The Distancing Diaries - 5th & 6th June, 2021

 

Once again, dazzling sunshine greeted us when we awoke on Saturday morning. Jon saw to the lads, made tea and brought it back to bed where we lay and read until 8am. I stripped and changed the bed, loaded the washing machine and pegged everything out on the line to dry after a coffee.

Breakfast, as is usual on a Saturday, was sausage sandwiches, meat for Jon and veggie for me. Jon couldn't resist buying these for me, I'd not had them before and they were delicious.

Remember the picture frames we'd bought from the clearance charity shop last Sunday? After breakfast, we removed the 1980s cross stitch panels and replaced them with the stash of vintage Indian postcards I'd scored for £2 from eBay back in January (HERE)

We added some religious stickers we'd bought from a little shop behind the 16th-century church, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in Panjim, Goa back in February 2020. 

We popped in a couple of postcards featuring the deceased Sri Aurobindo in his coffin & another of him and The Mother we'd bought when we visited Auroville Ashram just outside Ponidicherry back in 2006. We returned to Pondicherry in 2010, you can read about it HERE.

Factor 30, hair slathered in conditioner, a vintage bikini and Monica's mum's shorts from the 1970s - I was ready for a day in the garden.

We spent the rest of the day ticking off the to-do list. I'd ordered some pyracantha (aka spiky bastard) from a nursery on eBay to plant outside the gates in front of the fern garden and it arrived from Ireland carefully wrapped in completely recyclable packaging. Jacob loved the straw! After a thorough watering, I planted it straightaway. 

Looking back to my blog we're a few weeks behind where we were last year with plants but the sunshine's working its magic and we're slowly catching up.

The mock orange bloomed overnight and smells heavenly. The Yukka won't be far behind.

By 3pm we'd had enough of work and prostrated ourselves on the lawn with our books.

Tea was a paneer Madras with half a nan and some basmati rice. Later, accompanied by rum & cola, we watched Scotland's Home of the Year and The Antiques Roadtrip although Jon struggled to keep his eyes open.

We could hear the pitter-patter of rain on the music room roof the previous evening and it was still drizzling when I got up on Sunday morning. Despite this, I had a walk around the garden before making tea and bringing it back to bed. When Jon told me that the rain was doing the plants good I started to worry that my boyfriend had been snatched away in the night and replaced by an old codger.

Breakfast was a couple of slices of toast each eaten whilst watching The Andrew Marr Show. After gathering our donations - a vintage hammock, the voluminous off-the-shoulder top I'd worn last Sunday, the tapestries from the picture frames, a suit carrier, some souvenir tea towels and a couple of paperbacks - we drove down to the clearance charity shop for a rummage. Fortunately, the drizzle had been replaced with hazy sunshine.

I'm a solar-charged reader so I'm powering through books at the moment, these should keep us both going for a week or so. The 1970s suede fronted bomber jacket from C&A is for the stockroom. The charity shop stocks new items, too. These giant plastic planters are perfect for some of the bulbs Jon's growing and are a fraction of the price of those in the garden centre. 

I might only have been going to the charity shop but I felt the need to wear my new-to-me Dilli Grey dress. At a third of the retail price, the Lotta from Stockholm silver clogs were a lucky eBay find last year. I painted my nails in Green Berry, one of my favourite Barry M summery colours.

After our noodles, we got into our gardening gear and got stuck into the front garden transformation. Whilst I weeded between the pavers and swept up, Jon erected the new fence although when I say new I mean he used offcuts from joists he'd rescued from a builder and some metal panels our friends Erica & Jon were getting rid of. The only thing we bought was the Wilko Silver Birch wood treatment, which cost £5.

An elderly chap who I've known forever walked past and told me that my Grandma would be proud of what we'd done, which made me smile.

Our next job was introducing some British wildflowers, so we cut into the lawn and added some great knapweed, red clover, wild carrot, great burnet and yarrow.

This is how they should look in a few weeks time.

The back bed is slowly coming along, Lynn's Auntie Gladys's sunflowers are starting to climb, the clumps of geranium are starting to bloom and the French marigolds are adding a welcome splash of colour whilst the nasturtiums bide their time.

It's pizza for tea (no surprise there) along with a beer and the England match (which reminds me, I must get a wallchart ready for when the Euros kick off next weekend). Later we'll be watching Time, the BBC's new drama starring one of our all-time favourite British actors, the fabulous Stephen Graham. We started watching Eastern European crime series The Pleasure Principle on Friday night, it's on Walter Presents and is well worth a watch.

See you soon!