A Lush Time

Its been so nice this week , warm and sunny. We've had breakfast alfresco all week for the first time this year. The Lido's been a positive pleasure to swim in and this morning we all swam a little later than usual and after had a Pool side picnic lunch again. I've even taken to riding up town with 'Himself' and coming home on the bus. Might as well make use of the bus pass before the Government decide it's a perk too many. The Seniors free swimming is to go in August due to Government budget cuts so I'll have to start paying for membership again.

My summer tan's slowly developing just through swimming and pottering in the garden. The gardens looking especially lush and colourful at the moment.

The flowers have grown so well this year it's hard to spot the weeds sneaking through but I'm sure they're there. Daisy's doing her best to wreck some areas though. I now have plants that she doesn't care to munch through so she squashes them instead!

The strawberries have cropped heavily this year and I've managed to pick several bowls full before the birds or slugs have got to them. The beans and tomatoes are shooting upwards but it'll be a little while yet before they crop. The peach tree was covered with a mass of blossom in the spring and I'd never seen so many peaches on the little tree. Sadly though something seems to be munching away through the skin of nearly everyone. I'm not sure whats doing it yet but I suspect it may be ants. The grape vine is looking so healthy and is loaded as well with bunches of developing grapes so I'm hoping for a bumper crop this autumn. That is if the wasps don't devour them like last year.

A Black Saga

As I write this Mrs Blackbird is sitting rather forlornly on the very top of my Acer Brilliantissum tree surveying the garden. I'm afraid she'll search in vain. Mr Blackbird scuttles across the patio with a worm dangling from his yellow beak looking for his off spring.

This sad saga began back in mid April when we noticed the industrious pair flying back and forth into our ivy covered Gazebo. Nest building was happening in earnest and after a few weeks hard work Mrs Blackbird seemed happy with the results.

By early May she had laid two eggs. She may well have laid three, as we spotted an empty shell lying on the patio one morning just after we realised she had eggs.

The nest was well concealed deep in the ivy inside the gazebo and she settled down to incubate the eggs. Mr B was a good husband guarding her and keeping other birds the same size as himself away from the garden. It was quite entertaining watching from the kitchen window his antics when attempting to shoo away a flock of starling that had flown down to bath in the stream.

The concealment of the nest has been of utmost importance as Magpies were nesting just a few yards away in our neighbours pine tree and squirrels run up and down the fence a few feet from the nest . Both creatures wouldn't be above robbing the nest of either eggs or young.

Eventually the eggs hatched and Mr B was busy fetching food for his wife and chicks. As the chicks grew Mrs B joined his in the food search in between long periods of brooding the chicks. Then, as Blackbird chicks often do, they fledged rather early, leaving the nest and hiding in the undergrowth in the garden while their parents continued to find and feed them.

After another couple of weeks I became aware of Mrs B fetching new nesting material to the nest. In early June three more eggs appeared in the nest and Mrs B settled down to incubate the new clutch of eggs.

In due course they hatched and the feeding frenzy started all over again. the incubation period this hatching seemed to be longer and the time Mrs B brooded the hatchlings was also longer. I assume this was due to the period of cold windy weather we went through.

The chicks eventually fledged and like their siblings in the previous brood they hid in the undergrowth waiting for food from Mum and Dad. We think the fledging was caused by some drama in the garden for when we opened the back door one morning a female Blackbird lay dead on the patio. Mr B sat on the Acer calling. Hoping he would carry on with the feeding we buried the unfortunate bird. Mr B carried on calling and suddenly over fence Mrs B appeared with a beak full of food. What a releif. The strange bird must have been chased by Mr B and she flew with some force into the conservatory window. Mr and Mrs B both carried on feeding and we got glimpses of the little birds occasionally. If they were in open view and we got too close Mr B squawked his piercing alarm call to warn us off. The neighbours cat got even worse treatment and scuttled off when we opened the door to shoo it away.

Then disaster. Yesterday morning I scooped one tiny fledgling out of the pond. In the afternoon I scooped out the second drowned bird. This morning the third little bird was sitting under the Gazebo being fed when we went out but by late this afternoon a third little body was scooped out of the pond.

