A Windy Sunday

On Saturday I arrived at the big Boot Sale at the same time as it started to pour with rain, so I turned round and went out again.....and so did everyone else.
Didn't even bother to try on Sunday as it was grey, chilly and very windy. Instead I baked scones and went out for a walk across the back field.

I have no idea if this video will work,  and because it was so windy you can't hear the skylarks that I could hear and most of my words were blown away too.

The footpath down my meadow and out onto the field isn't used much and mainly by local people, but if I'd done this walk just a while later I would have turned round and seen a large group of ramblers appearing - which would have been quite a surprise. I looked online and found they were Ipswich Ramblers group doing a nine mile walk in the area.

If we all have to stay at home and isolate ourselves at least I'll still be able to walk the path in the middle of nowhere.

Later I finished  this cross stitch, after it had been sitting half done in a drawer for about 2 years.  I've been right off stitching for all that time.

I used to stitch this design a lot when I was stitching to sell cards at the Country Market. It's quick and easy but looks quite effective especially when done on this marbled blue Aida. Just need to get it into a card blank......which mustn't take two years to do.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Another Good Week in Suffolk

Walking on Monday morning was lovely - cold but not too cold with blue sky and sunshine.

Cycling a couple of miles on Tuesday morning was chilly but sunny although the wind  and rain got going later. Just after 10pm there was a torrential hailstorm - on the back of the house, yet the rain earlier in the day had hit the front of the house.....weird.

Wednesday the electric was supposed to be off - a planned outage for tree cutting near wires  somewhere, cancelled from before Christmas, so I decided to have a day out........charity shops and churches (and a very strange meal in Dobies Garden Centre where a salad consisted of  2 cherry tomatoes and 3 slices of cucumber!) There I bought some bulbs for colourful Gladioli

 for my mini cutting garden to replace some of the Hollyhocks - which turned out to not be good for cutting as they have to have the stalks filled with water to stop them from collapsing in the vase. When I got home I found the electric hadn't been off at all. Which means we'll probably get another note through the door again sometime in the future......

Thursday I went to help at a 'Soup and Puds' WI fundraiser. This is at big WI, they've been doing them twice a year for years but I'd not gone and helped before mainly because I didn't really know what it was. So I volunteered to help with washing up.....safely in the kitchen - out of the way, while I discovered exactly how the event worked. I ended up not doing much washing up but generally helping in the kitchen and then dishing up some of the desserts. People have to buy a ticket in advance  for £6, turn up at the village hall at 12 noon and then  get a choice of 3 soups with bread rolls, they can come back for second helpings. Then a choice of about 9 different yummy desserts, followed by coffee and  a mint. I can quite see why Colin's Dad used to like going to this event before he died. There is a Bring and Buy stall and a Draw (of course). There was enough soup and desserts for all of us in the kitchen to have some too.
 I began to think I wouldn't get there as two roads were closed in two different directions, which I didn't know until I got to the 'Road Closed' signs, and I ended up taking nearly 45 minutes to do what usually takes  under 20 minutes!

On Friday I started a 12 week course run by OneSuffolk - " Lose weight with your FREE  local weight management service"............I'm not hopeful.
But  more importantly I welcomed Eldest Daughter with Eldest Grandson (heavens above he's nearly 4!) here from Surrey to stay for a couple of nights, mainly for Auntie H to meet her new nephew and for J to meet his new cousin - although he probably wasn't that fussed as he's got boy cousins big enough to play with on his Daddies side of family already and near enough to see often.
I decided not to bother with organising the picking up of my library books at a different place, so will just wait until the van's round again and carry on reading from my own shelves in the meantime.


My Being Grateful thoughts this week were easy

• Walking
• Cycling
• Helping
• Family

By this time last year I had done lots of garden clearing, the weather had been warm and I had seeds sown in the propogator ..............This year it's just been wet and virtually nothing has been done.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend
Back Monday
Sue

Fresh Air and Exercise

After spending Saturday and Sunday venturing no further than the garage and the wood shed, I needed some fresh air so had a walk round the lanes - away from the muddy fields.

The morning was lovely - sunshine and blue sky through this old Oak tree.

The fields have standing water everywhere

The drainage ditches around the fields are all full. Here the water is running out of the ditch on one side of the road, across the road and into a ditch on the other side.

It's unusual to see water draining from the fields this fast. These ditches will be dry for most of the year.

Perhaps this road will be re-surfaced this year. I've biked along it and it's like biking over cobbles.

A grumpy farmer who owns some of the fields around about home has applied for outline planning permission to build a house on this area. It's been a concrete hard standing for sugar-beet and is on a corner of the narrow road.

