Bits and bobs.. keeping going...behaving!

 Keeping my feet up this morning...knee swellings going down, and ankle as well. Still not right though.

Frustrating.... boring.... although I did a lot of Duolingo lessons!!

After lunch, cleared all the fleabay packing to a small wardrobe in the sewing/ turbo room... eventually to be followed by the rest of the fleabay stock.

The study is almost ready for printing, and is fit for visitors to stay...ok, just an airbed...

Coffee for one, no fun!
The list is migrating in the right direction!

And after tidying the greenhouse as much as I could, the beetroot outside got thinned...all the marble sized beet went in supper.

I got chatting to my friend in France...and did a little Ancestry hunting for him.

I should have saved the first link, but at least I printed it out...and quite a few other records as well...he can have fun researching them if he comes over before Christmas.

Culross and the Palace Garden

 The sea broke into the undersea mine workings in the 1600s, and the owner died not too long after...and with that the town had no work or commerce...but that did mean that the old town was not developed and destroyed...

And for now commerce is on the other side of the river at Grangemouth....which you can smell and hear even at that distance over the Firth of Forth.

But I must not forget the garden....

A day of this and that.

 A visit to Nae Sae New this morning to pick up and pay for a cassette player. Our old CD, cassette and radio came to its end. 

And what tape had Pirate left in the old one for me to find? Whitney Houston.."Your love is my love"....

The new one is just a cassette player, secondhand but in good condition...and works well. So the stack of cassettes won't go to waste!

Into Ayr for a little shopping..just perishables mainly as my larder is quite healthy. Then into the town itself, to try and find a rotary cutter...as the small one I have isn't going to cut nearly 400 pieces....

This was a mistake, as there was a gathering near the Low Green...and people in semi military uniform....and when I came out from the bookshop on the high street I realised...coming down the high street behind a police car with it's headlights on, was a marching band. 

I could quickly go ahead of them and back through an arcade to get back to my car...and echoing around the squares were the fifes and drums and the big Lambeg drum of the marching bands...a huge procession still coming out from the Low Green ...it was an Orangemens' procession...

Quite a chilling sound.  It explained why most of the shops on the High Street had few people in them and some were closed that I hadn't expected.

I was glad to be away from that...so home it was....lunch and then afternoon gardening.

Clearing what weeds there were from the parts of the garden with no crops..they had all been covered..

The bare patches have been loosened and raked. Phacelia sown for a green manure crop to be dug in in spring and raked in so that hopefully the sparrows don't make a meal of the seed!

The peas are rather windswept (but delicious) a tall old variety called Alderman that grows taller than me!

And the runner beans that are walking up the poles!!

That was definitely today's exercise!

After supper I carried on cutting quilt squares...I do really need a new cutter...

I checked online and haberdashers are getting far and few between. Even the crafts supermarket is about 35 miles away! 

The one place that I know that I can walk in and buy what I need is in Castle Douglas...45 miles south...in a family run shop that does all sorts of art and fibre supplies.

I cut the first colour of Squares...and the cutter is struggling.

Evening is getting earlier.

This was at 9pm. 

Keeping active...

 I wasn't very active this morning... waiting for a phone call...much unpicking done while waiting....phone call postponed until lunchtime...

Which meant trying to make a call myself...cue asking auntie Goggle for over half an hour, as the company concerned doesn't put their phone number on their letters....

Then a 52 minute call, 45 of which was hanging on...but at least I know now that my widow's pension is a Live Case...and phone again in two weeks if I haven't heard anything.

Things may be tight....but just imagine if I was under state pension age..... possibly younger, with children to care for.,and if I did claim Universal Credit benefit, that is at least five weeks wait for a decision....

Then I could get out in the fresh air and DO something!!! 

I trimmed some grass and clipped up the tomato plants after clearing out the leaves below any fruit.

It started raining..just a few sprinkles...so grab a coat and go for a walk around Hannahston...just along the nearest side and back up the fields, not the full circuit.

Of course, having taken a coat...it stayed dry until after I got home again!!

Dogwood fruit ripening....

Lammas growth on the young oak trees

And thistledown