Day 51 - Remembering

~ Two Years Today ~

His favourite flowers - Auriculas

I miss you Dad.

~x~

Day 50 - It must have been listening!

I've had this Bottle Brush plant in my garden for years and just a few weeks ago said to lovely man that I may remove it as it had never flowered and was getting a bit unwieldy. 

Look what's happening!!

There are hundreds of (what I now know to be buds!!) all over it.  

The moral here is make a decision.  Then wait a while! 

Day 49 - .... and it was all yellow

At around 9pm this evening, everything was bathed in an eerie yellow light.  I half expected a storm to be brewing. The stillness of the garden was curious and the field seemed to beckon to me, whispering through the tall privet hedge "come see, come see ...."

I felt a little like Alice in Wonderland as I made my way out of the back gate.  I haven't been out there for a few weeks and the greenery has exploded somewhat!  It's all overgrown and bushy and verdant and thrusting and "at the height of Summer-y"!  The nettles outside the gate are at shoulder height on the bank and as vicious as you like; their spiteful fronds leaning over to nip you as you brush past. As usual there wasn't a soul in sight,  It was that golden hour in-betweeny time,  just before the day shift beds down for the night and the night shift are yet to rouse.  The ubiquitous swallows and martins were out in force, diving and wheeling overhead, screeching to each other as they hoovered up their mid-air banquet.

The farmer appears to be growing animal feed beans again this year

Quaking grass shivering in the very faint breeze

It really was all yellow!

Hey Mr Bee - you're up very late - have you gone to sleep inside that Foxglove? Is it a temporary bee tent?

Yellowy clouds

The verge of the field is smothered in different grasses

Greeny yellow spurge

It's very still.  And very quiet.  And there is still no sign of the summer storm I was sure was on its way.

See you soon x

Day 48 - Precious Photographs

KTT stumbled across a bag of old photographs earlier this evening whilst he was mooching about up in the loft looking for goodness knows what.

I've spent a happy few hours looking through them.  There are photographs of around five weddings together with the invitations and place cards.  Its sad to say that not one of the marriages lasted for more than a few years.

There are photographs of rock concerts and Donington festivals with the old ticket stubs tucked safely in the photo wallet.   Dear me.  I have copious pictures of the backs of people's heads, fuzzy dots in the distance which will be some now unrecognisable rock band as we were always so far back from the stage the camera would never pick up anything worth saving.   I could show you a picture of  Bon Jovi, and Iron Maiden and Metallica and, and, and......... but you'd have to use your imagination!!

Of course - all these dud shots would just be deleted from the camera these days - the beauty (or the curse?) of sending off a reel of film off for processing was never knowing whether you had a couple of decent shots amongst all the dross, or whether your pictures depicted nothing but blurred images, backs of heads, half an arm, someone exiting stage left or portraits of family members at important events all with their eyes closed.  Photography was a risky business back then!

Amongst my collection, I have found several pictures of random anonymous male bottoms (no idea!), one random picture of a pair of anonymous boobs (absolutely no idea!) and lots of photographs of bottles of alcohol.  Nope I have no idea why either!  I found pics of my hen night (eek!), loads of photos of past kitties as teeny tiny kittens in flats and houses we inhabited prior to having the kids.  Photographs of my honeymoon.  What on earth do I do with them?

More precious are photographs of some brilliant nights out in our two local pubs.  We spent most of our misspent 'yoot' there and they had a lot to answer for!  Both establishments have now been demolished and the photographs are full of good memories which cannot be replaced.

More precious than any of the above are these two.  Ickle me with Mum and with Dad.  They need restoring as they're very fragile so please excuse the poor quality picture as they're photographs of photographs which are nearly 47 years old.

Take care of your precious photographs.  Please make sure in this digital age that you print them off, or save them to a memory stick so they can't be lost in the event of a computer tantrum.  Cherish your memories.

Mum would say that I've never shut my
mouth since I was born!

The look of love.

Love, Love.

Day 47 - Monday - Slow news day ....

So here's a slow loris eating a rice ball.

If you don't go awwww then your cutsie button is broken and you need to go in for a re-bore.

Seriously though.  Awww!!

Day 46 - Alternative Sunday dinner

We can take or leave a roast in this house. More often than not we're busy doing stuff outside in the summer and I get terribly mardy if I have to stay indoors to prepare a big meal. 

Today has been no exception. We were working on the mosaic for most of the morning (will share that in it's finished form in due course. It's awaiting grouting at the moment). I also wanted to catch up on some crafting which involves cutting out 100s of paper shapes (don't ask!!). 

So, tonight's tea was a bit of a fajita type affair so everyone could just grab what they wanted with minimal input from me or LM.   I stir fried some chicken breasts and added a fajita style sauce from a jar, caramelised a few onions in some balsamic vinegar, shredded some iceberg and grated a bit of cheese for those who fancied it.  A couple of bags of corn chips came to the party too. 

