I started the year with lots of easy reading. I would recommend, Love Lettering, Evvie Drake Starts Over and A Cheesemonger’s Guide to the British Isles.
His Bride for the Taking – Tessa Dare
I enjoy Tessa Dare, I completely have to handwave the ‘historical’ part of it but they are always fun reads. This was no exception and was a lovely easy way into the New Year
The Friend Zone – Abby Jimenez
I still don’t know what to think about this. I guess I’m always a bit meh about a story that starts with infertility and ends up with a miracle baby. However, the happy ending is about more than a baby, it’s about learning to accept being loved and knowing that you’re worthy of being loved.
I liked the take on the heroine not making or having an issue of the hero’s autism. I liked that neither hero or heroine were white and I enjoyed it and the ending.
Love Lettering – Kate Clayborn
This was a delight. I loved that Meg described how she sees words and that she works things out and learns how to be better at all relationships not just the romance and the weight that the entire story gives to friendships and honesty and staying. I also the description of PMT emotions as….
‘the kind of mood that swings wildly between “ten seconds from murdering someone” and “three seconds from crying because you noticed a layer of dust on your windowsill, you absolute filthy pig“‘
Evvie Drake Starts Over – Linda Holmes
Another book that I adored. It’s about how you manage relationships when you are completely broken and how you still need to have relationships and find yourself when everything seems to suck. I can relate. Another delight. Go and read.
A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles – Ned Palmer
Back in October, I linked to the review of this. Jo bought it for me as a Christmas present and it’s such a lovely read, it made me want to eat lots of cheese and taught me things, but it’s not preachy, just really enthusiastic. I really enjoyed this.
Another Brooklyn Bruisers book, I love how all of this is sort of taking place as other books are happening and it was the perfect end of January book
I prefer farmers to hockey players and I liked this one more, it’s amazing how quickly in life and in fiction, problems can be solved if you talk to each other and that goes for more than just the romantic relationships.
This year I used some of my Christmas money to buy myself new bedding, I was wondering around and came across this jersey duvet cover and pillows and they had jersey sheets and there you go, the most cosy bedding ever invented. I can’t wait for summer, but I will miss this bedding…
Bedding especially when you have a king size bed can be really expensive, I rely on Primark and Ikea for most of mine. It’s reasonably cheap, washes well, lasts a while and I usually get out of the shop with a full set of sheet, pillowcases and duvet cover for less than £40!
Including us. We started off with re-filling the bird feeders. We have four feeders now, two for fat balls and two for seeds. Then we got around to cutting the blue pipe we have variously inherited and been given. We now have three sets for the square beds and two sets for the longer beds. So that done and put away, we went to our jobs.
Ma got on with the epic task of weeding the new bed that we put together the week before last. I had given it a rough dig then and it’s full of grass and really weedy, that end of the plot is overshadowed by a building on the other side of the road and the soil is clay and holds water more than the other end, with all the rain we’ve been having, the soil is difficult to work so weeding was a tough job. However, experience has taught us (with all due respect to Charles Dowding) that weeding before we cover with compost works better than a layer of cardboard. While we were weeding the robins came to visit to see if there were any worms…
Back in October, I bunged a load of bulbs in a patch near the herbs, there were four types and I only remember two of them, giant snowdrops and bearded irises. We’ve pretty much just left it but I wanted to use the bricks we found on the plot to define the bed and we’ll add primroses and primulas and hellebores to it as well as other things. So I did.
I’ve bunged the two of the lavender pots in the space for the minute and put the path around it in. We’ve had a re-think about this side of the plot. At the other side of the new path, there is already a rose bush and there are another six roses on the plot, the ones at the back on the other side of the work area are not doing great because they don’t get enough sun. Mike and Nina are also moving plot and have offered me some smaller rose bushes from there old plot to. So we are going to move all the roses and have a mini rose garden next to this flower bed and a mini pond. So all of that side of the plot will be flowers and not vegetable beds! This is my very not to scale plan of the top half of the plot.
We also ordered three new beds which should come next week so once they are up and the roses moved that will be a huge area of plot structure done. We’ll order four more square beds in April and then one more that we’ll make next to the squash bed. Then all we have to do is fill them with compost!
We’ve done quite a bit and I’m feeling good about it. Next week is installing the new beds and moving roses. That will involve some epic weeding. So if that’s all we get done, I’ll be happy with it but if I get time I’d like to split the autumn raspberries and move the boysenberry.
People I’m done with winter. I seem to always hit this spot after Christmas, the days ARE slowly getting lighter but, and this is the kicker, it’s actually darker in the morning for a bit and while I don’t like the darker days in general, I really hate dark mornings. It generally manifests as a complete inability to get the hell up in the morning which I know right now is not helped by PMT. Several times this week, I have had to remind myself and have my mother remind me that I do actually love my job. It was that kind of week.
In other news, we went to see 1917, which was good, beautifully filmed. Some of it didn’t quite work but overall it was difficult to watch and sad but worth the time.
Plans for this week are all about work and sleep and being much less grumpy! I’m out to dinner next Friday but other than that it’s all much as usual for January!
So I needed to pluck and draw the bird. I have a vague recollection of trying to pluck a chicken as a kid but I have never plucked a whole bird, YouTube is fantastic, I watched 4 ‘how to videos’ but actually doing it is harder and takes longer than you think.
The plan was to have it roasted on Saturday night, however that 
Nic Dempsey 