night and eventually she began to return to something like normal.

We had lent Das and Belinda our two cat baskets which Das returned and he reported that all five seemed fine - they had stayed overnight at the vets so at least they didn't have to witness the 'coming to' period which is a bit distressing to say the least.

We had the stir fry pork with noodles and it was absobloominlovely in fact it was right on the chili limit for the two of us - John had to go outside to cool down after eating it!!!