dear diary ~ a long week of ups and downs…

Like the weather

As I write this post and we emerge from the Easter week, I am greeted with a snow shower falling outside my window. DH and I have just returned from our morning walk which was both brisk and cut short as the bright, but bitterly cold, spring day soon turned into a cold hailstone shower not long after we had walked down the road. There was little point heading upwards along the lane towards the moor and we circled round the block quickly and were glad to get back home.

Many of the tulips in the border at the front of the house are in full flower, such a cheery sight and the local neighbourhood’s children have not managed to land a football onto them…yet! Although I love the pink, purple and moody colours I find they don’t come again as easily as the Apeldoorn variety of vibrant reds and yellows that I have had for a few years now, and they do keep coming back. It means I do not have to keep planting and removing and replanting each year.

The tulip Sun Lover which is a vibrant orange with yellow streaks has also made another appearance and will be in full flower soon to add to the display. They all contrast well with the deep blue grape hyacinth and the forget-me-nots. I have yet to find out if any of the unopend buds are Queen of the Night, a rich velvety purple colour.

The ones in the picture below have still to open – if I remember rightly they are double early mixed that I planted before Christmas. I am eager to know what they look like.

The Amelanchier Canadensis (Snowy Mesipilus) has abundant delicate white blossoms and the whole tree will look like a cotton wool cloud as they all fully open (if this windy, wet weather doesn’t whip them off the branches).

My dicentra, as always, steals the show in the front garden, no matter what the weather it seems to survive our harsh temperatures and gives a good dispay.

The camelia that had one flower last year is flowering and has been moved to the front of the house.

And the primulas keep on giving…

How different is the weather again now to that one day last Wednesday when the temperatures soared and I had to rummage in my summer wardobe for some suitable attire. And today I am glad I decided not to pack away the three thick jumpers I have been wearing all winter, because I am once again wearing one of them right now. They are so old and bobbly I had thought I would put them in the charity rag sack, which will force me to buy some new ones next winter….but just in case I am hanging on to them.

If you asked me what I have done this week, I would have to search my brain to remember. We visited mum last Sunday, surprisingly the weather was sunny and not too cold, though only 5 minutes after leaving her apartment a large dark cloud went overhead and we were pelted for a few minutes with hailstones. It was quite unpleasant but in true style my mum braved it all and thankfully it was fine for the rest of the time in the park. She devoured her toasted teacake and cappuccino and then had an Magnum icecream.

We left her in good spirits with the mid-afternoon carer and went off down the road to Thirsk to call in at my younger daughter’s home and deliver Easter eggs to Little L and Sweetie. I always get a bear hug from Sweetie, apparently granny tops the list of her favourite people! We had a chat and a cup of tea and then got back on the road homewards.

It was an early night for us and I slept like a log.

Monday morning the washing marathon began. I had brought down 4 black bin bags of washing, all bedding and underwear, from my mum’s. What with her leaky rodent ulcer on her leg, that bleeds and issues a fluid continually onto her sheets, and a number of accidents in the past week, the carers had to strip the bed more than once. Everything needed soaking and stain removal and some of it took two washes. Luckily, I could get it all out on the line, dried, ironed and packed ready to get it all back up to my daughter in Thirsk on the Wednesday by means of a friend of hers who was going to see her. My daughter will then pass it on to my sister when she returns back home from holiday this weekend. My sister usually does all mum’s washing but in this instance there was no way I could have let my sister arrive back from her holiday to all that washing.

In between I did some weeding and pruning and set a few more annual seeds in the greenhouse. I usually grow a few cosmos, zinnias and calendula and all but the calendula are sprouting already. We have late frosts so I don’t sow too early as it is late May or beyond before I can plant out here and be reasonably safe from overnight frosts.

On Tuesday we reluctantly decided to do our weekly shop because we were expecting Master Freddie on Wednesday and Friday to play while mum and dad were at work. Baby Chocolate goes to nursery so Freddie had our undivided attention on both days.

He is seven now and loves to have some time on my computer (with a little supervision from me so he doesn’t accidentally delete or uninstall anything). He had a vision to make a puzzle book and we sat together like the contestants on the Apprentice when they are developing a new product with the help of a design agency. He told me exactly what he wanted and I helped to show him how he could achieve that using blank sheets in the Microsoft Word program.

He designed the front cover using a clip art from the internet.

He was so definite he wanted a bar code on the back cover but I couldn’t figure out how to do thin and thick lines in Word, but happily settled for this – a seven year olds world is very simple!

He had a tagline selling point saying ‘over 10 puzzles’. He also wanted the price sticker to say 30p or 50p depending on people’s means to pay, which I thought was very sweet and thoughtful!!

Inside, he created 10 pages of different puzzles by himself, including this simple ‘word search’ and this colour puzzle as well as a couple of mathematical puzzles.

