Putting the place to right

Spent the morning in Zac's doing some cleaning. The builders have finally finished leaving us with a mess to clean and walls to paint. It's going to be fab!

I washed the wall to the right and cleaned the window and radiator before scrubbing the front door, inside and out. When I opened the door to clean the outside several of our friends stopped to chat, which was lovely even when I didn't entirely follow them or understand what they were saying. But they were all good-natured!

Then I started on the chairs. First I dusted then I hoovered then I went over them with a damp cloth.

Then after all my hard work I messaged Husband and suggested he pick me up and take me to Verdi's for lunch.

Oh, and here's a little posy from the garden in the vase I painted.

No M or P please

What sounds like a duck but isn't a duck?

Unless it were a duck that fell out of a hot air balloon and landed at the top of a tree.

I took Daughter on the walk to Ilston that Toby and I explored last week and that's where we heard the duck in the tree.

* * * * *

After seeing a woman in the library with a book journal I bought one for myself. I can check it to find out if I've read a particular book before - unless, as sometimes happens, I didn't write it in my journal.

That aside, I have noticed two interesting things:
I read more books beginning with M (I ignore 'The' or 'A') than any other letter;
I DNF (did not finish) the last four books I borrowed that began with P.

My M collection has taken over all of O and is spreading into the end of N. And the books prior to the last four P all only scored 3 or 3.5 *. 

From this I deduce I should avoid books beginning with P, and for the sake of my journal, M.

* * * * *

For Christmas Daughter gave me The Magic Words by Joseph Fossano. Its tag is, "Unlock the poetry that lives inside you."

Yesterday afternoon we had writing group and I got everyone to have a go at a few of the poems. It was amazing the variety we produced. Everyone grumbled a bit but all eventually conceded it had been interesting and helpful. I saw progress in a couple of people so I was very pleased. For myself the exercise proved that I do not have poetry living inside me - unless it is buried deep in those miles of intestine.

Because my printer wasn't working I had to write the templates on a flipchart and, in case you'd like a go, here they are.

I suggested to the group that they could take away their basic poems and fill them out, because it wasn't always easy fitting in exactly what was required. But I doubt they'll do that! Although we have one lady who is very poetic and descriptive in her writing so it would be interesting to see her expanded version.

OMO

In 1979 Jilly Cooper wrote a non-fiction book called Class. In it she, upper-middle class or higher, said something along the lines of:

Women - the lower classes - will put a box of Omo in their window to let their lover know 'Old Man Out,' and it was safe for him to go in.

I suspect this is an urban legend but the packet of Omo on the jigsaw reminded me.

pop-tart anyone?

A weekend gone and what to show for it?

A jigsaw completed! A piece missing. I search the floor but all I find is a dead fly.

I think the reason I was able to complete this so quickly was because it was grocery products from the 60s and the brands and logos were all very familiar. Some long gone now but others still going strong.

What else?

Writing a talk and preparing for leading writing group tomorrow.

I'm glad I didn't get up to watch the rugby, Wales playing Japan in Japan. Wales lost, their 18th defeat on the trot. I don't remember a slump as bad as this. We haven't had a proper coach since Warren Gatland left - was encouraged to go - in the middle of the Six Nations in February. And those in charge, getting paid lots of money, don't seem to care.

But glad we did go to GrandSon1's 14th birthday party on Saturday afternoon. Good company, good food, good fun. The house we're renting for the family holiday in Cornwall in a few weeks has a snooker table, and we're planning a family championship, so I take every opportunity I get to practise on the grandsons' small table. Needless to say I got thrashed. I did pot at least three balls though not necessarily the ones I was supposed to be aiming for.

Sunday morning church very good. Monty on fire! Did a bit of gardening in the afternoon as I was in need of exercise. This is why I should wear my gardening gloves.

It's just easier to feel if you're ungloved. 

Wales Air Show this weekend, just down the road over, over the bay. A bit cloudy so while in the garden was driven mad by hearing planes - possibly Red Arrows - and not being able to see them, or even work out which direction I should be looking in.

This morning I've been practising a talk I have to give next Saturday afternoon to a group called Torch Trust, of blind and partially sighted. Oh yes, and my printer broke down. Actually it stopped a few weeks ago but I did my usual trick of leaving it alone and waiting to see if it would work next time.

