Next steps; grip-relaxing bimbling, and avoiding the temptations

Suffolk_lass

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate the ongoing reassurance and good wishes.

I didn't after all get a call from the doctor, I received a text saying they had referred me on to the hearing centre and I will hear from them in due course with an appointment. Our surgery has become a lot more pragmatic about not replicating advice already received from somewhere else and this is a good example of not wasting a doctor's time.

We have haircuts booked for this morning, a week earlier than normal because the barber is off on his holidays next week, and we are supposed to be at my Mum's the week after that. Normally I would defer but last time, Mr Sl had his when he should have and mine was a week later due to asthma, so this way it is only me a week early and we can get back in the 7 week groove.

As our gardener is coming today, we will go one at a time and I will get involved in pruning the bramley apple, the crabapple, and some overgrown shrubs that don't flower. Then it is bramble removal and some nettles, before they establish.

I need to book the hall for a committee meeting and write up the brief notes from the last one and distribute them. They will be decisions and actions, and I am removing all the waffle that takes up so much time. My first meeting since offering to take on Secretary; I also need to report back on a few things.

Nothing other than haircuts to spend on today, but yesterday I saw the osteopath for the last time (hooray) - lovely man but £60 a go, and I filled the car with diesel (£73!!), mind you, it was running pretty much on fumes! 

I have 6 bee frames more or less assembled, just the (larger size drone foundation) wax to attach and then that kit can go away for a while. I will get to use my cheapo nail gun again - I need to practice as it still makes me jump when it deploys a bradawl.

Right, two coffees in and I need to stop lolling in my nightie and get going. After laundering all the bee-suits I need to repair one. I have a denim patch I will sew on the inside of the torn leg, but only after Stealth Cat has been persuaded that it is not her new bed!!

Have a good day everyone, it is blue sky here and cold - just how a spring day should be!

Suffolk_lass

Medical yukkiness
Oh boy, I had thoughts of @foxgloves as the phone call at 12.30 told me the medical centre I was due to attend had currently got no water, and not to come in for my procedure until they called. We both agreed it was important that they could wash their hands and the implements to be used between patients!! They could give no assurances at that point, but it would be much later than planned. Having already undertaken most of the week preparing, both parties were content to wait it out and I finally went in around two hours later than planned, and they had postponed everyone on the fasting-only preparations. It did mean that the road was quieter than it would have been on the way home, and apart from a constantly running nose where they shoved a foam wand so far up one nostril they have irritated something (I feared brain damage at one point!!), no other unpleasant aftermath. The report already suggests repeat surveillance in three years time. Lovely

Food and shopping
It did mean I could have some normal food so a much craved salad, along with left-over cold chicken and a small jacket potato for supper, and then a dish of bottled stewed plum and apple (more poached than stewed really; just enough for it to seal in the preserving jars), along with a dollop of yogurt. Mr Sl had the same but without the mayonnaise and lemon dressing on the salad, used the plant based spread in his potato and had 0% Fa*e yogurt. It's a bit more expensive but his low/no fat diet demands it. I have got some haddock, prawns and small salmon fillets out to defrost for tonight, and I will make a fish pie, using cornstarch instead of flour and butter in the poaching liquid to make the sauce.

I ignored the morries £12 off £80 this week and bingo! in to my email popped a £12 off £60 so I have ordered a few stock-up items for Tuesday to click and collect. Cat litter is the "can't live without it" imperative. Annoyingly, two items are out of stock now, so not included in my order unless I re-include them. Mr Sl confided that he is surprised he is not missing butter or chocolate (we had fallen into having a stick of water on the shore chocolate on many/most evenings) but his cheese cravings have not diminished. There is a one-inch cube of cheese left in the fridge that only I have been eating, and it is the same piece of cheese that was about three inches square when he went in to hospital, and, the same block of butter is still in the butter box, again, I am the only consumer! He thinks he is eating more sugar though and caught himself adding more honey than normal to his porridge. I am not allowed to operate machinery for 24 hours, so not allowed to drive. Mr Sl will be given the collect order information for a replacement toilet seat from Argos that is waiting collection. As it is in Sainsbugs, he can pick up some bowl fruit while there. 

Garden things
The forecast is for quite a cold day again today, but sunny. I would have liked to have started painting the cart lodge as it desperately needs doing. Mr Sl has order the barn door hanging fixings and the doors also need preparing - maybe I could sand them ready to paint. I have the paint and the spray thing, but the no machinery rule means I am restricted. Perhaps cleaning a few flower pots will be my thing. A trug of warm water and an old vegetable brush. 

All the little pots on my kitchen windowsill in the unheated propagator are germinating, with little loops and seed leaves of the tomatoes I have resown, all appearing. So I am going from 7/15 in the first sowing (outin the greenhouse), to about 35 out of 35 in the second! Best of all are the Black Russian beefsteak seeds I saved last year, out-performing the bought in seeds by some measure. Apart from the F1 variety (Sungold, an orange cherry tomato) I could grow from my own seed every year. Black Russian is a heritage variety and very tasty. I especially like it in the passata I make and store in jars. 

