Better!

 I set up husband's new phone for him this morning, if I hadn't he would have been niggling on at me all day.  Since he hardly ever uses his mobile, makes almost no calls on it, nor does he receive many and gets very few texts (and hands the phone over to me to read them out as he forgets how to read them), and has never sent a text in his life, I don't really know why he's so obsessed with the idea of having a smart phone.

Good relations have been restored between husband and our next door neighbour, they sort of kissed and made up yesterday afternoon.....well, obviously no kissing nor apologies, nothing about their spat was even mentioned.  Gifts were exchanged - neighbour gave husband some veg plants he'd grown from seed, and husband gave neighbour the cardboard packaging our new fridge came in,  he wants to use it as weed suppressant at their allotment.  The neighbours are going away for a few days so hopefully everyone will have chance to cool down.

The builders next door haven't been on site for a couple of days, although Mr X himself was doing some banging inside the barn for a while yesterday, no idea what the noise was but it didn't last too long.  We've realised that Wednesdays is always a noisy day on site, as well as the builders, Mr X and his brother (who both provide the labour) have the day off work to help the builders with any labouring work.  So in future I think we'll consider going out for the day (taking Betty with us) to have a break from the noise.

K, I like the idea of a salt moat to stand hostas and dahlia pots in to keep away the marauding slugs, I'll have to try that, we do seem to have a lot of slugs here and the little buggers certainly don't mind crawling over all the gravel.

I've got the returned LPA to get on and redo this weekend, I'll offset the frustration of that by planting all my new dahlias in pots.  Light rain is forecast for tomorrow but Sunday looks to be a mostly dry day, so we might even go out for a drive somewhere.  Mixed weather forecast for next week.  It's definitely a lot cooler.....not that I mind it being cooler than that heatwave we had last week, but a bit warmer and drier would be nice.

Lots of small courgettes being picked now, which is lovely.  Husband has brought in bowls of strawberries a couple of times....but when I was preparing them, tiny baby woodlice dropped out of a few - YUCK!  Put me right off.  We don't seem to have had much luck with our strawberries here, last year as well they were getting eaten by woodlice, slugs or birds faster than we could pick them.  I'm considering getting rid of them altogether and having a few fruit bushes in their place next year.  At this time of year British strawberries are plentiful and cheap in the shops anyway, and at least they'll be pest free.  In a couple of weeks we'll be able to have some of our own potatoes grown in bags, which will be nice, can't beat fresh homegrown little new spuds, simply boiled with a sprig of mint and a knob of butter melted on them.