Last weekend, I banjaxed my back. This weekend, I was determined not to hurt myself anymore. But I wanted to be consistent and I needed to pick up the weed bin, so off to the plot I went.
First, I watered the poly.
Then I collected beans, chard, herbs and dahlias.
I weeded a bed to rid it of cinque foil. At that point my back did hurt and I went home.
In 1994, the Eurostar opened and suddenly there was a direct train from London to Paris. The next year, Mum took me to Paris for the day for my birthday. It was such a good idea, I did it a couple of more times!
Since then, I’ve been to Paris some more times. I went to see the twins when they were little, I went on an overnight photo taking trip, I went and stayed at the British embassy (to babysit Ms T!).
Paris is always great but I haven’t done a day trip for a while, because it’s quite expensive and it’s different for me to be away for long periods of time. Then in the summer, Eurostar had a sale and Christelle and I decided it would be rude not to go to Paris for the day.
That day was yesterday
It was an extremely early start but great to wander around. We headed for the Tuileries and the Louvre.
Louvre
And then wondered down the river to Note Dame.
Notre Dame
It’s an interesting thing, a church that is also a national monument and a tourist attraction. I was a bit shocked to see a shop in the church itself, the card machines to take the 2 euros to light a candle and it felt much more like an exhibition space than a church.
Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s have the same issues. Notre Dame has lots of the old Catholic things that were destroyed or whitewashed in English churches during the Reformation. So I was fascinated by the colour and the painting. I have a much better idea of what the Victorian Gothic revival was trying to do now.
I loved the colours in the chapelsThe BVM is unbothered by childbirth in a stable
We then wondered some more in search of a new pair of shoes for Christelle. She was wearing her comfy walking boots that for some reason turned on her! So new shoes were required!
New shoes!
That done some more walking and a metro back to Gare d’Nord
View of the Seine from the Pont des Art
We had lunch at Terminus Nord, which had great food and the best ceramic floor I’d seen in ages
Then the train home with some champagne. (And yes some French sweets!)
It has not been a good health week. I had a flu jab on Tuesday, I’m having an ongoing issue with my GP about my HRT, and I banjaxed my back. Anything I managed to do from Thursday on is a testament power of over the counter co-codomol and Deep Relief patches and gel. I’m doing some exercises that should help in the long run but it’s been pretty ouchy
Some sunshine. The weather has been very autumnal and wet, but there have been some beautifully sunny mornings
A big cupboard clear out at Mums. I’ve needed to do this for a while but it had to be done this weekend because Mum’s wheelchair arrives next week and we need somewhere to put it. I needed to move various bits of furniture about to make it happen and no it was not the best thing to be doing with a sore back! But needs must! We found Mum’s Christmas decorations, which we be useful because we’ve ordered a tree (I refuse to spend Christmas in a house without a Christmas tree!). For those of you wondering yes that is the mattress I sleep on when I stay at mums and yes I do realise that it’s not the best choice for middle-aged people with back issues…
I bought an amaryllis, I’m not sure that it’ll flower for Christmas, lets see…
As we come to the end of October and with the advent of the clocks going back, I’m thinking about next month. November is tough. It’s dark, I’m SAD and the month is full of anniversaries and sadness.
There is also the pressure of it being the last month (and payday) before Christmas. There is a lot of pressure on being festive in December and November can feel like the beginning of all of it.
This year I have much more going on with Mum, and I’m still working on the balance of that my full time job (that I’d really like to keep), home, allotment and my life generally.
At work, I write a weekly priority list for my SLT so they know what I’m doing and what capacity I have for extra tasks and planning. It helps me be clear about what I need to get done, and I feel I need a November priority list so I can do some personal capacity monitoring!
So this is the priority list for November:
Mum. We’re in a groove with this. I stay at hers from Tuesday night to Friday and work from her house. I get Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday in my own bed. Although, I go back to Mum’s on Saturday for shopping and house work. That way Ma does exercises and treadmill for four days a week and treadmill only one day when Ben comes to visit. Despite her protests, the exercises are helping and we do like hanging out. We should be getting a wheelchair for Mum next week, so I’d like to work on getting her out of the house at least one day a week too!
Work. I feel like I’m always moaning about being busy but I like my job and I want to do well at it. There are some projects I really need to get finished.
Home. I need to really get to grips with the things I need to do at home. So I need a Friday night reset and Sunday prep so that when I am home, I can relax.
Weekly Plot. I’ve been doing at least four hours on the plot every week, come rain or shine and it’s been good for my mental and physical health and I am so close to having it in a good place in time for the new season. So that needs to continue.
