In the doldrums

 It's another wet, windy and grey day, so depressing.  For tomorrow, although still showery, it is forecast to be a little bit brighter, thank goodness.

I really don't like going out in bad weather nowadays, I can't stand being outside when it's raining and the wind is lashing the rain into my face, so going for a walk, standing at a bus stop (buses were running about 40 mins late yesterday, with one journey being cut out altogether, according to locals on FB) or even going out in the garden to do a bit of tidying up is out of the question for me right now.  But....I'm so fed up with being stuck indoors with a grumpy husband who spends most days flat out in his recliner chair dozing, the TV playing to itself with all kinds of daytime rubbish on, the remote control clutched to his chest or fallen down the side of his chair so I can't even turn the damn thing off!  I suppose I could pull the plug out....If he's not got the TV on then he's sitting at his computer watching noisy reels of car crashes or drunk/drugged people arguing with police officers.  Even Betty has been moping around the past few days - I don't think she's unwell, she's just bored.  I do try to play with her a couple of times a day, to alleviate her boredom and give her a bit of stimulation.  

This morning I've done a washload and put it on the airer in the hallway - it's not even been drying in the car port lately, the weather's just been so grey and dismal and damp.  I've chopped a load of veg and put them in the slow cooker with a handful of pearl barley, with a can of mushroom soup and a packet of garlic mushroom sauce - still using up our stocks of UPF foods.  I mixed up a packet of white sourdough bread mix (yes more UPF) yesterday, adding some wholemeal flour and mixed seeds to it.  Left it overnight in the fridge to prove, this morning it was well risen and bubbly.  Once it got back to room temperature, I turned it out of the bowl, gave it a quick fold and shape, left for another half hour to rise again then baked it, just taken it out of the Ninja oven (which bakes bread beautifully) and it looks and smells lovely.  We'll have a couple of thick slices to dip into the veg stew tonight.

Husband took Betty out, both of them wearing their raincoats, for a short 10 min walk, then got back in his chair.  I've just asked him to hoover the lounge. ** He didn't go to the gym again this morning, citing his backache....I've told him yet again that lazing flat out in his recliner chair for hours is doing his back no good, he needs to get up and move, which is the medical advice nowadays.  

I've decided that tomorrow I'll pack some food (some of that bread, cheese and some salad bits) and a flask of tea and we - including Betty - can go out for a picnic up on the moors.  We'll most likely have to eat in the car, but at least we'll be outside.....a change of scenery will do all 3 of us good, we're all down in the doldrums.

** He hoovered the large rug in the middle of the lounge floor and that was it 😒

Just to clarify....

 ...apparently, our next door neighbours did inform our Housing Association of the problems and private neighbour's intentions a couple of months ago, to no avail.  They've since got our Housing Officer to chase up the relevant department a couple of times, but it appears they still haven't done anything about it, despite the H/O taking photos of the missing wire fence boundary and submitting them.  I'm still not getting involved.

Learning to say No

 Thank you for comments....yes it did give me a giggle HH, and June about the only thing I miss from leaving the Midlands and moving down here is being close to my sister, we used to do a lot together.  And thanks for the good wishes for sister - she was discharged yesterday with no antibiotics to take home with her, unlike the previous week, so will be speaking to her GP today.  The hospital doc said they would be sending a report to her GP yesterday or today.  Hopefully she'll get some answers.

Yesterday my next door neighbour, who I get along with very well albeit I generally keep them at arms length as she and her husband have some very strange views and a bit of a history of falling out with other neighbours, tried to get me involved with the rear boundary neighbour dispute regarding the fence.  To put things in a nutshell, between ours and our fellow tenants gardens and the (private house, not a fellow tenant) rear garden, there is a 3ft wire fence belonging to our landlords, which marks the boundary line.  Previous tenants here arranged for a wooden 3ft fence to be erected in front of the wire fence, for some privacy, likewise our fellow neighbour tenants had a 4ft wooden fence erected in their garden.  The private garden on the other side of our boundary contains a dilapidated barn, which they have planning permission to convert to a 2-storey holiday home (it's currently single storey), the rest of the 'garden' is used for parking - the owners have 3 vehicles plus a motorbike.  Their large house and own rear garden are across the road from this barn and parking area, it's not adjacent to their house.  As I've previously mentioned, there used to be trees and tall shrubs along his side of the fence, which provided a good deal of privacy for us, but last year he removed them all, completely taking away our privacy.  He says he's going to erect a wooden fence which he claims will be 5ft high, but as his garden is lower than ours, it will only amount to 4ft on our side, if that.  