There is only a farmhouse further down the road on this side of the road although there are properties opposite. The Parish Council have objected  as have quite a lot of us who live close by. It's outside any area designated for building and would set a precedent for farmers to use concrete hard standings - and they are everywhere in this arable area- to build houses. We will see what happens. This is the farmer who reported my neighbours for fly-tipping when they planted some bulbs and primroses on the opposite side of our lane. He said he wanted "His" weeds put back! The council came and looked and dismissed it as ridiculous. There is always a debate about who owns ditches but he certainly doesn't own the land on the lane side of the ditch!


Back Tomorrow
Sue

30th January

Thank you to everyone for comments this week so far, especially about 'stuff' in the cupboards. If I didn't have room for all my possessions to be tidy then it would be time to move more out, but at the moment everything fits in, is used and tidy enough to find. I can't see any point in clearing out things that are used now and again because as sure as anything the moment I got rid would  the day before I needed it!
 So the clearing out will slow down to just books.............oh and maybe the tea towels (a post to follow sometime!) My sister and I (mainly sister as she was closer) cleared out Dad's house after his death and he hadn't chucked anything out for years- there was an awful lot of junk, don't want to leave my lot with too big a job - even if it is  hopefully a long time in the future.

There was no swimming again this week. The pool has had to put in some sort of temporary boiler as parts for their old one are having to be made from scratch. That short power surge in early January certainly did a lot of damage.

I went for the free NHS 5 year health check and the nurse asked about exercise - and of course I hadn't swum due to the above, I hadn't walked due to my walking shoes being repaired, I hadn't cycled because the weather has been too wet and hadn't gardened for the same reason! Making me sound totally lazy - oh dear. (I've now got my walking shoes back - so no excuses - except for the weather)

But, just a little bit of proper sunshine on Monday enticed me out for half an hour to start the job of cutting back all the dead stuff from the quarter circle garden out the back of the house. I often think my gardening mojo has disappeared but it always comes back with fine weather. Although the fine day on Wednesday was accompanied by a freezing strong wind which put me off.

Took Polly to the vets again because once again she is constantly cleaning herself and losing hair. We agreed that there was no point giving her another steroid injection. Instead I've sent for  one of those plug in cat-calming things and I'm going to shut the cat flap at night so the mystery cat can't come in and Polly will have to use a litter tray (UGH) night time. ( I know all about microchip cat-flaps but it would be difficult to change it on the door, plus finding someone to do odd jobs is difficult).

I couldn't believe what I found after getting my shoes back and doing my first walk  down the field and back up the lane - someone has cut down the branch of the old apple tree that had the mistletoe on it.  I thought the wind had broken the branch but No it's been sawn through and is laying on the ground under the tree

WHY? and WHO? is what I want to know.

I'm a bit cross, but nothing I can do about it.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

On Track

Last week I heard the noise of big machinery across the field and guessed it was things to do with the Heritage Railway Track Extension and as the weather on Saturday was better than the forecast  I took my new walking shoes to have a look.

Sure enough here is the new  end of the Middy Railway. Its just quarter of a mile from home. They wanted to put a big turntable in here to turn the trains round to run back to the station. But with this new ending to the railway being just  50 metres from houses and as the railway didn't own the land they needed, they couldn't get permission, which I'm quite pleased about for the sake of the people who live there. Because it would have meant lots of people getting off the train to watch the turntable going round and probably wandering about the lane by their houses which would be quite a change from how their lane is at present.

This "new destination" 1km from the museum is to be called Aspal Halt. Heavens knows why as the village of Aspal is several miles away! The railway museum has an open day on the 21st April then their Middy in the War Years weekend on 5th and 6th May. I expect they are hoping to have the sleepers and  rails laid by then - depends on the weather I guess.

  This is where we picked loads of blackberries in 2017, now all cleared for the railway extension

Here's what was making all the noise

 I don't know how I feel about this, it was a lovely path (although not an official footpath)down the old track-bed, now its stones ready for sleepers and rails

There is a footpath crossing the railway here not sure how that will be sorted out

This is where the railway used to end

And the other way shows where it will be going - up hill a little, so I expect to hear the little trains huffing and puffing up the slope every Sunday through the summer.

Other machinery I might have been hearing was this, it's a willow cutter

 And here are the bundles ready to be collected

 I'm glad they haven't removed the cherry-plum tree -  blossom just beginning to appear.

 Heading home...........this is the footpath where  boots get caked in mud after rain, and that cream house is my cottage at the end of a lane.

Lovely lot of primroses this year on my meadow, among the new trees.

Thank you for all the comments about the random odd blog yesterday.

Back Tomorrow
Sue