Physical Self Care. Staying at Mum’s is good for everything except my hips and back. I’ve been pretty consistently hitting my other gentle exercise goals but need to get back into daily yoga and stretches because my back is banjaxed. The other piece of this is sleep, Ma and I are generally always in bed for 10pm but I don’t sleep that well at Mum’s (as I write this a combination of no HRT, a flu jab, the sore back and the floor has meant four hours sleep even though I was in ‘bed’ at 9:50pm – as you can imagine, I’m a delight today!). So when I’m in my own bed, I have to go to bed early because I really need my sleep!
Mental Health Self Care: I think I’m in pretty good shape for the end of October but three things has worked to help remind me that life is not all doom and gloom, it’s like press ups for optimism!
I’m not planning on doing more than that, these are the priorities, I’m just going to plough through the month and remember that there are good things in November too, I’m going to Paris for the day, Mum is getting a wheelchair, Oli, Jane and Christelle have birthdays! (See I can even do ‘Three Things’ for the month!).
So last week I bought another cherry tree. For those of you keeping count, that’s five but I only actually have four on the plot. I’m still waiting on three more that I’ve ordered (cherry, apricot, peach).
Plot is looking very autumnal and the path needs weeding (again)
It arrived on Friday, so the first job for Saturday was to get it in a pot! I also topped up compost and mulch on the older trees. I have moved all but one of them to the back of the plot and nearer their planned new home. This also gives the blueberries some room and me a chance to get amongst them for maintenance. Which s planned in the next few weeks!
In dire need of more compost
In order to do that I needed to empty a pot of compost so a tree could go into it. That galvanised me to clear the squash bed of my failure (I got four tiny squash from about 20 plants!) and the weeds (so much aramanth). That done, I emptied the pot and found some potatoes! None of which I managed to capture because it started to rain!
Then I planted the cherry tree in the pot, topped up the others, mulched them with strulch and watered.
I do need to get in with weeding those last bits of path but I banjaxed my back last week (I’m still suffering but I didn’t want to do too much weeding of the path and some of the beds were in a state. So I weeded the lingonberry, leek and kale beds, I need to keep on top of the weeding to avoid the nightmare that was the garlic bed this year!
Weeded beds
It was raining again so I watered the poly and had a tidy of the pots and tables and put one away.
It’s slow progress but I’m getting there
Harvest was tomatoes, chard, lettuce and dahlias
I took that and a some kale in pots home for Sue and called it good
It wasn’t the best session I’ve had on the plot but it’s getting better every time I turn up. Jess Sowards says that the best medicine for the garden is the gardener. She’s not wrong and the consistency of being there even if it’s only for three and half hours is better than my not going at all.
Next week, I’d like to at least do the rest of the main path and one of the side paths. I’d like to get in amongst the blueberries and weed and top them up with compost and strulch. If there is time I want to get the spring greens and garlic in a bed and maybe the onions and shallots and broad beans. Finally, the tomatoes and courgettes need to come out and at least one of the raspberry beds needs chopping down
If I can get that done and the likelihood is that I won’t get it all done. Then I’m ready for the big tidy in the really messy areas as discussed here
I’m a big fan of bribing myself through hard things and autumn/winter is hard and I can’t do my traditional winter hibernation so bribery is the answer!
Happy Monday! It’s officially going to be dark until next year
Being paid for a day in a garden. The is the Ropewalk Community Garden in Southampton, you can follow them on Instagram @ropewalkcommunitygarden
Straight (ish) hair, I washed my hair at mums on Tuesday night and couldn’t leave it to dry curly, so straight hair
A whiskey mac. I know using Irish isn’t traditional but this is what I had!
My Grandad was famous for being early for everything! I think his motto was ‘why be on time when you can be early?’ I have no real sense of time and I struggle with moving from one state to another, so being on time (and thus not wasting other people’s time) has always been a struggle. This week I had two journeys to Southampton, one for 7:30am and I was convinced that the next day it was 6:30am. Until I got to the station at 6:20am and realised that it was 7:00am. I was an entire 40 minutes early! I look like my Grandad, I’m left handed like my Grandad and apparently his timekeeping genes are asserting themselves!
Colder weather. Autumn properly arrived over the weekend. I had to find my gloves!
I’m 52, when I look in the mirror I wonder who the old person is! I don’t actually have a problem with aging but my middle aged skin doesn’t bounce back like twenty or thirty something skin did.
I’m dealing with a lot at the minute and it’s all showing in my face, what I’ve been using wasn’t quite hitting the mark but I wasn’t sure what would help.
I had seen the ads for this and thought about it. Then a similarly afflicted friend said that she was using it and that she loved it. I bought a bottle, then I bought a bottle for when I’m at Mum’s. About four weeks into using it and my skin feels great and the look… not younger but a bit fresher.
Pre allotment selfie, I’m wearing lip balm but not much else
