Category Archives: Life

Quick garden update

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We’re treating / painting our fence!  Takes about an hour to do a single panel, slightly less now, and there’s 10 panels left on the side of the house with the most fence.  Some photo’s for proof!  We’re using the same stuff that our next door neighbour used first on her side of the fence, so she chose the colour which we actually quite like.

In order, the front including the half panels, the side, to show the difference between treated and untreated, and lastly, the remaining 10 panels.

front middle halfnhalf

The garden’s doing pretty well although we’re coming to the end of summer.  The grass we seeded has grown in and we’re starting to get it tidy, and the flowers are really doing well and have looked great throughout the summer.

back grass border sideflowers

This year has seen us do more for the house / garden than we’ve ever done for any property we’ve ever lived in, without a doubt.  There’s so much in the house we should still get sorted (but we’re just so bad at doing it, well, I am, Grete tries to encourage me, but I mainly just stall and fob her off) but getting the garden sorted has been such a good thing and I’m glad Grete has been able to enjoy it while the weather has been good.

Some Cats

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If you own cats, you know that they demand photo’s be taken of them in stupid positions.

bubblesheadscratch First of all, this is Bubbles receiving a head scratch, well, until we started holding her ears down obviously, to make her look dumb.  She doesn’t mind!  She just loves having her head scratched so she’ll let you get away with pretty much anything as long as you don’t stop.
fizzbag Fiz just can’t help but climb into bags.  Anywhere, any time, any bag.  She loves them.  She’ll sit in them for hours if she can, just watching the world of non-bag go by.
catfriends Here our two cats spend some quality time ‘together’.  They kind of tolerate each other, proximity to food calms them down (the only time they’ll sit next to each other is while they eat), but once out in the garden, there has to be a regulation 10 feet between them otherwise it’s war.
greteshoulder This is Fiz’s second favourite place to sleep, on Grete’s shoulder like some demented parrot.  She walks all over Grete’s desk, face, shoulders, head and lap until Grete finally relents and lets he lie like this.  It only ends when Grete’s arm is so numb she can’t hold it there any longer.
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sofa2

 And here was have Fiz’s first favourite place to sleep.  On the back of the sofa in the lounge, which usually has some kind of blanket draped over it, while we sit on the sofa and watch TV.  She stretches out her full length and slowly slips behind the cushions, pushing us further and further off the sofa.  Sometimes it takes her minutes to actually crawl back out of there when we get up to leave.
shelf Despite the fact that the whole house is cat friendly and there’s a lot of soft furnishings, the cats just love to kip in awkward places.  Bubbles is sleeping on the third shelf of the unit in the dining room, mere inches from the top of their soft, plush cat furniture, and on top of a bunch of pointy plastic miniatures (HeroQuest)!  They both take turns kipping here, especially when it’s raining outside for some reason.
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sun2

 Bubbles just loves the sun!  This is her in the middle of the year taking in some rays, on her back, looking fat as usual.  She lies like this, with her fluffy tummy on show until you’re dragged in and forced to tickle her, at which point she closes all four paws on you like some demented furry Venus fly-trap and savages your arm.
catpike And lastly Bubbles, in the cat-pike position.  Back legs out straight, front legs grabbing them, head tucked in.  Only the Russian judge gives her less than a 10.0.

Is this a newt I see before me?

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Took this shot in July on the concrete just outside the house.  We don’t have a pond, although we see a lot of frogs in the garden so there must be water somewhere within reach.  I think it’s an English common newt.

Newt

Some folk might be wondering ‘yes, a newt, so what’, but we don’t really see much wildlife in the middle of this part of Nottingham, so it’s always nice to see something alive in the garden that isn’t just a slug.

Which leads to these photo’s.   Two slugs in August, hanging out on the patio.  The book is for size reference (it’s a regular paperback), not something they were reading at the time (although the title, an accident, is somewhat amusing).

Slug1Slug2

That’s two different slugs, and probably the reason why one of our plants in the border just mysteriously vanished one night, without a trace.

Moon!

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Something about the moon looked really beautiful tonight.  I tried to take some shots but this is exactly the kind of thing the low price camera ranges don’t deal with very well.  They either ended up too saturated or too dark and I couldn’t get a sharp shot.

