Great weekend

It's been a really good weekend, we've both enjoyed it very much.

I'm not a train enthusiast in any way, shape or form - husband does like steam trains but even he's not obsessive about them (for a change!!).  However, being on the platform at Minehead steam railway station yesterday was actually quite interesting, there were several (stationary) steam engines to look at, all with staff climbing over them and doing things, and another engine and carriages all waiting to take people on a journey.  Every time an engine moved, even if only a few feet, they blew the whistle - a safety feature I guess, meaning 'get out of the way!' (there were lots of staff milling around on the tracks).  There were loads of people, clearly enthusiasts with big cameras and equipment, taking lots of photos.  Whilst at least half were older men, I was quite surprised at the numbers of younger people, men and women, who were also taking photos.  The station is well staffed by volunteers, lots and lots of them, there's a book shop selling loads of second hand books, DVDs and CDs, around half of which were specifically about trains.  There's a cafe and shop, an information point, ticket office (obviously), and several piles of old suitcases and lots of other bits and pieces of old steam train memorabilia scattered along the platform.  There are also lots of large flower beds, filled with big healthy plants, very well maintained.  A very interesting place to go if you're on holiday, and opportunity for a full day out if you opt to go on the trains - there are I think 10 stations en route and people can get on and off at any of them.  We didn't go on a train yesterday, we're saving that for next month when our friends from Kent come for another week's stay - they are steam train enthusiasts, when they came in March the trains weren't yet running.  I have to admit I do like the sound of the train whistle, and the 'chuff chuff' sound it makes when it's moving.  Very evocative of 'the olden days' 😂 - not that I remember, of course! 😉  Husband says he can remember standing on the bridge over the railway line near his home when he was a boy, waiting to be engulfed in the steam as the train went under.  It was a good morning, actually, at the train station.  But sorry, I never thought to take any photos!!

Afterwards, we went to the garden centre nearby, to get some more veg plants, herbs and seeds.   Husband planted a couple that were ready to go out, in the raised bed, the others will be kept in the car port covered with fleece overnight, for another couple of weeks.  It was a mixture of sunshine and clouds yesterday, but quite warm, with a couple of showers later on.

This coming week it's looking like we might actually be able to sit out in the garden, the weather forecast is good!  The next thing on the garden agenda is Betty's lawn - a small area of gravel, 6ft square, here it is (with Betty posing beside it):-

This week we'll be raking off all the gravel and distributing it in other areas around the garden, some of it will go on the newly created rockery bed (behind Betty's bum in the photo) where the conifer hedge used to be.  Then the ground will be dug over, raked level and prepped for the turf, which we'll buy later in the week when we're all ready to lay it.  We'll cover it over to keep Betty off it until it's established, don't want her scraping it up or trampling all over it before it's settled in.  

I'm so happy with what we've done in the garden so far, so is husband - we've come up with some good plans and achieved quite a lot in the short time we've been here, and it's not cost us very much.  The biggest expense has been compost, I wouldn't like to quantify how many bags of it we've bought.  Still, it was needed, and we definitely won't need to buy much next year.....by that time our own homemade compost will be ready anyway.  We'll need to get another compost bin soon, ours is over half full already.

Oh, the police came back again yesterday.  This time the young woman (eventually) answered the door, the police were there for about 10 mins and then left.  They didn't arrest her, so presumably it wasn't her they were after, despite the fact that she lives there alone.  Oddly enough, over the past 4 or 5 days she's had no visitors at all, which is highly unusual, she normally has some or all of the same visitors every day.  Very strange.  I hope that's the end of it, whatever 'it' is.