To cut a long story short, last year he removed the wire fence behind our fellow tenant neighbours' garden, which he shouldn't have done as it didn't belong to him and he didn't get permission to do.  He's starting to erect the wooden fence on his side, but much closer to our neighbour's fence - in other words, he's 'land-grabbed' 4 or 5 inches or so to make his area bigger.  Our fellow neighbours have put in a complaint to the Parish Council and it's due to be discussed at the next parish meeting.  The private neighbour, who is a very jolly, loud, lord of the manor type (he isn't lord of the manor!) who thinks he can do whatever he wants, hasn't as yet removed our wire fence, but I expect it's only a matter of time.  Anyway, our fellow neighbour wants me to get involved, get in touch with the Planning dept and go to the parish council meeting along with them and add my voice to the complaint.  However, I respectfully but firmly refused.....I've found it quite difficult in the past to actually say no to things I really didn't want to do.

I know it's wrong, both morally and legally, for the private neighbour to remove fences that don't belong to him and 'land-grab' but I don't really care about that - unless he removes our wooden fence!  Him taking a couple of inches behind our wooden fence doesn't really have any impact on our garden, so I'm not really bothered.  I'm not happy about our now lack of privacy (our garden and the back of our house are now very overlooked both by surrounding houses and the road), but we're quietly addressing that by buying and planting some tall shrubs along our boundary fence - in fact we bought another one yesterday, it's just been delivered, it's over 5ft tall so wouldn't fit in our car.  We now have 4 tallish flowering shrubs along that fence.  

With all the stresses and problems I have on a daily basis with husband's deteriorating health, I can't be doing with adding more.  I have to choose my battles, as it were, for my own sanity.  I don't like what the private neighbour is doing, but I am, fairly successfully I think, putting it to the back of my mind and just quietly doing what benefits us on our own side of the fence. 

Not again!

 My sister was again taken to hospital by ambulance yesterday morning, with chest pains and breathing difficulties.  For the first 3 hours she was seen by doctors in the ambulance outside the hospital, as A&E was full up 😒.  They initially thought she might have a blood clot in her chest...fortunately that turned out not to be the case, after several xrays, chest and lung scans and 3 lots of bloods, they said it was yet another bad chest infection.  She had anticoagulants (her blood was clotting too quickly), painkillers and 2 lots of intravenous hefty antibiotics throughout the night, has now been discharged and has just arrived home.  She's exhausted but is feeling a little better this morning.  Poor sis, she's had a real rough time lately.  Fortunately, she has good friends who have been round several times the past week, doing her housework, changing the bed, doing washing and bringing meals round for her husband, who is housebound and immobile.

Talking of husbands, mine was having one of his insisting black is white days yesterday, he was very argumentative, confrontational and downright obnoxious all day, it was one of those days where I really felt like walking out of the door and never coming back.  I didn't, obviously, just stayed in my bedroom most of the day.  Sometimes I just want to scream.

I was trying to - calmly - discuss garden plans with him.....he disagreed with almost everything I suggested.  I said it would be best for us to start cutting back on the amount of edibles we grow - nope, he wants to grow even more. WHY?! he grows far too much for our own use as it is.  And halfway through last year he got bored with the garden and did next to nothing to look after the veg - I had to ask him to tie up growing shoots to the canes, as the tomatoes, cucumbers and peas were falling over and getting in a right mess as he was neglecting them.  For the record, I deal with the flowering plants, he does the veg - when he can be bothered.  He neglected the strawberries and didn't cover them properly, meaning lots got eaten by birds and slugs.  Although he did spend a lot of time in the garden during last year's hot weather, it was mostly sitting in the garden chairs with his feet up, sleeping in the sun. 