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Snails!

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This is our lawn this morning.  Yesterday was red hot, then it rained overnight at some stage, and the snails came out in force.  This is a tiny selection of the army that was covering our lawn.  Sometimes if we go to the car at night it sounds like we’re walking on eggshells.

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A Day of Updates II #4 – Back to Work

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I went back to work last Thursday after my two weeks signed off, although I worked Thursday and Friday from home (sorting out e-mail mostly).  Today I was back in the office for the first time and although my laptop bag is pretty heavy I’m okay carrying it on my shoulder the short distance to my desk, Grete helps me get it into and out of the car.

The day was okay, I was hunched over a bit at the keyboard which caused some discomfort but once I kept reminding myself to relax and sit back it was better.  In terms of being at work it’s good to be back and around collegues, I won’t comment on the work side of work since bloggers don’t seem to get much legal protection these days.

It’s amazing how much routine you get out of working, especially knowing what day of the week it is.  A few days into being off work and I lose track of the day and date.  It’s also pretty impressive how much I save when I’m not at work buying breakfast and lunch.

A Day of Updates II #3 – The War Against the Cat

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Well, while I was recovering from surgery seemed the ideal time to leave the cat sprayer switched off since setting it was beyond my frail and fragile post-op body (or something).  It went okay for about a week, we had some rain in that time which keeps the enemy cat away normally anyway, and on the nights that were dry it didn’t come around.  However, it eventually realised the device was off and we got up one morning to find it had sprayed and the place stank.  It did it again during the day, a day or so later.  We started turning the water sprayer on again in the evenings and that seems to have worked.

Except one day over the weekend we were both sitting in the computer room, Fizz was resting on her chair (hard day in the sun and she needed a break).  We heard a cat-chirp and both looked and the little bugger was either just coming into the room or just leaving the room and sprayed the bloody woodwork as it left.  Since we managed to catch it so early it was easy to clean off and left no smell but the little shit is clearly getting braver.

Having said that, we’ve not set the sprayer for a couple of nights again since our cats are out so late when the weather is this good and it’s not been back, so I think we’re wearing it down slowly.  I’ll set it tonight I think, just in case.

A Day of Updates II #2 – The Garden is Glorious

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The garden’s really coming along, the little planters we bought for the patio really brighten the place up.  We had a couple of BBQ’s last week during the nice weather and it was really pleasant sitting out there surrounded by the flowers.  The grass in the front has come through pretty much all over the soil, but at the back it’s very very patchy and I think we’ll need to do some extra sowing.  I suspect the birds ate a lot of the seed.

The big apple tree has a thousand apples on it, more than ever before which is odd considering we pruned it really close before the spring.  Grete is frantically picking up the small ones that drop (probably about 10-20 a day, seriously) and keep the thick down before they all fully grow and drop.  It’s a huge job getting them off the ground when they’re big and slightly rotten.  The small apple tree seems a little sick, the leaves went brown and pretty dry although it looks like it’s recovering and starting forming apples.  Hopefully it’s nothing serious.  The cherry tree we bought has done – nothing.  Not a zot.  No change at all.  Not sure if it’s dead or alive.  The Acer is healthy enough and looks happy surrounded by the lush grass.

The little plants in the big borders look lonely, but we really only stuck them there since we had a load of spares.  The shrubs are growing and hopefully next year it’ll look a bit more even and full.  The plants in the front are slowly spreading as we hoped they would and it should look spectacular when they all flower next year.

I’ll post some photo’s in another update when I get time to sort them out.

Five ways to make sure you don’t enjoy a movie

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I originally wrote this a couple of weeks ago while I was feeling bitter about something or other.  I kept looking at the draft and thinking I’d reword it so it made more sense, but frankly,  I don’t have the energy so here’s the raw post as-is.

  1. decide beforehand (either consciously or unconsciously) how the story must or should go, how it should be played out, how it should end.
  2. expect a specific style of storytelling and get that confused with the actual story itself.
  3. assume that a sequel or franchise movie must have the same style and flavour of the previous movies.
  4. believe that a pivotal role can only be played by a certain person.
  5. go in expecting your version of the film and not with an open mind about how someone else might do it.