Lady Gardening

As usual, my lovely Husband and my lovely friend's medical lives have coincided once again.

Stevie was given bail on Thursday while J was sent down on Friday, and my goodness what an ordeal she has had.

She's a sufferer of advanced endometriosis and is on one of the first of many surgeries. A little while ago she asked me to make her what we like to call a "lady garden warmer".

You see these microwaveable heat packs are great for pain relief, but they're the wrong shape, so I made her a heart shaped one from a fleece blanket, some cotton leftovers, lots of swearing and some lady bird printed felt. Unfortunately, I failed to take a photo of it before I gave it to her, so I'll have to get her to take one, which she won't mind doing - she needs the practice on her new phone.

I'm up to a severe amount of creativity at the moment, but most of it I just can't tell you about it because it's a real, proper secret. But what I am doing is keeping a photo log of all the lovely things so that I can share them after the big surprise.

So I'm trying to continue with creativity I can talk about in the mean time! Aaaaaarrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhh I REALLY WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!!!!

Oooh, and my lovely friend Helen gave me a friendship cake to "grow". It's still bubbling - I haven't killed it!

Love Thy Neighbour. I do.

I've got a new best friend. Actually I've got two. What a show off.

One of them is a circular saw - who I have called George. I used to be really scared of him, but now I love him, and I use him every day.

The other best friend is my neighbour. Until we moved here I'd never set eyes on them before but my goodness what a lovely couple and my goodness how grateful to them am I? Very is the answer to that.

A conversation over the fence yesterday with me looking longingly at their beautifully kept garden while I wrestled with something or other in mine, resulted in the lovely gent offering to help me concrete my line post back in. The council ripped it up when doing renovations and I'm fed up of waiting for them to come and put it back. I'm quite brave, I'll attempt and pull off anything DIY wise (that doesn't involve wires - except a plug of course), but I've never touched concreting before, and I didn't really have the tools to even dig the whole.

I also mentioned that I had had a quote for cutting my front shrubs back from their bedraggled and unkempt state. I came home today and found the shrubs beautifully pruned, off cuts gone. I nearly cried. It's so lovely to have another big job to tick off my extensive list.

Then, while thanking lady neighbour for the pruning, she spots my half dug hole for line post. I wanted to at least do the hard work bit so that I didn't have to ask "getting on a bit" gent neighbour to do it. Within five mins, he was around, pick axe, sledge hammer and crow bar later, a suitable site was located, between all the buried rubble, and another ten minutes later, the post is supporting itself! I'm so grateful - and isn't that lovely? In truth I had no idea how I was going to pull it off.

Then, as I was doing further drilling (shelves, wall mounting wicker baskets, tie back, fixing my shed door) and my other neighbour on the other side knocked the door with two lovely fresh trifles for us! I love it here, I must be honest.

I've been so lucky. I've got awesome friends, and awesome neighbours and for all of the things they've done for me I am incredibly grateful. Let's face it, we're all busy, but some people make the time to help a family struggling with massive life changes and illness. I'm so grateful.

So with my help received today, I managed to do the last bit of fencing today too, and I'm also really pleased with it. I'm going to use some of my skip-rescued timber to reduce the amount that can be seen through it. I reckon I'll finish it tomorrow, photos will follow.

And I FINALLY fixed my shed door! What a relief!

Gratuitous Spaniel Photos

I don't apologise one bit for sharing this picture of my gorgeous Spaniel. His gorgeousness deserves to be shared - I look at it as a public service. And in fairness he is under one of my most favourite candy stripe brushed cotton sheets from the actual 1950's that I was so excited about inheriting from my Grandmother.

One of the five, count 'em - five, funerals I went to of late, my Grandmothers lifelong friend Enid was sadly one of them. She had been quite frail and vulnerable for a long time, but before she got very ill, she used to do a bit of knitting as most ladies of that generation did. My Grandmother gave me a sack of wool odments that she had been given from Enids house and there were two half made Tom Baker style scarves. I joined them together and fringed it - I don't think there's anything prettier in the world. ANd I get to carry a bit of Enid around with me wherever I go.

So, Steve's back in hospital, not fun, and a side effect of my looking after him full time is that I have put a lot of weight back on. The difference is this time, I quite like it.

What I don't like is constantly having to spend a fortune on ever bigger underwear. So I'm going to make my own.

Watch this space!

Rest and Rejuvenation in the Face of Sadness

Something good has come out of the recent sadness. Some lovely creative conversations with Mrs CrownHeartStar and a trip to new haberdashery territory gave my creativity a kick up the backside. And not a moment too soon.

We've got the wedding of the year on Saturday to look forward to, and boy are we looking forward to it.