It was impossible in Word to find a way to draw a maze or a dot to dot picture so we had to cut and paste something from the internet. When all the puzzles were finished he wanted to put all the answers on the back page just like a real puzzle book.

We had great fun with it and once printed out and bound together with a bit of sparkly cord he was so proud of it and couldn’t wait to show mum and dad.

So today both DH and I are recovering and would have ventured into the garden if the weather had been better. Our garden furniture is still under wraps; keeping dry so we can paint it and the projects we had started are waiting for the better weather. It has been hard work trying to sort the garden out in very limited fine weather – it must have been the worst year for rain here.

I decided as it is one of those stay at home and inside all day, days I would dust, tidy and hoover, the house certainly needed it. I have packed away the few Easter decorations I had out on display – although I have kept the odd one out for a bit longer, it sems a shame not to as Easter was over so quickly. I am just debating whether it is worth swapping my winter wardrobe for the summer one just yet.

After an early tea we are going to a local theatre production of a play called ‘A Bunch of Amateurs’. We enjoyed their last production which was a murder mystery; we do like to support the people who are willing to put their time and energy into these productions so they don’t die away like a lot of things are due to the coming of Netflix and takeaway suppers.

I took advantage recently of the Gardeners’ World offer of 6 issues for £12 plus the 2 for 1 entry card into many gardens. With the first issue I also got a free packet of cosmos seeds which I will sow this week. I note from the cover it is a special subscribers issue so maybe there is some content left out or fewer pages than the full price version.

I need a new mini wooden greenhouse. DH has in the past managed to repair the one I got in 2014 for £42.49 from Homebase, but now he is repairing the repairs. We saw that Aldi had some in their March gardening event but we were too late to the party and they had all gone. So we are looking to find one elsewhere. Although I have my ordinary, small (6×4′) wooden greenhouse, the mini one is great for hardening off the trays of plants and holding the plant pots over winter.

Whilst in Aldi though I noticed one of those picture frames that will display and contain many pictures – great for the children’s drawings they leave and only £3.99. I am sure they were more like £12 on the internet.

I had to return a book to the library this week and whilst I was there picked up an interesting one about the history of the village I live in from before the dark ages to recent times. I am engrossed – I love a bit of history.

Our village is really a town as we have a town hall and a market place – though no market these days. It grew to quite a size with the industrial revolution and the valley is littered with old mills, some demolished now but others have become housing. I was keen to know what kind of place it was before it was taken over.

Looking at the 1677 Court Roll there were a few scoundrels back then and no changes today.

I seem to be mentioning my mum a lot these days and that is probably because she takes up a lot of my week and sometimes her actions make me laugh, but sometimes they make me want to scream.

This week has been an absolute nightmare.

One afternoon something was not right with her phone when I rang. It started off OK but then suddenly the volume went and I could hardly hear her. She is not able to rectify this kind of problem anymore so I told her to wait for the carer who was due in half an hour so they could look at it, but suspected it was running out of charge. Within that half hour she called me 14 times – each time just to check the phone and each time it was no different and I told her she was running the charge down further.

As well, for some reason she had decided she wasn’t going to eat or drink at breakfast and lunch at all – she told the carers she had no appetite because she was not getting any fresh air. I could see where this was going because she has no problem eating the chip butty, chocolate brownie with cream and drinking her large cappuccino across at the deli cafe on a Wednesday and Friday, and knowing my mum she was probably hoping the carers would take her across to the cafe every day if she wouldn’t eat what they made for her. The carers were very concerened for her and tried to coax her to eat as you would a child, but were met with some unpleasant reactions and words from mum. The care agency manager had to have words with mum about her behaviour towards the carers. I am sure they are used to it, but it is not pleasant. My mum denied all charges and dismissed the concern over her not eating and drinking saying they had all lied about her. Then mum left a few nasty words for me on my voicemail!

Anyway, since then she has been a bit better the last day or two and has eaten again and been pleasant with the carers. How long that will last is anyone’s guess.

The OT went to see her yesterday as she has been struggling to get out of her chair and doesn’t leave it until a carer is there, not even for the toilet. The OT offered her a reclining chair and different walker and a few other aids to make her mobility better – she refused everything. I did say to the carers that she would. I think she actually likes having everyone think she cannot do anything for herself or get up out of her chair without their help.

She can do things when she wants though because during the not eating episode and betwen carer visits she did manage to get up from her chair herself and walk with her walker over to the bin to deposit her sandwich and then told the next carer she had eaten it. Unfortunately for mum, the evidence had partly fallen outside the bin and lay on the floor. She still said she had eaten it and denied putting it in the bin!!!!

I wake up every morning now and wonder what the issue is going to be today. Who needs Coronation Street… my mum is enough of a drama for me.

Well I will stop rambling now – I have a play to go to.

Have a good weekend, back soon x

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