And then I worked on adapting a safeguarding policy template. I couldn't convert the original pdf to Word to work on it so had to copy, paste, amend. Oh, yes, and I received an email telling me my website host details needed confirming. So had to go through the what's my website id/password - and because Outlook isn't working for me I had to go to my bt account and get the reset, before I could get on to the host and check my details, which didn't need changing at which point I realised I needed have bothered. 

I hate technology. (I don't really but it is very irritating on times.) And Microsoft is threatening to delete my OneDrive, which I didn't even know I had.

First world neighbour with contactless fish

So I jotted down a list of things I wanted to remember to blog about. No, I haven't lost the list; I'm just explaining why this post will be a bit all over the place.

First on the list is fish. (Stop and think for a minute to work out what that means. Ah yes.) In the supermarket I bumped into a woman I used to work next to in our old exercise class. We were both choosing fish. She had smoked haddock and planned to serve it with a poached egg and rice. "That sounds nice," I said, and then I bought cod, new potatoes, and a tub of hollandaise sauce. Which is why she is skinny and I'm . . . not.

It's a bad time of year for tree seeds. The surface of our pool is covered in them. First world, middle class problem. Rich enough to have a pool, not rich enough to have a poolboy to scoop them up for you.

Every morning at about 7.40 our next door but one neighbour goes out to his car and makes a phone call. We hear it ringing. Husband thinks he's phoning his mother in Greece. I doubt he'd do that every day.

I'm doing banking in my Duolingo Welsh lessons. Contactless is ddigyffwrdd. One vowel, all those non-vowels - consonants, that's it. Unless you count y as a vowel. Then you've got daearyddiaeth, meaning geography. No wonder I struggle.

Thank you, Arctic Fox, for reminding me that my red plant was called Heuchera. This one was planted in the same bed at the same time but didn't get the tlc that the red one received.

It was looking even more pathetic but more light and space seems to be making it happy.

Come for a walk

Since I "know the way" led Daughter on a sliiiightly overgrown path she refuses to do any more exploratory walks until we get a map. Personally I don't think a map will help unless she can read it, because Husband will tell you that map-reading isn't a skill I have. (But I am good at finding 'scenic' routes.)

So I asked Husband if he wanted to come for a walk to explore Ilston Valley.
"No chance! I know what your walks are like!" (He approached again a few minutes later to apologise for sounding aggressive. I told him it all made good blog fodder.)

So it was just me and Toby who set off from the Gower Inn to try and find our way through Ilston valley to St. Iltyd's Church. So please join us now for an adventure in the valley.

First, ladies and gentlemen, look to your right where you'll see some ruins.

The ruin is the site of a pre-Reformation Trinity Well chapel used by John Miles (or Myles) from 1649 for meetings of the first organised church of baptised believers in Wales i.e. the first baptist chapel in Wales. (In 1663 Miles emigrated to Rehoboth, Massachusetts where he set up the first Baptist church in the state. He also took with him the Ilston Church Book, now preserved in America, in which he recorded that the first two converts in Ilston were women. He found this disappointing but consoled himself by believing that the Lord was ‘thereby teaching us not to despise the day of small things’!)

And with that, let's continue on our way. The path is flat and edged by a few astilbe struggling to survive in amongst the invasive Himalayan Balsam.

It looks pretty but is taking over everywhere.

A little further on and we come to a fork in the path.

Neither path looks well-travelled but the one to the left crosses a bridge and all the articles I've read about the walk say there are a number of bridges so we go left and follow the path up. And up and up and up. Until it brings us out at the top. In a field. With no sign of a church anywhere.

"Come on Tobe, back down we go."

Another path follows the mostly-dry river-bed, whether that's through lack of rain or a diverted course I don't know.

And through a guard of honour of tall thin trees.

And so we continue on until we reach our destination, St. Iltyd's Church.

Most of the church dates from the thirteenth century.

I do love an old graveyard although most of the graves I saw were nineteenth century or later

I couldn't get at these, and probably wouldn't have been able to read them anyway.

The yew in the church grounds is said to be as old as the church itself.

I didn't want to take Toby inside so we turned around and made our way back to the car park. Excluding getting lost exploring the area, the route took about half an hour each way, and was very lovely.

Yesterday I saw a post telling how to distinguish between hemlock (poisonous) and Queen Anne's Lace. 

But I couldn't remember! I think this is Queen Anne's Lace.

