Off with their heads! (The Lords & Ladies that is)

 Re the weed.....I'd not heard of Lords & Ladies, but as soon as some of you mentioned Cuckoo Pint I thought yes that's it, you see great swathes of it in woodland (there's great swathes of it at the caravan park) and it has those spikes of red berries in the autumn.  I didn't actually know that all parts of it are poisonous, although I'd assumed the berries probably were....although it's interesting that birds can and do eat the berries and they're not affected by the poison.  Having read that it's very difficult to eradicate completely, as it's virtually impossible to remove all of the root rhizomes and if any are cut through, they'll simply regenerate and grow again, we've pondered on how to deal with it.  Husband is all for spraying with weedkiller, but a) I don't like using chemicals in the garden in case they're damaging to wildlife or the environment.  And b) he's very indiscriminate when he sprays anything, and would most likely kill off all the other plants we want to keep!  I don't think we'll attempt to dig it all up, I think we might just cut it all off at the base (wearing gloves), put it in bin bags and drop it off at the tip on our way home, as apparently it's not a good idea to put it in your compost bin (we have a compost bin behind the van).  I know it'll keep regrowing, but if we keep cutting it off then we'll keep on top of it and it might eventually weaken it.  I certainly don't want Betty eating it, she does eat grass from time to time but I can't say I've seen her eating anything else.  So a big THANK YOU everyone for your input.

We've found out that another couple of neighbours have tested positive, so that's 6 households out of our little hamlet of around 20 or so houses.  It is worrying and we're well and truly keeping our distance, and testing every few days - negative thankfully so far.  I see they're starting to do 4th jabs now, we'll have ours when the time comes.

I can't quite believe the weather forecast for this week, and into next.....warm sunshine all the way.  It's finally gardening weather!  I shall be in the front garden, pruning and weeding today.  Husband has cut both front and back lawns, and he'll start on clearing some more of the raised veg beds.  We nipped to a garden centre yesterday and bought some veg plants - 2 cherry toms for the van, 2 ordinary toms for home, 2 strips of leeks and a yellow courgette - we wanted 2 courgettes, 1 each yellow and green, oddly they had no green (sold out I expect).  I also got some seed packets of cut & come again salad leaves, for both home and van garden.  We've already got carrot and beetroot seeds.  Husband cleared his space in the utility room for the veg plants.

The mobile mechanic friend-of-a-friend is coming today to change the defective StopStart switch on the car, also the electric window switch (a couple of the windows suddenly stopped working).  He'll also do another full diagnostic thing, although the limp mode problem has completely disappeared now (fingers firmly crossed!).  We are of the definite opinion that it was a dirty fuel problem which has now resolved, having used up the likely dirty fuel and refilled since then.

We are having a very low carb week (I'll even continue it at the caravan, although not quite so strictly), as both of us have put on weight and are feeling sluggish which, in my case certainly, is due to eating far too much carby stuff.  I do feel 'fat' at the moment but when I weighed myself yesterday morning, with one eye closed expecting to be horrified, I was actually pleasantly surprised to see I've not put on as much as I thought....still not good though.  Going very low carb does get rid of quite a few pounds for me very quickly, carbs make me so bloated that when I stop eating them, I pee for England, which I certainly did - twice - early this morning.  So we're not having ANY bread, potatoes or other root veg, pasta, rice, cereal or baked goods this week, what few carbs we have will be coming from fruit and veg.  Husband isn't overjoyed about it, but is prepared to do it for a week.  He's aware he needs to get some of his weight off, as he's been getting a lot more breathless upon exertion (or even bending over to put his shoes on) lately.  And that's not good for his heart failure.  The extra weight certainly isn't good for my knee either.