The only consolation is that one of the first fledglings is still about and being given the occasional mouth full of food. I wonder if Mr and Mrs will go for a third brood as Often they do. Watch this space.

The photos ? Well they were taken very briskly and sneakily taken when I observed both parents had flown off to hunt food.

A new shopping experience

On the way back from collecting Grace this afternoon we called in at the brand new 'Garden Park' Shopping experience in the East of the City. Its built on an area of land that sits next to the Cities garbage dump. It's not a place for routine grocery shopping but more a once in a while visit.

The main focus is the obligatory Garden Center. This time the quite expensive up market Van Hague garden center. Then there's a Hobbycraft store. It almost rivals Canada's Michael's stores in size. At the opposite end of the parade of shops is a Coffee shop called Adronicas. In between there are a line up of smaller fairly up market stores.

Along the front of the stores a wide area of land is laid out to pleasant gardens with seating and olive trees. Despite coming from Italy the little trees must be tough as they have suvived the winter we've just had and are promising a bumper crop of olives.

The Cotswold Camping and Mountain shop, Past Times, Cotton Traders and Le Creuset are just some of the stores. There's also a book store a toy store and an aquatic store plus about five unoccupied stores.

Grace found some modelling clay from Hobbycraft. I couldn't find the American micro glitter though, but they've lots of Card making materials.

I was intrigued by this unusual shaped wooden hut complete with glazed windows and stout door and thought it must be a 'rich kids' Wendy House!

But no. It's a posh barbecue shed, complete with inside barbecue and extraction chimney. How decadent. Especially in a recession.

Himself smooched around the Aquatic shop and found a free booklet called Water Gardening!

For most of the visit I sat in the gardens enjoying the sunshine. I've already been here three times since it opened so I didn't feel the need to tramp all around every store today.

Does anyone know the answers?

This morning I wasn’t feeling up to swimming, it might have had something to do with the rain drumming on the conservatory roof and the weather station recording an outdoor temperature of 13 degrees. Whatever my body just wouldn’t collect my swim gear and get into the car.

I sat for ages my mind wrestling with complex thoughts and coming to no conclusions. I mean how was the explosion that created the ‘big bang’ theory triggered?

How does your brain deal with the complex universe ‘theoretical and factual knowledge’? Space is still expanding, but if it’s still expanding shouldn’t it have an edge?

Considering how mankind has developed over the last 1000 years what progress will it make in the next 1000 years? I want to be able to see what it will be like. But, will we continue to develop in the past all great civilizations have collapsed and disintegrated, will ours?

Will we travel in space in the future to colonize new worlds? Will we be consumed by global warming or will the next ice age catch up with us?

If scientists develop time travel in our future wouldn’t we be seeing people from the future delving into our past right now?

What sort of brain does a person have who believes implicitly in an all-seeing God? Or one that believes an act of terror will provide them with an after life of virgins? When a psychic purports to see and hear dead people what’s happening chemically in their brain? It must be some sort of chemical malfunction like epilepsy is. Or can they really see them and can certain people really see the future?

Oh no, too many unanswered questions making my brain tired, I need a nap !!!!!

After the Storm

Last night’s thunderstorm and downpour freshened the air and cooled things down somewhat. The last week had been so hot, culminating in Saturday’s 30-degree temperature in the garden. Sunday morning arrived giving us overcast, misty but warm weather albeit considerable fresher so we decided to have a day out. So, car loaded with coats and umbrellas, just in case, we set off along the A47 towards the coast.

A misty blue grey haze hovered across the green fields of wheat, barley, beans and rape the effect was to give the fields all the same colour with slightly different shades. The distant trees on the horizon looked like cut out silhouettes, all the same shade of dark blue gray and further away, the trees were the paler they became until they merged into the blue grey sky.

At Kings Lynn we suddenly changed our destination, as I wanted to call at a farm shop with a Yurt restaurant along the coast road between Hunstantan and Wells.