A few hours later he had one of his crazy ideas....he said about building some kind of structure/tunnel to grow the cucumbers, courgettes and tomatoes up, so they would hang down.  And he was going to do it in the middle of the garden, obstructing my view of my flower beds.  He's a bodger, he never plans anything properly, just makes things up as he goes along, then loses interest when the thing doesn't work as it should so just gives up with it.  I don't want another half-finished jerry-built unsightly construction stuck in the middle of the garden.  Like that blasted shed he insisted on building last year, it's not watertight so there's often a puddle of water inside and the tools/equipment he wanted to store in there still get wet anyway.  The door doesn't fit properly, there's a big gap at the top and the door or frame is warped, so he has to use a hammer to bang the bolt to get it open.  He can't be bothered, or doesn't know how, to fix it.  Words fail me sometimes.  I didn't say anything about his latest crazy idea, hopefully he'll forget about it soon.

He hasn't gone to the gym today as he says he's got backache again, so I just hope he'll be in a less argumentative frame of mind today.  I'm going to find and print out the bus timetable in a bit and stick it on the wall beside the calendar, so I can start going on the bus into town once or twice a week - I need the break!

Garden plans for the future

 June mentioned me saying that the previous tenant was unable to maintain the garden due to illness - thank you for your kind words, June - and for everyone's comments.  According to our neighbours, the previous tenant had been a keen gardener, until she was diagnosed with Alzheimers and went downhill quite severely for the last 2 or 3 years of her life.  When we first moved here, it was clear to see that someone had loved the garden in previous years, there were (still are) a lot of roses, both shrub and climbers, mature shrubs, a couple of clematis, hedging and lots of Spring bulbs.  However, everything had clearly been neglected for a few years and was very overgrown.  The garden had been divided up into raised flower and veg beds, with concrete or slab paths in between, no grass.  Virtually all of the beds had been covered over with gravel though, with some roses and shrubs struggling for life in a few of the beds.  Apparently, the tenant's partner, a man with health problems of his own, had arranged for the beds to be gravelled a few years back when the tenant became unable to do the garden, as the partner was in no way, shape or form a gardener.  When we moved here, we found 2 wheelie bins literally full of empty wine and spirits bottles, beer cans, cigarette packets and tobacco pouches - I guess the partner's way of coping with the tenant's dementia (I neither drink nor smoke, escaping to my bedroom or the garden in summer is my way of coping....not that husband has dementia as yet, but the likelihood of that is getting closer).

I am concerned about our future ability to carry on gardening and growing produce, to this end I've been gradually introducing more perennial shrubs to the flower beds, ones that won't get too big or need lots of care.  There is one area of the garden still needing to be changed, it's my intention to get that done this year, then it'll just be a question of light maintenance, hopefully, after that.  I'm sure we won't be growing loads of edible produce in the future, I'll maybe keep 2 of our current raised veg beds for that and the others I'll plant up with flowering shrubs.  Betty's small lawn which we made for her the first year we were here I'm going to transform into a rockery - we turfed it for her to lie on in the summer, but she's only ever laid on it a couple of times, she prefers to lie on the paving slabs.....she only wees on the lawn now, so it's covered in brown patches anyway.  It's just a small grassed area but still needs mowing, so that's another job we can do without as we get older....a rockery with small alpine plants will be much more manageable.  Husband has already lost a lot of interest in gardening, so I need to make sure the garden is easy for me to manage alone in the future.

Flexitarian!