I had a packet of veggie meatballs in the freezer which had been kicking around for a while so I defrosted those and made a very quick ragout type sauce from onions, a tin of tomatoes, garlic purée, tomato purée, a little sugar (makes tomato based sauces taste more tomatoey don't you know!), a splash of balsamic, salt, pepper and a spoon of ras el hanout paste. Then I bunged the veggie balls in to the sauce.  There is enough of this left to take to work tomorrow with some salad. 

We usually have this in soft tortilla wraps but yesterday I found something that was far more fun!   Stand and stuff tortillas!  Yay! 

They are so good I shall award a gold star to the inventor of them!   You can stuff them to your hearts content and they're sturdy enough to tuck into without fear of fajita sauces running down your arms! They're not cheap at £2.00 for eight but they were a great treat and good novelty value too. Plus they did a sterling job of handling lots of yummy filling!!  I heated them in the microwave for 30 secs but I guess if you want them to be crispy you could bake them gently for a while. 

They were really well received by the famalam and I would definitely buy them again. These would be great for parties and picnics too I reckon. (Hiding from the frugalistas as I type!!)

*please note that the above review is my own and no freebies or sponsorship were  received*. (Although I'm open to offers cos I'm a mercenary old bag on the quiet).   Snigger.  

Love love!!

Day 45 Fox on the run

An old school pal of mine drives for a container skip company.  This morning he came back from one of his driving  runs only to find out that he had a stowaway lying on the cover sheet of his container who had hitched a ride back to the yard from Wednesbury. 

I'll just quote what he put up on the book of face.   "I'd just like to say that no animals were hurt in the removal of foxy. I just gently rolled the easy sheet back & he jumped onto the cab roof I then tried to move the truck towards the toilet block so he could jump onto the roof but he scrambled down the side of the cab &run off up the road....😊"

Thanks Darren for letting me share these pics.  

Day 44 A damsel in dis-greenhouse!

Thank you to my lovely bro for letting me pinch show you these photos of a visitor to his allotment greenhouse this afternoon.

Isn't he beautiful? (The damsel fly not my brother!)

Day 43 - Thursday Conundrums....

Hiya Bloglie people!

Thanks for your ratty suggestions - I think we only have one option really and that is to bait some traps as we don't know how many we are dealing with and don't know where or if there is a nest of the buggers  More worrying is the very timely reports on the national news tonight that a breed of 'super' rat which is becoming immune to the usual poison is becoming very prevalent

A note to Sheryl who left a comment on yesterday's post - Sheryl I'm so sorry, my phone has been playing up and I think I've accidentally deleted your comment rather than publish it as was intended.  Your mention of the http://www.whatsthatbug.com/ website is very helpful though and one I have saved for future reference.  Thank you!

Not much to report tonight.  There is, however, a growing undercurrent of dissatisfaction in the workplace once more, this time on the very sticky subject of salaries.  I'm not sure whether the powers that be imagine that we are far too naive to be checking out job agency websites for indications of salaries when a new position is advertised, or whether they simply don't care.  The issue here is that they are bringing new people in on far higher salaries than the people who are already doing the same job and who have been doing for years in some cases. This is now becoming common knowledge.  Salaries are a taboo subject aren't they which is why I feel that  a more transparent pay structure should be in force and I also wish there was something we could do to press for one.  It's very disheartening to know that a newbie has come in on at least a couple of grand more than you are on.  We don't have a Union.  At the risk of being a Militant Millie I do think something should be done - trouble is everyone is standing around being annoyed and unhappy, but ask them to band together for the common good and they run away from a potential conflict.

Sticky situation eh?

Day 42 - (nearly) Wordless Wednesday

A Swallowtail Moth, I believe. Chilling on my ceiling this morning.
Oops.  "Wordless"   *slaps self*  Sorry.  Shhhh!  Tee hee!



Even Less Words HERE

Day 41. Oh Rats!!

Bugger and blast.

My nosy bint of a neighbour took great delight in telling lovely fella that she's seen a rat sitting on our bird feeding station. Sure enough, as I was sitting outside earlier, there was a rustling in the ivy that runs riot over the brick shed and as I looked up I watched as the seed bar container was pulled into the leaves.  I went over to investigate and could hear ratty scuttle back up over the ivy.   Just to make sure, I kept a watch for a while only to see it happen again.  I've removed the seed bar holder and I could plainly see the seed bar gnawed down considerably.

So what do I do now then? I'm loathe to put anything on the bird table.  I hate killing anything but I have the chicken to consider.  Closer inspection of the run tonight has revealed a suspiciously rat sized hole burrowed out under the perimeter of the run.

What do I do bloggers?