Day 2

It's been a rather rainy day here!  So much for my initial plan of pottering in the garden between the predicted light showers!!  I did harvest some more potatoes for my tea and picked some lettuce and beetroot leaves.

I drizzled them with some of my home made chive flower vinegar. It's such a pretty pink colour! It was a simple but delicious side salad 😋

I had some sorry looking apples left lurking in the fruit bowl.  No idea what variety but they were rather small.  I gently poached them with a tiny bit of sugar.  That's my dessert tonight sorted with some Alpro custard! 😋 I didn't want to waste the peelings so I've started a batch of home made apple cider vinegar.  Never tried to make it before so we'll see if it works!  It's just apple peelings, sugar and water. Free vinegar, so worth a try! (loads of instructions on Pinterest)

I rounded up the finished hexagon flowers I've made this week to stitch together and join them to the quilt.  Each flower takes about 40 minutes to make so I usually make one a night while I'm watching something on tv in the evening.  I'm just making this for fun and to use up fabric scraps but in my head I'm imagining wrapping up my future grandchildren and saying things like 'Can you find the red bus?' 😍

Sue from A Smaller and Simpler Life has sparked an idea for a plan to get myself organised for the next 7 weeks. Watch this space 😉

Day 1

Last week I was very excited to see this asparagus shoot pop up in my new raised bed.  Even though it was tempting, I know it will be a few years before I can harvest them.

Today my 5 crowns looked like this!  I had planned to spend the first day of my holiday in the garden but heavy rain stopped play. So I've been inside instead.

I've been making some patchwork hexies from scrap fabric so added a few more today.  All hand sewn and made from fabric that was no use to my Lovely Mum and her quilting friends.

It's slowly growing.  It's totally random as long as patches made with the same fabric are not touching each other.  It's a nice easy project to work on at night or on rainy days.

As always the first day of the summer holiday has been a lazy one.  I have so much I want to do so I need to make a plan! 

End of term

I am now officially on holiday for 7 weeks. Yeay!  But I have no idea what teaching will look like when I go back in August.  Maybe we'll have the blended model (part time in school with half the class, rest of the time home learning) or maybe we'll be back full time business as normal cos this virus is just going to disappear in 7 weeks in Scotland.  That is what Mr Swinney said this week so must be true 😑  This is what my stripped down classroom looks like 😢  Each child will have to sit at a table by themselves 2m away from the next person.  No play based activities, no active learning.  Good old fashioned chalk and talk teaching with kids sitting at a desk all day.  Not happening with 6 and 7yos!!  But I'm not thinking about it for the next 6 weeks.

This was the view from my polytunnel this week on the one rainy day we had.  I'll make a video soon as the plot is unrecognisable.

Today I picked some raspberries and strawberries.  The birds have been having a field day until I finally got some netting on them.  Sadly the crumbly raspberries are losing to the local blackbirds!

Tonight I had the first of my home grown garden potatoes for tea.  Just potatoes with non dairy 'butter' and spring onions 😋

Emma has been enjoying me being at home, as you can see 😄

And so we come to the biggest unexpected expense of the year so far.  My neighbour has had major building works.  We share a wall (on the right) and he kindly paid for the work done to that.  But in doing so we discovered that my garage front needed some attention ie the roughcasting was letting in water.

So that wee tiny circled bit on my neighbour's side resulted in me needing to pay £1200 to get my garage front and roof sorted!!

Looks much better already.  Thank goodness I've got savings to cover it! I've been repairing the door and it's ready to paint now.  That will be my first holiday job 😊