Evening shadows

It's usually easier for my schedule to walk the dog earlier in the day but recently we've been heading out in the evening instead.  I'd forgotten just how nice it is to see the sun setting across the fields and through the trees, and as the days have been a little cooler it's been more pleasant for the dog as well.  

We've had the rain recently; heavy heavy showers that have filled up the water barrels to overflowing and made the grass green again.  It's still warm though, and we're appreciating not having to take extra layers out with us in the evenings.  

Slow summer days and long summer evenings.  We've been very spoilt this year.

Edge of the diving board

All year we've been working our way step by step out along the diving board until now - with the last day of school finally here - we're ready to make the leap and plunge into the summer holidays.  It seems quite incredible that a whole school year is over!

On the one hand, I am so ready (and so is small daughter) to take a break from the early mornings, the reminders to take a waterproof now that the rain has returned, the constant "have you got your homework - wait, have you done your homework?" questions and the obligation to wear school uniform every day and I'm very much looking forward to having both my girls around all the time, but on the other hand a small part of me is rather worried about whether I'm going to get anything remotely work-like done over the holidays.  I think the word "Mum" (in our house it's pronounced "Mu-u-um") is used just to break the silence in our house sometimes, but sadly it breaks my concentration as well although often I do get a get a brew out of it (big daughter has just come to talk to me whilst I'm writing this and we're laughing as I'm disturbed yet again, although she is brewing up so I'll forgive her :) )  I think the plan will be to get up early as that's something that neither of the girls tend to do - or to take myself out of the way, but more of that later!

I've been trying to pack in all of those jobs that are best done before school holidays.  Last week I went to Skipton to see Lucy and to pick up the Yarndale Sock Line socks.  

Jogging along

After another sunny weekend, it's overcast and drizzly here this morning and I am not complaining at all!  I seriously can't remember the last time we had such a continuous run of sunny weather and I'm not complaining about that either, but it's good to see the rain again.

It's Monday too, the start of a whole new week.  It stretches ahead of me, blank pages to be filled with ... work, shopping, knitting, after school clubs, dog walks, gardening, all kinds of jobs that are best done before the school holidays (you know, the sort that might just involve a brew with a friend ;) ) ... and I am blessed to be able to do it all.  However busy we are, however much we don't fancy doing something on our list, there's always a parallel universe in which we would give anything to be doing that instead of what we are currently engaged in and I never forget that.    

And on that happy note let me show you what's going on in our little patch of the world this week :)

My "office" which relocated to a shady patch underneath an umbrella in the garden during the sunny days has returned indoors to the kitchen table.  It would go back to the desk in my study if I could find it under the piles of paper and stuff that appears to have grown on it like some kind of peculiar mould, but for now I'm quite happy here because I'm closer to the kettle.

Monthly Musing - July 2018 - Good enough

Do you ever have those times when you realise that you’ve not done something that you intended to do, feeling your stomach sink in that moment of “Uh oh, how do I fix that?” panic?  Sometimes it can be something pretty big (“my MOT certificate is really out of date”) and sometimes it’s not really that big at all (“I forgot to buy bread rolls”), but still that plummeting feeling can catch you unawares.

I forgot to write the Monthly Musing last month.  Did you notice?  Did it ruin your day?  I thought not (although apologies if it did).  After a few moments of “Uh oh, how do I fix that?”; “Can I write it and backdate it and pretend nothing was wrong?” and “How on earth could I forget that?!”, I realised that there was really no point in worrying about it.  On a scale of 1 to 10, it wasn’t up there with anything life-threatening or seriously problem-causing; my Monthly Musings are something that I write because I like to.  The deadlines are my own, and if I miss a month (intentionally or not) then the world doesn’t stop.

Dried out

Wow, it's been hot hot HOT!  

We're not used to this sort of heatwave in the UK; usually we get a couple of days of sunshine, the newspapers print headlines like "Phew, what a scorcher!" and compare Britain's temperature to various places overseas where it's not as hot as here (and we all know that Britain is regularly hotter than Bahrain, right? :) ), everybody puffs and pants about, complaining about the heat despite the fact that it's rained solidly for the previous nine months, and then it rains again.  

But not this time.  

This year, we've had proper sunny sunshine for weeks with not a drop of rain to be seen, and just like when it snows heavily, we have no idea how to cope.  People are walking their dogs in ridiculous temperatures and wondering why they're dying (seriously, would you like to chase a ball in a fur coat?  Our dog has spent most of his time in his favourite shady spot - there will be more than enough time for long walks later in the year).  We've had an email already from the water company asking people not to keep refilling paddling pools or use garden sprinklers so that they can conserve precious water resources and people complain about the prospect of hosepipe bans because - heaven forbid - their grass might turn brown instead of green.  This is what our grass looks like at the moment.