Bees
I think I am up to date with new kit assembly. It means I can reclaim that part of my kitchen. I would like to do a quick inspection this week if the forecast for 15c holds good. I really want to get them going in fresh boxes of undrawn comb so we can see what is happening, and the old stuff can be rendered and swapped. I have ordered five new calm queens to replace the not nice ones at the farm, and I'm keen to have made the right preparations for this.

Enough of my prattling, have a good weekend all!

KajiKita

So relieved for you that the medical test did happen and you can eat real food again! 😊

Bravo on the saved seeds doing so well 😊

Where do you get your new, calm queens from? I’m not sure if my dad can still get them from where he used to. 

KK

Suffolk_lass

KajiKita said:

So relieved for you that the medical test did happen and you can eat real food again! 😊

Bravo on the saved seeds doing so well 😊

Where do you get your new, calm queens from? I’m not sure if my dad can still get them from where he used to. 

KK

These are coming from Wales - the person I mentored last year bought her first Nucleus from them and then when they needed splitting, I showed her how to introduce a second Queen. They were just lovely. I know I should stay local, but our local beekeeper source died and it is not clear if his work of 50+ years will continue, and I have to calm my nasty apiary down. They chase people! Although they are on a non-public farm track with a chain across it saying "not a permitted path" with a biosecurity notice, you would not believe how many people trespass, and then moan when they get chased and stung!

Yesterday, Mr Sl and I agreed it was just too cold to work outdoors although sunny and bright, so we didn't. Today there are a number of niggly little things we need to do though. I hope to be trusted to use the small belt sander to prepare the outside of the garage doors we bought, as the barn door fixings are due on Tuesday. It rather depends whether a replacement belt is available from one of the usual places. I do feel a tad frustrated that despite me saying I wanted to do this, only now has the lack of a belt been mentioned. I think he thought the tiny orbital sander with the teeny-weeny triangular sheets was going to be my weapon of choice! Whereas I was about big picture and then maybe some nitromors paint stripper in the fiddly bits. I also need to prune three apple trees, stake or strap them into less one-sided positions, and move three gooseberries into my fruit cage. 

Then I shall read my book!

Humdinger1

The bookmark on your diary dropped off @Suffolk_lass and is now reinstated; I'm catching up from Jan. You have given me a perfect metaphor for so many situations in 'bees too angry to sell '.  Thank you! Love Humdinger xx 

Humdinger1

And now caught up @Suffolk_lass.  Gosh, what a time you've been having! Sending love all over again and sympathies for you having to deal with Juggins who ignore notices and then complain! Entitled types who think they're so exceptional that the rules can never apply? Or am I being a heartless swine?! Onwards and upwards love Humdinger xx 

Suffolk_lass

Humdinger1 said:

The bookmark on your diary dropped off @Suffolk_lass and is now reinstated; I'm catching up from Jan. You have given me a perfect metaphor for so many situations in 'bees too angry to sell '.  Thank you! Love Humdinger xx 

   that has made me laugh this morning, so funny 

Suffolk_lass

My strawberry runners arrived in the post, yesterday (yes, Sunday), two dozen, a dozen each of 2 varieties; the varieties are "Malling centenary" (although bred at East Malling (Kent), they have come with a plant passport tag - pops off to check what the codes mean with regards to origins... Aha - the D bit is GB, so produced here). Anyway, they are main-crop. Interestingly, the second variety "Malwina" is UK, not GB, so NI origin perhaps? Malwina is a late crop variety. Anyway, they were in a very sandy. rather dry bag, so I popped them all in a pot of water for a few minutes before planting in slit trenches in their destination bed (previously topped up by lots of FY manure and topsoil/loam soil improver. Watered them well and I've left them to it. The other strawberries, transplanted to the fruit cage, are the young plants and runners that had the best root structure when moved. All good. No activity there yet. It was still too cold for me outside, so pot-cleaning and transplanting gooseberries is postponed for another day.

Now in the "dead zone" for money, I do have my big river subscriptions coming tomorrow and a grocery order to collect. I succumbed to £12 off £60 and padded it out with cat litter, to make up the total! I kept it minimal as we are meant to be in Scotland next week.

I need Mr Sl to pester the hospital about his follow-up appointment as we were planning to visit my Mum's after Saturday, for a week and she is half expecting us to pull out. I need certainty. In the meantime, he is preoccupied with important club matters

Spendywendywoo

Ah glad all went well with your procedure @Suffolk_lass

foxgloves

Strawberry plants are on my list too, @Suffolk_lass as we are starting our strawberry containers afresh this year. Will try village garden centre first to see if they have the varieties I like to grow. Feels strange not to be planting up my own overwintered runners, but it was the end of the 3-year cycle, they'd worked hard, so were council-binned, along with suspected Evil Weevil. 
F