The A47 was busy as usual but luckily as the Children’s half term week was ending all the traffic was leaving the coast instead of heading for it. Through the Sandringham estate the Rhododendrons’ were in flower creating big splashes of purple colour along the roadside and among the pine forest. These Rhododendrons brought in by the Victorian plant hunters and are now considered undesirable, as they are such thugs. They’ve been cleared from great swathed of the countryside where they had self-seeded. Many have been removed from the route through the Estate. I hope one day the pine tree forest planted in a great mass on what was open heather covered heath land will be removed and the heath restored to how I remember it as a child.

Hunstantan was still quite busy. As we walked through the popular Sunday Market this Little Smart Car turned into a novel mini mobile café made us smile. It must hold the record for being the smallest mobile café bar ever. The coffee smelt really good as well.

Lunch beckoned, at the seaside so fish and chips seemed appropriate so we headed for Cassie’s the café overlooking the Green and the sea. The fish was tasty although a slightly different Sunday lunch to the one I had been planning at home. The duck legs in Orange sauce will have to wait until Monday!

As we were lunching a scooter and motorbike contingency powered up to the sea front. It reminded me of the Mods and Rocker groups that would descend on an unsuspecting seaside town on a Bank Holiday back in the 1960’s. In those days there would invariable be a fight between the gangs. I use to be a Scooter rider in the 60’s owning a Vespa 125cc, not a Mod though I hasten to add.

Ah the good old British sea side You can't beat it, Ice cream, Fun fairs, dodgems, the big dipper, donkey rides, candy floss, sandcastles, buckets and spades, sea shells, deck chairs, sticks of pink rock, crabs cockles and winkles, and best of all jumping the incoming waves with your dress tucked in your knickers. Ok so maybe I'm a bit too old for the last bit!!!

Over the years the ice creams have got bigger and fancier the windmills and beach games have evolved. Even the sea itself has got busier. White sails of small yatchs push through the waves, speed boats pull along the water skiers. Further along wind surfers and sail board surfers ride the waves.

The sad things are the Victorian piers that have slowly disappeared from the British coastline with constant battering of successive winter storms and breakwaters are slowly being worn away. Donkeys have given way to ponys. The beach has also altered, Over the years storms have washed away the golden sand leaving wave smoothed rocks from the clifts along the coast and a dark gritty sand.

Moving on round the coast we stopped at the farm shop that has been on the same corner for over 45 years. I remembering having a tray of hot freshly dug and cooked new potatoes in butter and basil from there before any of the kids were born. Oh they were so good. They now have an authentic Yurt that acts as a resturant where they serve home cooked local food. We really must stop for a meal one day. On reaching Wells next the Sea we decided to take our coats and umbrellas with us. Just as well as while we relaxed with a mug of coffee in the Mermaids Purse along Wells shopping street the rain that had been forcaste finally showed up.

Eventually we decided the rain was no fun and headed back to the car slightly damp but not dispirited. It had been a good day out.

Why am I a Pensioner?

OAP- definition

A person who is old enough to receive a Pension from the Government

........BUT........

Why do I have to be known as 'a pensioner' or an 'old age pensioner' or worse an OAP?

My pension is my income, I've earned it and It's not what I am.

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What is the origin of the word pension?

Answer

The origin of pension is late Middle English (in the sense 'payment, tax, regular sum paid to retain allegiance'): from Old French, from Latin pensio(n-) 'payment,' from pendere 'to pay.' The current sense dates from the mid 19th century. Answers.com (wiki answers)

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Do you like the word “Pension”?

Monday, 23 November 2009 from 'Value my Pension.com'

According to new research released this morning, almost a fifth of all 18-24 year olds in the UK are putting off starting a pension because they don’t like the word.

72% of those surveyed associated the word “pension” with old age, 18% associated it with grey and the remaining 10% thought it was simply too old fashioned.

Such is the concern of this research, the Oxford English Dictionary has got involved and a campaign has been launched to find a new word or phrase to replace “pensions

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Then I'm not alone in disliking this label. It's such an old fashion derogeratory term. I mean what other group of people are labled by their income. Children are children, Teenagers are teenagers, adults are adults the elderly are pensioners, but why? Surely we can be Seniors as in other countries. In The USA and Canada we wouldn't be labeled 'Pensioners"

I want to be known as a Senior or Senior Citizen not an OAP.

OK yes I'll admit to being a 'grumpy old woman!'