Staying in and garden planning

 My sort of sore throat and stuffed up nose have gone, no other cold symptoms and I feel absolutely fine.  Husband is no better but no worse either....well, his sneezing seems to have eased off a bit, he says he feels alright.  Cherie suggested we test for Covid - I'm sorry you and Tony have got it, I hope it's shortlived and you don't suffer any lasting effects.  We haven't got any test kits, we did have some left but I threw them out when we were packing at the old house - they were very near their use by date so I didn't see the point in keeping them.  I don't actually see much point in testing ourselves right now anyway - we've got no appointments coming up, no visitors due soon, and with the weather people predicting another storm with rain and gale force winds, we won't be going anywhere.  No shopping or anything needed, so we'll just stay at home in the warm and have lots of hot drinks and nourishing food.  I know husband is at more risk of being more seriously ill with covid, due to his health problems, so I will of course keep an eye on him and ring the surgery should he get worse.  It's not necessary right now.

We took Betty to the beach yesterday, she had a wonderful time charging around, digging holes in the sand, throwing herself into them and rolling around on her back.  She ran up and down the beach, getting loads of exercise, whilst husband and I more or less stood still and just watched her enjoying herself.  I find it quite difficult walking on the sand now, I feel very unsteady so used my walking stick for support.  Betty slept literally all afternoon when we got back, so much exercise clearly wore her out.  In view of all that running about she did, we won't feel guilty about not taking her out for walks for the next couple of days, she'll be fine just using the back garden - she loves sniffing everywhere out there anyway, we think there must be creatures (mice, hedgehogs, cats....maybe even a fox, although I'm not sure where they would get in) using the garden at night....not that we've ever seen any, but Betty can clearly smell them.  So she has all that sniffing to engage her brain and senses, and we do play with her indoors, with tug toys and balls.

I'm still thinking about and planning things for the garden, both rear and front.  At the front it's open plan, no fencing - all the front gardens are, to give the contract gardeners employed by the housing association free access to mow the lawns I guess.  So there's a lawn with a medium sized apple tree in the middle, and some shrubs and trees to one side.  Right in front of the house it's paved and gravelled, about 6 feet deep and the entire width of the house frontage.  So it's quite bare there.  I want some shrubs and/or flowers to soften it - I love flowers and colour.  Oh, there are hanging basket brackets on the front wall so there've clearly been baskets there in the past.  However, as we will be away at the caravan for up to a fortnight at a time throughout the park season, whatever containers/plants we put out there will have to survive with no watering for that time....as this is a community of elderly people, we can't expect neighbours to be watering all our plants.  So containers will need to have water-holding gel crystals or the like in them, and be deep enough to not dry out - and contain plants that don't need daily watering.  I'll have to give it a bit more thought and do some research.