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It's been a while since I posted, which means it's about time for an update. Where to begin? With today's news, I suppose.
Some of my friends will know all about the ups and downs we've experienced with my little sister, tempestuous force of nature that she is. For the last two years or so, C has been living with her best friend, K, and K's dad, who has a small flat a couple of towns along the coast. It has been a good arrangement for C - K and her dad have been a really positive, stabilising influence on her, sorely needed as she is highly vulnerable and has been taken advantage of in the past.
Last night, C and K returned home after visiting my parents and found K's dad lying dead on the bathroom floor. Heart attack, Elvis-style. An awful experience for the two girls, really shocking. And it is too soon just yet, of course, for them to even begin to think about what to do now, whether they can stay together in that flat or not. They are with K's mum for now, as C didn't want her little girl (who lives with my parents) to see them upset.
In other news, after homeworking for 14 months, my status has finally changed. I am now categorised as 'blended home'...which just means I am still working from home, but am allowed to visit site from time to time to do bits of work there, mostly site checks and room inspections. Well, it's an occasional change of scenery, at least. Which is much needed, quite frankly - when I went for my first covid vaccination a couple of weeks ago, I had to travel to the other side of town for the first time in over a year and felt like an animal in the zoo being given enrichment! Whole buildings had been demolished and rebuilt since I last saw them! So it'll be nice to get to see something other than my own four walls once in a while, although I'll be honest, I don't really fancy going back full time. Which doesn't, in fact, seem to be entirely on the cards - a 'better ways of working' programme has been set up and it looks very much as if a blend of home and site working will be the way forward. We'll see.
And in other work news, my boss is retiring this summer - hoorah! Ahem. She's, um...challenging to work with, shall we say. Anally retentive, nitpicking control freak, to put it mildly. The deputy who will be stepping into her shoes is much, much more pleasant to work with.
Last time I posted, my garden wall had just collapsed in a storm and I was in despair over the fate of all the plants in my main border, buried beneath the rubble. It is now rather more than two months later and my landlady has just today, finally, had a quote approved by the insurance and appointed a builder...who is not available to start work until mid-end June, although they say they will come sooner if they can.
So it is just as well, really, that my dad came around with a lump hammer a few days after the collapse, broke up all the bricks and piled them up in the middle of the lawn. The lawn is completely ruined, of course, but it meant I was able to dig up all the plants from the border and transfer them into temporary housing until the building work is complete. If they'd stayed buried beneath the rubble all that time, I'd have lost everything! As it is, the herbacious perennials have inevitably fared rather better than the shrubs. There were a few notable casualties - I've lost my beautiful winter-flowering coronilla and my enormous, so dependable erysimum 'bowle's mauve', both so popular with the bees, the fennel and the big rosemary are gone, one or two others that were badly damaged remain on life support, as it were - but the vast majority were salvaged and are now recovering.
It was a busy couple of weeks, spending every break and lunch hour digging the entire bed up into every container I could beg, borrow or steal from a variety of generous donors! Bird food tubs, plastic crates, vegetable grow bags - all of these and more have been pressed into service. And because it was so early in the season, not all of the herbacious perennials had started to shoot, so I had a couple of weeks where every time I thought I'd finished, something else would suddenly poke its head above the soil to let me know it was still there! It was lucky the end of March and April were so dry, really, while this horribly wet May has at least spared me the onerous task of keeping so many pots watered.
This is what the garden looks like now:
And that isn't even all the pots - a lot of the smaller ones, including all the spring bulbs, are around the side, where it is shadier so they won't dry out as quickly. I also gave a bunch of them away to a community garden project at a homeless hostel, since some of the larger clumps came up into three or four pots each so I had plenty to spare! Exactly where I'm going to put them all next month when building work begins I'm not quite sure yet - there is going to be a considerable shuffle and squash, that's for sure.
When I think what it looked like this time last year, full of flowers and bees...but it will be beautiful again, eventually!
Also, yes, my neighbour and I can now just wander in and out of one another's gardens, if we choose. Before the rains set in, in fact, I was going into their garden daily to water the pots, as the old man had gone into hospital for a hip replacement and his wife is disabled! Before that, I had to get used to having old Dennis waving at me from his garden every time I wandered into the kitchen to put the kettle on, as he likes to sit out back to smoke his pipe! It's probably a good thing we get along so well, really.