 Thank you for comments, I have some lovely readers who I much appreciate.  Happy Introvert said that Professor Tim Spector has an Instagram account - I don't, and am not very keen to open one, I don't really want another excuse to possibly spend hours scrolling!  Thank you though, I might get one of his books.  Ruta said she refers to herself as a flexitarian - I'd never heard of that term, but having seen that it refers to someone who is mostly vegetarian but occasionally eats some meat and fish, I'm happy to now join you and refer to myself as a fellow flexi!  I do mostly eat mainly vegetarian, but have fish usually twice a week.  I don't eat beef, pork or lamb, or any offal - the smell of offal cooking (husband eats it and so does Betty) now makes me heave, so he has to cook it with the kitchen door closed and the windows open to get rid of the smell (and then I have to clean up the kitchen afterwards, to get rid of all the bloody and greasy splashes he says he's wiped up!).  When I buy a gammon joint for husband, about once a month, I may perhaps eat 1 small slice of it with the usual veggies for Sunday dinner, I sometimes chop up a slice to go in an omelette or quiche.  I eat a chicken thigh for a Sunday dinner maybe once or twice a month, and again occasionally use a small amount chopped up in a pasta bake or rice dish.  I did occasionally eat a couple of sausages or a bacon sandwich but not anymore, as I'm determined to cut down drastically on UPF foods.  Burgers - no thanks, I really like the Linda McCartney mozzarella burgers, they don't have that (to me now) awful smell and horrible greasy mouth feel of beef burgers.  Yes I know they're probably UPF, but it's not like I eat them all the time - perhaps twice a month.

Yesterday we had battered cod, oven chips and mushy peas, all from the freezer, for dinner.  Quite nice at the time but far too many carbs for me, my guts and sluggish joints are certainly not thanking me this morning.  I think in future when we have battered fish we'll have it with salad and homemade coleslaw, and I'll only eat half the batter.  Today it's an egg and tuna salad for lunch, jacket spud with cheese and a spoonful of baked beans with a side salad for dinner.

Nice sunny morning, I've put washing on the line.  I was having a look around the garden and changed my mind again about where to put a large hebe shrub I want to move from its present location.  The bed it's in I have plans for so the shrub has to come out....I'd considered a couple of other locations for it but have now decided it'll go in front of the fence between us and next door.  It's quite a large shrub, it was here already when we moved in and had been neglected, along with everything else in the garden, for a few years, the previous occupant having become too unwell to do any gardening.  So it was very tall, straggly, overgrown and untidy - having pruned and shaped it for the past 2 years, it's now a pleasing (and tidy) round/oval shape.  I don't mind it getting a little taller once it's in the new position, it'll help towards screening and privacy (you'll remember the neighbour got rid of all his trees and large shrubs along the boundary fence, leaving a 3ft high fence - which belongs to us, well, our landlords - and removed all our privacy).  

Week coming up doesn't look very nice weatherwise, overcast and drizzly.  Not cold though, so that's something.

Judgemental

 I joined a non-UPF group on FB a couple of days ago, it's a private group and one can only see posts if you join up.  After a brief browse through the most recent posts, I quickly resigned from the group - wow, some people on there were SO judgemental, if someone mentioned buying something that was even minimally processed, they were jumped on quite rudely and told in no uncertain terms that the food/drink wasn't a non-UPF.  We all have to learn when we start something, we also have to work out what's best for us, our health needs and our own circumstances, it can't be an 'all or nothing' approach for everyone.  I noticed a similar mindset with some people when I first made the decision to go (mostly) vegetarian/pescatarian 2 or 3 years ago - I do what suits me, for my own reasons, but some individuals were very quick to have a go if I mentioned (or they saw me eating) something meat-related.  A few people still do, actually, but I no longer feel any need to justify my choices.  Each to their own.

Off to Aldi today to do a store cupboard stock up, which will take longer than normal as I'll be studying ingredients lists on everything and probably making other choices.  Husband will be moaning like mad, if he gets too grumpy I might suggest he goes to have a browse in the big Proper Job diy-type store nearby.  Much more his thing.  Actually, he could drop me off at Aldi and go straight on to Proper Job, picking me up later when I've done the shop, no need for him to come in with me at all.  Sorted! 

Back to heavy rain today, but at least it's warmer.

My sis and stepdaughter are both improving now, thankfully, they've both been so poorly.