Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun stuck in the house doing broadly the same things, day-in day-out? Another week has flown by.
My starting point in typing one of these posts is to look at the camera gallery on my phone to see what snaps I’ve taken in the last week. Once again, they don’t tell much of a story this week, being mainly countryside views snapped whilst out running.
It did occur to me this week, whilst trotting around one of my longer new routes (taking advantage of the reduced traffic, so I feel safe running on little lanes, and enjoying the undulations that can be had locally by using those roads), that the countryside is looking mighty fine at the moment. I love constantly running in new places when we’re away in Bertie and often have to restrain myself to not stop more than half a dozen times to snap photos, but I have to acknowledge that our local countryside is also lovely and worthy of dozens of photos, particularly in its current state of lush greenness under clear blue skies.
All taken on this week’s runs
My other observation from this week’s outings is that skip businesses must be booming. I’ve never seen so many on local driveways! I noted this just a day after giving passing thought to ordering one for ourselves, so as to dispose of the results of our efforts in the garden. Happily we had confirmation this week that the council’s garden waste bin collections will be going ahead next week (after a couple of missed collections) and our neighbours have been so kind as to donate to us the spare capacity in their bins.
I reckon that one wouldn’t have to stare at a pot of germinating runner beans for long to see them grow before one’s eyes. The second snap was taken 7 hours after the first, the third 12 hours later.
Of course, taking waste to the tip isn’t an option, as that service is suspended. Perhaps as a result of the closure (or perhaps not) someone thought that one of our quieter local lanes was a good location to dispose of the output from a household clear-out. I only know about this because I read about it on a local online discussion group, even though I ran along that lane twice between the time of the dumping and the time of its removal. Admittedly on the first occasion I was probably concentrating on breathing rather than looking around me (it was at the end of my fastest run since my triumph at parkrun des Dougnes back in January), but I’ve no idea how I didn't see it the following day.
News from the garden is that the cleaning of the patio is complete. Yay! It looks very clean and bright, but it’s not a job I ever want to tackle again without the use of a labour-saving device.
The borders are also looking tidier than they have in a long time, although there’s still a distance to go to call that job complete. The left hand border was a particular mess of some ground-covering weed, and as I finished the task of clearing it yesterday I had to acknowledge that, just from the point of view of that border, the current ‘stay at home’ mandate has been a benefit. I hate to think for how much longer I might have ignored it otherwise.
I didn’t specifically take a ‘before’ snap but you can see quite a bit of the border in question in the first pic here.
I’ll finish with a couple of snaps of the output of Friday’s “I really need to use up those slightly manky carrots” realisation:
My starting point in typing one of these posts is to look at the camera gallery on my phone to see what snaps I’ve taken in the last week. Once again, they don’t tell much of a story this week, being mainly countryside views snapped whilst out running.
It did occur to me this week, whilst trotting around one of my longer new routes (taking advantage of the reduced traffic, so I feel safe running on little lanes, and enjoying the undulations that can be had locally by using those roads), that the countryside is looking mighty fine at the moment. I love constantly running in new places when we’re away in Bertie and often have to restrain myself to not stop more than half a dozen times to snap photos, but I have to acknowledge that our local countryside is also lovely and worthy of dozens of photos, particularly in its current state of lush greenness under clear blue skies.
My other observation from this week’s outings is that skip businesses must be booming. I’ve never seen so many on local driveways! I noted this just a day after giving passing thought to ordering one for ourselves, so as to dispose of the results of our efforts in the garden. Happily we had confirmation this week that the council’s garden waste bin collections will be going ahead next week (after a couple of missed collections) and our neighbours have been so kind as to donate to us the spare capacity in their bins.
Of course, taking waste to the tip isn’t an option, as that service is suspended. Perhaps as a result of the closure (or perhaps not) someone thought that one of our quieter local lanes was a good location to dispose of the output from a household clear-out. I only know about this because I read about it on a local online discussion group, even though I ran along that lane twice between the time of the dumping and the time of its removal. Admittedly on the first occasion I was probably concentrating on breathing rather than looking around me (it was at the end of my fastest run since my triumph at parkrun des Dougnes back in January), but I’ve no idea how I didn't see it the following day.
News from the garden is that the cleaning of the patio is complete. Yay! It looks very clean and bright, but it’s not a job I ever want to tackle again without the use of a labour-saving device.
The borders are also looking tidier than they have in a long time, although there’s still a distance to go to call that job complete. The left hand border was a particular mess of some ground-covering weed, and as I finished the task of clearing it yesterday I had to acknowledge that, just from the point of view of that border, the current ‘stay at home’ mandate has been a benefit. I hate to think for how much longer I might have ignored it otherwise.
I’ll finish with a couple of snaps of the output of Friday’s “I really need to use up those slightly manky carrots” realisation:
I don't make pretty cakes, but they always taste much better than they look!
Only shopping once a fortnight means that not everything will fit in the fridge – an issue that was compounded in the case of this bag of carrots by a failure of our stock-rotation. Carrot soup was my plan and I thought I’d Google for some inspiration rather than using one of the recipes that’s stored in my head. The cakes came about because as soon as I typed ‘Carrot’ into Google, it suggested I wanted a Carrot Cake recipe, which suddenly sounded like an excellent idea. The soup thus became carrot and butternut squash (recipe out of my head) as three of the carrots got re-purposed towards the cakes. Both were tasty, but the cakes were the winners.
Modern day carrots can be quite pesky. They seem to go off almost in an instant from being good and healthy to degenerate into a black pulpy slimy mess. So I find myself panicking to use them before that happens. Then I buy another batch that seem to last forever. All very strange. Anyway you managed well to maximise on their use before disaster struck.
ReplyDeleteI find pears to be the worst for having the ability to go from under-ripe, via perfect, to absolute mush in the blink of an eye. That's perhaps why I don't buy them very often, as I've far fewer ideas as to how to use them up once they've turned. Carrots are far more versatile.
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