April arrives...

 Charlie is poorly, he is currently in the vets on a drip, hopefully we will know more tomorrow

April started with the most glorious of days - wall to wall sunshine but the clear skies meant it was to be bitterly cold during the night - temperatures down to 6 degrees were forecast so my tender plants which have been wrapped in fleece are not likely to be uncovered any time soon.

It was a great day for gardening so I busied myself outside whilst John was indoors doing some jobs which I have put on his 'urgent before we have visitors' list.

He was on electrics - two of our sockets have cracked which doesn't look nice and bothers me so when we were down at SuperHome the other day he got some replacements and he also got some sockets which would allow him to turn a single socket into a double and a double into a triple which will be very useful.  I kept out of the way as the exercise did not go exactly to plan but eventually he emerged triumphant and instructed me to scratch that particular job off of his list!

I got in touch with Phil's Home to check whether our furniture had arrived for Joani's Space and it had and we arranged for it to be delivered on Tuesday.  This meant that (a) we needed to get the decking plinth for the furniture sorted and (b) we need to take the broken chair to the upholsterer to see how much it would be to have it repaired because it is too good to throw away.

I will also need to find a way of displaying 'The General' our mini terracotta warrior so that he doesn't fall over - I am thinking to mount him on a tile or something but that is fluffy stuff after the plinth has been created and the furniture put in place.

A lot of my gardening at the moment involves dealing with damage caused by hail and cold winds.  This is my pot of Wandering Jew (Tradescantia) which was doing so well and I had intended to bring it indoors but it didn't seem like it was going to need it.  I decided to cut back all the dead stuff and cut off some of the longer bits and pop them back in where there was a bald patch to hopefully bring the pot back to its former glory.  This probably took me the best part of an hour but which time John decided we should nip down to the woodyard to get the wood we wanted because tomorrow is a Bank Holiday and he was wanting to get it started.

The woodyard always has a resident mouser or two.  Today there was a little girl sat on the chair at the entrance - I would have said black and white but she was more black and grey as her white bits were rather grubby.  She was placid and affectionate but as with so many Cypriot animals, not a pet but there for a purpose.  I gave her a cuddle.  John got his wood and the guy there chopped it up for him so we could get it in the car.

We had warm sunshine late into the afternoon so on our return John got cracking getting the new bit of decking sorted whilst I was getting our supper prepared.  If the weather was going to be good tomorrow we have nothing planned (save for John having an early bike ride with the boys) so John is keen to get the job sorted if we can then the furniture can arrive Tuesday and have somewhere to go.

It felt good to have got some jobs done.  I think the fact that all our neighbours are busy working on their homes has spurred us on to do some things to our own.  John had been pleasantly surprised by the cost of the decking - he had thought it would have been a lot more expensive bearing in mind how much things have gone up.

I am now itching to get the kitchen painted so that will be my goal over the next couple of weeks.  We have everything we need but have a busy week coming up so may have to do a small bit at a time so the place doesn't look too much of a mess when we have people here - Kaz and Dip are due on Tuesday - hopefully the furniture will come in the morning as they have indicated.

Supper tonight was something different for us - John wanted a curry and we got some beef cubes and there was an onion and a pepper loafing in the fridge so I found a recipe which was for a beef and orange curry.  John wasn't convinced when I told him but OMG it was absolutely amazing and even better there was enough left over for us to have it on another occasion.