Last big purchase, garden plans, and a cute memory

 Thank you for all the comments on my last couple of posts.  The computer-generated letter mentioned by the nice case manager lady arrived this morning, once again it's a bamboozlement of figures which don't seem to make any sense....but as she said to ignore it, I will!  I'm not dealing with anything admin or finance related this weekend, it's a weekend off.  

I decided yesterday to get another armchair, to replace my current recliner in the lounge - I've had it several years and it's become very uncomfortable, the padding or springs or whatever it's made of on the seat part are breaking down.  There's a charity furniture shop in town that we've bought a few items from already, I noticed on their website that they had a lovely, new-looking chair in just the right colour, so we went and had a look....and I bought it.

It's what's called a fireside chair I think, although I think of it as a granny chair....it brings to mind the chairs all around the lounges in an old people's care home - the same style of chairs which are in our residents' lounge here on our little sheltered housing estate, in fact!  I guess it's appropriate - although I'm not a granny, having no children/grandchildren myself, I am an old person! (well, ish 😉).  Anyway, I like it, it's in excellent hardly-used condition and is very comfortable.  It's not a recliner, of course, but we do have a nice leather footstool I'm happy to use. 

That's the last major purchase I'm making out of the legacy money I received, the rest is staying firmly in my savings account.  I'm also going to add to it regularly, this year is going to be all about putting money into savings.

And finally it's the last day of the month....January has felt like it's had about 8 weeks, exacerbated by the miserable, grey, windy and rainy weather meaning we've not been out much, I'm definitely feeling stir crazy.  Today's weather is a mix of short (very short) sunny spells with a bit of blue sky, interspersed with more cloud and rain.  It's hard not to feel depressed when the weather is so dull and dreary.  At least February has only 28 days (unless it's a leap year this year?  No idea, better have a check....no it isn't).

I think I've now made the final decisions about what to do in the garden this year, having changed my mind a few times.  Nothing drastic, just a few changes to future-proof the garden and make it easier to manage, as I doubt husband will be doing anything much (except dozing) in the garden from now on.  There's a half-dead yucca type tree to cut down, cut into smaller pieces and take to the tip - husband's got an electric saw and we'll do it together, it's not a very big tree.  We have another recently-bought small tree - well, more of a large shrub - to plant in the border between us and the neighbour (more privacy-gaining measures), not been able to plant it out yet because of the bad weather, it's fine in a large pot in the car port at the moment.  Betty's small 6ft square lawn, which she never laid on and only ever wees on, making unsightly dead brown patches, to rip up and turn into a rockery - she has several gravel covered areas to wee on, and does, instead.  As I mentioned before, we'll be growing less, and less variety of, veg from now on - my decision, towards the end of last summer husband just wasn't interested in it anymore, so it became another job for me.  I want to buy perhaps another half dozen perennial shrubs, flowering ones, I won't be buying or planting any annuals from now on.  I may scatter a few annual flower seeds in the beds though, I do like flowers and colour in the garden.

This photo came up on my feed this morning, I took it on 31 January 2017 when Betty was 3 months old, we'd had her a month then.  She was such a character when she was a baby.  And so tiny!