Last Monday feeling like a weekend

As of next Monday it will just be a Monday like any other rather than the day before I’m back for another week of school shifts.

I was woken far earlier than I planned getting up by Bonnie leaping on the bed but managed to get back to sleep. I’d been having a vivid dream about losing a whole row of teeth top and bottom and was torn between being keen to get back to dream world and resolved it with a visit to the dentist and happy to be awake and therefore fully dentally intact!

I looked at a game Davies had downloaded with him and chatted to the kids before it was Popmaster time and Ady came back up from strimming round the pig fence (the grass had grown and was earthing out the electric fence in a couple of places) to listen to that. My planned jobs for today were planting out some more herbs in the herb spiral that have been brought on in the polytunnel and giving the spiral a bit of a weed where my cardboard sheet mulch had not quite been comprehensive enough and some grass was growing through. I also wanted to rationalise a bit in the polytunnel – thin out the salad leaves as some lettuce was getting a bit mildew, chuck out some ungerminated seed trays that have had long enough and not done anything and maybe sow a few more bits and pieces. I want to create some more raised beds too but we’re out of timber so that will be a stone collecting task to build some dry stone beds which will look fab and be very sensible with their heat storing capacities but time consuming.

Davies played with Bonnie and Scarlett and I were chatting in the polytunnel while I sorted out the salad leaf trays and Ady strimmed. The pigs got all the thinned stuff and were most grateful. The wee piglets are very cute and so friendly, Scarlett can pick them up and carry them around and they come hurtling towards us when we call them for ear rubs and strokes. I don’t love them to the point it will be too hard when it comes to bacon o’clock but I do feel really happy that they are having such a nice life. Pig keeping is a nice past time 🙂

Suddenly a man appeared at the entrance to the polytunnel so I said hello and that he was welcome to come in thinking he was just a random curious tourist. He came in and said he was looking for me and had been sent by Fliss. He turned out to be John Humphries, owner and editor of Scottish Islands magazine who was here looking to make contact and find writers for the magazine. He’s asked me to do a guest columnist article and possibly write more regularly for him. Hurrah!

We chatted for half an hour or so about Home Ed, our lives, his life, the islands and life in general and while he erred on the pompous side I quite liked him. Fliss said later he had been very anti Home Ed when she talked to him before sending him here but he appeared very open minded and interested in us, having been a teacher for 38 years.

John left and we went back to the static for lunch. After lunch Ady stayed at the static to tidy up a bit while I went down to do more in the polytunnel and planted some seeds. Scarlett and I were companionably chatting and singing while sowing when Fliss and Joss appeared with our post which included a new pair of rigger boots for me. I’ve missed having steel toecapped work boots the last few weeks with various stuff we’ve been doing and found some cosmetically damaged (ie leather has marks on it and a security tag hole right at the top of one boot) on ebay for £12 which is a bargain given they are over £50 new. I love them, I wore them down the shop this evening and threatened to kick anyone who messed with me. I do heart work boots!

I showed Fliss around the polytunnel and then we came up to the static to drink tea. They ended up staying til it was veg box collecting time so we walked down together, collected our car and I dropped them in the village before Fliss and I went to the shop. We had a nice evening down there with lots of laughs and then I came home. Ranger Mike had been here taking pictures of Ady and the kids for a new nature trail leaflet that’s been printed.

As it was not midgey thanks to a breeze I planted out the herbs and weeded the herb spiral that I’d not managed earlier thus completing all my weekend jobs in the end anyway 🙂

I rang my parents as we’re trying a different estate agent to sell Osborne Drive and they are doing all the liaising so caught up with them before dinner.

And back in the blogging zone! 🙂