I am now working on a recovery plan for the lawn...
Some of my friends will know all about the ups and downs we've experienced with my little sister, tempestuous force of nature that she is. For the last two years or so, C has been living with her best friend, K, and K's dad, who has a small flat a couple of towns along the coast. It has been a good arrangement for C - K and her dad have been a really positive, stabilising influence on her, sorely needed as she is highly vulnerable and has been taken advantage of in the past.
Last night, C and K returned home after visiting my parents and found K's dad lying dead on the bathroom floor. Heart attack, Elvis-style. An awful experience for the two girls, really shocking. And it is too soon just yet, of course, for them to even begin to think about what to do now, whether they can stay together in that flat or not. They are with K's mum for now, as C didn't want her little girl (who lives with my parents) to see them upset.
In other news, after homeworking for 14 months, my status has finally changed. I am now categorised as 'blended home'...which just means I am still working from home, but am allowed to visit site from time to time to do bits of work there, mostly site checks and room inspections. Well, it's an occasional change of scenery, at least. Which is much needed, quite frankly - when I went for my first covid vaccination a couple of weeks ago, I had to travel to the other side of town for the first time in over a year and felt like an animal in the zoo being given enrichment! Whole buildings had been demolished and rebuilt since I last saw them! So it'll be nice to get to see something other than my own four walls once in a while, although I'll be honest, I don't really fancy going back full time. Which doesn't, in fact, seem to be entirely on the cards - a 'better ways of working' programme has been set up and it looks very much as if a blend of home and site working will be the way forward. We'll see.
And in other work news, my boss is retiring this summer - hoorah! Ahem. She's, um...challenging to work with, shall we say. Anally retentive, nitpicking control freak, to put it mildly. The deputy who will be stepping into her shoes is much, much more pleasant to work with.
Last time I posted, my garden wall had just collapsed in a storm and I was in despair over the fate of all the plants in my main border, buried beneath the rubble. It is now rather more than two months later and my landlady has just today, finally, had a quote approved by the insurance and appointed a builder...who is not available to start work until mid-end June, although they say they will come sooner if they can.
So it is just as well, really, that my dad came around with a lump hammer a few days after the collapse, broke up all the bricks and piled them up in the middle of the lawn. The lawn is completely ruined, of course, but it meant I was able to dig up all the plants from the border and transfer them into temporary housing until the building work is complete. If they'd stayed buried beneath the rubble all that time, I'd have lost everything! As it is, the herbacious perennials have inevitably fared rather better than the shrubs. There were a few notable casualties - I've lost my beautiful winter-flowering coronilla and my enormous, so dependable erysimum 'bowle's mauve', both so popular with the bees, the fennel and the big rosemary are gone, one or two others that were badly damaged remain on life support, as it were - but the vast majority were salvaged and are now recovering.
It was a busy couple of weeks, spending every break and lunch hour digging the entire bed up into every container I could beg, borrow or steal from a variety of generous donors! Bird food tubs, plastic crates, vegetable grow bags - all of these and more have been pressed into service. And because it was so early in the season, not all of the herbacious perennials had started to shoot, so I had a couple of weeks where every time I thought I'd finished, something else would suddenly poke its head above the soil to let me know it was still there! It was lucky the end of March and April were so dry, really, while this horribly wet May has at least spared me the onerous task of keeping so many pots watered.
This is what the garden looks like now:
And that isn't even all the pots - a lot of the smaller ones, including all the spring bulbs, are around the side, where it is shadier so they won't dry out as quickly. I also gave a bunch of them away to a community garden project at a homeless hostel, since some of the larger clumps came up into three or four pots each so I had plenty to spare! Exactly where I'm going to put them all next month when building work begins I'm not quite sure yet - there is going to be a considerable shuffle and squash, that's for sure.
When I think what it looked like this time last year, full of flowers and bees...but it will be beautiful again, eventually!
Also, yes, my neighbour and I can now just wander in and out of one another's gardens, if we choose. Before the rains set in, in fact, I was going into their garden daily to water the pots, as the old man had gone into hospital for a hip replacement and his wife is disabled! Before that, I had to get used to having old Dennis waving at me from his garden every time I wandered into the kitchen to put the kettle on, as he likes to sit out back to smoke his pipe! It's probably a good thing we get along so well, really.
I am now working on a recovery plan for the lawn...