Postscript

I had to go to Mumbles and while I was out Husband decided to pick-axe the root.

He lost his balance, cut his leg, and threw soil all over himself. 

I call it karma. And the root remains.

Meanwhile the library will be closing for at least three weeks from Saturday for necessary work to the children's library. The library was built in 1935 and is a listed building so they're having to find the same plaster as was used then to replace it. If work at Zac's is anything to go by it will be longer than three weeks.

On my way home from the library I wasn't listening to the radio - I had the windows open and it was too noisy - but its display was showing. A synopsis of what was currently being broadcast:

Socrates flees his wife who faints when she feels Plato's legs.

You want to listen to that now, don't you?

Oh yes, and back in the garden.

I first planted this in the shady side bed. It was always being dug up or trampled on and was looking very pathetic so I transplanted it to a pot for some special care. It did well and I was able to put it back into the garden, in a better bit of soil, and look how it's flourishing today. I don't have many great success stories so I have to make the most of them when I do.

Speaking of non-success stories I have lost yet another pillow case. I have given up and ordered eight white pillowcases and two white fitted sheets.

The never-ending story

From your comments on my previous post I assume wandering cattle aren't a normal sight where you are. They are here. They're often over the golf course or even down on the beach. There is a lot of common land in Gower and the farmers seem happy to let their animals roam.

Daughter's front garden wall was knocked over by a cow but there was no recompense. The cows will belong to several farmers and there's no knowing which is whose. 

Now back to the never-ending story of The Gardener and the Bamboo. 

I bought me a riddle, which seems an appropriately gold-prospector way of saying it, and I've been sitting in soil sieving it. 

As well the bamboo roots and the bush roots, I uncovered another deep root that doesn't seem to belong to anything. In fact, it might not even be a root; it could be an ancient relic, the hull of a Norman ship perhaps.

I decided I was going to dig this thing up. Like the bush I couldn't pull it up from the top so I'd dig it up from the bottom. Then Husband came along and said, "You should be using the pickaxe." He never learns, does he?

So it was a matter of pride to me that I should succeed in my endeavour. 

After about half an hour I decided pride was over-rated. I went in and told Husband he could dig it up with the pick-axe. "Are you grumpy with me?" he said.
"Whatever makes you think that, dear?"

However while I was, as I like to think of it, prospecting for treasure, my mind wandered to the California Gold Rush. I wondered how many people found gold, how many of them became rich, and how many died in the attempt?

Around 300,000 people travelled to California to look for gold following its discovery there in 1848.

Although an estimated 750 tons of gold were extracted very few people made a fortune. Shops selling shovels did well! As did Levi Strauss who came up with his riveted blue jeans idea.

It's estimated that 100,000 people died during the Gold Rush, of starvation, disease, accidents, and violence.

One other interesting detail - well, I think it's interesting. I found myself talking to myself in Moira Rose's voice. (We're rewatching Schitt's Creek.) In my head I sounded great.

Barbecue surprise

My plan for dinner has once again been thwarted by my own ineptitude. I suppose I could make ribs in barbecue sauce surprise, the surprise being there are no ribs. I know I looked at them when I was doing my order; I must have forgotten to press the button.

Gnocchi and veg it is then.

* * * * *

A lovely walk again today from Southgate to Pwll Du and back. A long walk - why is the hill so much longer on the way back? And once again regretted not taking our bathing things. The dogs had a wonderful time though and I only panicked briefly when Toby began swimming out to sea.

Stopped for a drink and cake on the way back. A mum and baby were comfortable on the roundabout.

But then as we were setting off for home . . . Rawhide!

Some sort of cattle drive was in progress although that implies cowboys rounding them up, and there wasn't a single, "Yup, giddup." It was just a load of cows - with a bull at the front - out for a stroll. This is just the back end of the herd. And, yes, it was definitely a bull: it had a willy.

They just kept on coming and even when we thought they'd finished and began walking home we had to take cover again as more came from the side street, and then even more down the main road.

Mummy cows are very protective of their babies and can be nasty if they feel threatened, especially by dogs, so we kept well out of their way.

* * * * *

Yesterday I did a bit more bamboo-battling. I was plugging away at it when Husband came along and said, "You should have started the other end."

He has survived heart attacks and cancer; he is lucky to survive a hot, sweaty, grumpy, wife.