My Mum - Janet

Sadly passed away on Saturday last.

Since the end of October, I've more or less decamped down south to help my Dad take care of Mum (and also look after him) but managed to get back north for 3 weeks at the end of January.

We've been coming down every weekend since and the weekend before last, Mum was just so unwell that I stayed south again. Eventually on the 23rd February at 10.15am, she eventually gave up the battle and went peacefully before we had got up to the hospice to see her that morning ! Contrary to the last. Didn't want to upset us, I guess.

So, goodbye Mum, see you later and love you loads. Will look after the fuchsias and little red car, I promise, cross my heart. xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Janet Bryer
30/3/32 - 23/2/08

At last, a bit of action !

Got home from work early yesterday and the sun (yes, you heard it here first), the SUN, was still out, so out came the secateurs and I attacked the privet hedge that escaped a prune last autumn.

Still nowhere near completed but I felt rather virtuous that I'd actually set foot in the garden again.

Tonight was even better (if you can call another smashed greenhouse pane better). I must have missed an unsecured one during the last inspection. This time it's one of the triangular ones - goddammit, so a bit of sawing to shape will have to be done with a sheet of perspex rescued from the other battered g/h.

Still I had a good hour out there, tidying, sweeping up the smashed glass, throwing stuff in bins and a bit of a fork over of various beds. Composted some Pak Choi that had been sitting there doing nothing but feeding the slimey ones.

The soil that I'd forked, appears to have plenty of worms doing their stuff and is nowhere near as clay-like and heavy as when I first started two seasons ago, so something must be going right.

I've decided that given my limited free time for the foreseeable future, that I'm going to have to rather ungraciously decline her upstairs kind offer to look after her garden this year. So the carrot bath and compost bin will have to come over to my side of the plot and I think I've located their new homes. To be fair, her side is much improved on when I first arrived (a year earlier than her) and she'll just have to learn to mow the lawn and cut her bloody hedges herself.

I'll do her a favour and sow some nasturtiums and calendula in a month or so, and from then on she's on her own ! She's got a couple of nice shrubs now and if my forsythia cuttings raise themselves from the twigs they have become, she's got a reasonable start.

Am back off south tomorrow morning for the weekend and hope to bringing home new wheels - I've promised Mum faithfully that I'll look after her baby for her, so that will be a huge help up here as I've only managed to get to the lottie once since my return.

Mum's Primroses are blooming delightfully, but the pansies don't appear to want to know. Perhaps when the temperature rises a bit, they'll put on an energy burst. All Mum's presents are now rather special and I'd hate to see them all bite the dust. The wallflowers out in "her" side bed are a bit hit and miss as well, but they'll stay there forever and hopefully by next year there will be a lovely show.

Clouds are looming big and dark now ........ tut tut rain again ?

Cheerio for now.

Ever get the feeling you're being picked on ?

If there's not enough of a crisis to be dealing with darn sarf, I've been laid low with a really nasty man-flu type bug leaving me with not enough energy to raise a smile let alone any children in pots !

The weather (whilst not as bad as elsewhere in the country) is pretty pretty rubbish.

The greenhouses are still waiting to be repaired. Have got spare clips now, but no enthusiasm to get out there in howling gales to replace the unbroken panes. The current gaps in the glazing appear to be allowing the wind to blow straight through without causing damage to anything else.

The car has now died which creates it's own problems and highlights how reliant I am on the damn thing.

Just to show willing, I sowed a tray of Lettuce Valdor seeds the other day which are meant to be sown over the winter. Can't see any sign of spring, so perhaps I'm not too late.

Observations from the window:

Blueberry Chandler has some nice new buds on the bush. T'other blueberry (Sunshine Blue ?) remains in leaf and green.

Rosemary bush is looking just fab and appears to be coping well with the not so Mediterranean weather that we're getting atm.

The perpetual spinach could really do with being cut back (or eaten even) but the fact that it has lasted thus far without being demolished by any animals or inclement weather really has encouraged me to get another bed going.

Got a free pack of Tomato Sub Arctic Plenty with GYO mag this month which is the first useful pack of seeds that I've got excited about for a while. Masses of early, large cherry fruits which don't need pinching out and like cool weather ..... that'll do for me ! May try a few of these alongside the other cherry toms in baskets that I was going to try this year.

So that's about it for the time being. Really need to get a wiggle on and get myself sorted, but for the time being ....... back to bed with Richard Hammond and a cup of tea!

Happy weekend people !

xx