You can find me here:...
or ....
It would be good to see you xxx
Thank you - your kind words, here and by email, both strengthened me and dissolved me to tears - I have had so many hugs from dog walkers who I don't know by name - only by the fellow-dog-walker nod - when they ask 'where's your dog?'.
Being at work was hard - staff and volunteers seemed as stunned as I, visitors to the park and walled garden were too. I still catch myself about to call her when I go out into the garden or get ready for work.
She was a funny, silly, hair shedding, eye-rolling, waggy tailed, muddy footed gallumph who enriched my life and she will be forever missed. So, thank you - so so much for your thoughts xx❤️🩹
who you calling a muddy footed gallumph?
Not an easy post today.
Moss - who we rescued, who rescued us, who made us laugh, made us walk, made our house and home into a furry pack - now makes me cry.
RIP my dear sweet buddy.
A combination of weather, work and every day commitments have firmly kept us off the hills for anything more than day trips or walking from home. Last week we suddenly realised that we had a couple of days free (during the bank holiday weekend) and a promise of half decent weather by those meteorological folk who can enthusiastically wax lyrically about atrocious weather fronts - they seem to love their jobs...
Any hoo - early Saturday morning we hastily packed the van with the bare essentials, food - tick, bedding - tick, warm stuff - tick, camera - tick, Moss' paraphernalia - tick tick tick. Then we headed to a new to us place - Alston in Cumbria and promptly fell in love with it.I've just stumbled back in from the garden - it is a bit cold out there now and I am pretty sure I heard the kettle call my name several times. Being on hands and knees and not moving very much whilst weeding (I love weeding, it clears the head and gives me permission to think or not to think, but to just be) however, I found I was clenching my teeth to stop them chattering.
First thing this morning - just after 7am, I pottered out in to the garden to take Moss for her first morning leg stretch and piddle and in the early sunlight I was taken how much my garden has gently moved on. We've been away for a couple of nights (wild camping up in the North Pennines) and in that short space of time - so much and yet so little has happened.
It said on the radio this morning that March had been the wettest on record for 40 years and although I did think it was a 'tad damp' (good northern understated term), I didn't think it had been that wet. I suppose, living in the lea of the Pennines we were bound to get our generous share of rain.
After a morning session in a private garden where I disembowelled a 14 year old compost heap on to very hungry and grateful flowerbeds. When I started here, the compost was an enormous unruly pile which dominated the corner it was residing in. It's taken three years to beat it back into submission and now after today's marathon digging and mulching, I just may have tamed the beast - I still have one more bay to empty but I can see that it is far less of a mountain in comparison - more of a molehill!
Just getting my hands back into the soil and feeling the weak sunlight on my face is such a boost. That combined with the scent of the awakening earth and newly emerging shoots is wonderful. However by mid afternoon the sun has slipped behind thin grey cloud and the temperature has plummeted - brrrrr. Definitely time for a brew. Happy - most definitely.
The verb 'weekending', to weekend, to do - so we did.
visiting...
After an odd week at work where two of the three days in the walled garden flew by at an indecent pace and I was left reeling almost as if I'd stepped off a roller coaster by the end of the day, followed by the slowest Friday I have experienced in a very long time.
It took an age to get to 10.30am, forever to get to 12pm. It then appeared to be 1.45pm for several hours. So to get home was an incredible relief. Sitting on the settee nursing a couple mugs of tea before I could move was the best way to recover.Hope, whatever you are doing for the rest of your weekend makes you smile - xxxxxx