I picked up a genuine vintage 1960's suit off ebay for £30 and that one outfit will do the whole day. The suit, obviously, for the day, remove the jacket, move the brooch, add a belt and a change of shoes (my old faithful Ravel Mary-Jane's £2 from a car boot nearly 10 years ago that rarely get an outing) and voila - evening wear also.

My Mum in law gave me a plain fascinator when we were up there last and I fell in love with a bag of feathers in the lovely haberdashers, so, this little multi-coloured baby was born. I used my favourite brooch and added a little few feathers to it to match beautifully. I'm really into the whole multi colour thing at the moment. Colour schemes are for wimps!

And while in said haberdashers, I was quite taken with some wool in there. I've been wanting to make myself a wrap for ages, and I must be honest it really feels amazing, and has been a pleasure to knock up.

Heirlooms. One of My Favourite Words.

I think we established yesterday that half of my family has departed this mortal world of late.

It's a sad fact that with that comes a huge amount of "stuff" needs distributing - things that were previously much loved possessions. And I find joy no where more than having something beautiful passed down to me, I'm not interested in it's monetary value, it's all about provenance.

Nana Maisey was an incredible lady. Married to the Admiral of the Merchant Navy fleet, she was an incredible people person and when she left at 93 (I think), she was one of the youngest people I knew. She also had amazing taste. She bequeathed me a beautiful strawberry full tea set, a third set of cultured vintage pearls, and when my lovely Mum in law was clearing some things out the other day she came out with this rather ugly (but dead useful) reindeer bag and asked me if I would like the contents as she thought they were right up my my street. And my goodness how right she was.

How incredibly beautiful are they? Almost a shame to hang clothes on them!

And as you can see I have a miserable, lonely and uncomfortable Spaniel who hates his life. I'd phone the RSPCA if I was him.

Right, Life, Now You're Having it Full in the Face.

Sometimes, there is no rhyme or reason. I'm fairly pragmatic about life, not being alive, that sort of thing but recent times have tested even my resolve.

First, a young gent I grew up with sadly lost his life in an accident I couldn't make his funeral because of Steve's needs. Then our beloved and every youthful Nana Maisey went, then Enid, family friend of 8 decades nearly, she had a stroke, we lost her. Two days before her funeral, our beloved Step Dad went, peacefully and quietly with us at his side, a new experience for Meg and I, I can tell you, and tonight my gorgeous Sister in Law has finally got the rest she so badly needed.

Nana, Enid, Pops and Jo were all ARE ALL larger than life personalities. Many laughs, much straight talking and much, much more will all be missed by many more people than just me. I guess this is just my little tribute to them.

But it's getting a bit ridiculous now. Despite these all being unrelated I wonder how long it'll be before people start crossing the street to avoid us!

It's when stuff like this goes down you really can count your friends even more. My friends have been blinding about Steve's increasing and profound disabilities, and once again they've come up trumps for us this evening with kind messages of support and love.

Once again I feel very loved - and that's lovely.

Now people, I need you to focus for a few moments. I want you to take a great big breath in ........... and summon up every bit of optimism and positivity you have. When you exhale, I want you to send it to my new friend Misha who's going to get some results tomorrow.

We're all rooting for you.

Oh and I'm really sorry peeps who are wanting me to sponsor them for stuff - I will, I promise, but I've been a bit busy, as you know.

On the plus side it puts my disheveled and unfinished house at the bottom of my priority list - where it belongs. It'll get done, it isn't the be all and end all, and it ain't that important. Is it?

We Made It Through ...

He's home, we're in and once again, life has many lessons to teach me.

Last year, I embarked on a year of "not buying anything". Thank heavens for that. Little did I know at that time what was around the corner for us in terms of serious, debilitating illness and major downsizing.

Our little bungalow is "bijou" to say the least. The biggest bedroom we donated to the teenager of the house due to her spending a lot of time in it, leaving us in the smaller room where we don't actually have any room for a wardrobe. I have employed crafty storage ideas utilizing boxes, under bed storage, shelving and I have turned (am in the process of turning) the airing cupboard (known to us as "the chokie") into a multi-rail wardrobe facility. If I thought I've had to be ruthless before now with giving things away, I had NO idea. I've had to get rid of things that I really do like and use, perhaps not all the time or as much as other things, but things I'd have preferred not to have given away. And my goodness, how liberating it is.

Of course the downside to the non-buying year was, as I have talked about before, the "useful" things that I collected - a huge amount of them. I simply can't do that here. Where I used to make huge vats of tomato sauces and things, I have to employ a much more "as required" attitude, maybe three or four at a time, and I have to use everything as there's just no room for accumulation. Perhaps this is the real incarnation of what I wanted to achieve last year.

As usual, I continue to learn, adapt and overcome, here's to the status quo!