Still bejeebered

Morning all.  You won't get much sense out of me today as I have been awake since 3.15 a.m. (again).  I shall be glad when I can start stepping down off the steroids, although at the moment I do still need them as my breathing wasn't good in the night again.  From tomorrow I can start slowly reducing the dose.

I bought this little Arts & Crafts child's chair at the Fleamarket on Sunday.  I just fell in love with it.  It's so individual and quirky, and probably a one-off piece - I can't find anything remotely like it design-wise in Internet-land.  It will go in our Unit this week and hopefully someone else will fall in love with it and buy it.

When I was in The Range buying Seagulls the other day (!), I grabbed a couple of packs of 99p bulbs.  When I am better, I am going to get Keith to help me refront a little slate-fronted raised beds down on "mum's" patio and put them in there. 

Being a glutton for punishment, I bought a tray of about 8 lbs of very ripe Peaches when we were at Chris Thomas's Greengrocer's warehouse at Abergwili on Tuesday.  For £1 I couldn't leave them behind.  I peeled and stewed up half of them yesterday for desserts this week, and then turned the rest into Spiced Peach Jam.  Looks good doesn't it?  Shame it hasn't set properly!  I shall put it back in the Maslin pan this morning with some of my home made Pectin and boil it up again.  I hope I don't lose the lovely pale colour and have it going brown.  I'll put up the recipe later.  UPDATE: hmm, didn't use enough pectin, still didn't set much better, so Pouring Jam it is then!

It is feeling very autumnal in the mornings now  and I will have to crack on with sorting out the garden and tidying it for the winter when I'm back to normal.  Anything with Large Leaves is going to be hoiked out and since that is a job for the mattock, I need to be completely well again before I tackle it.  I have a nice White hydrangea (£5.99 from Lidl recently) to go in the spot where the Oriental Borage has been for years (that's all talk and no trousers - small flowers in early spring and then gigantic leaves the rest of the year.)

As I laid awake last night, more plans have been going round and round in my head and the to do (and to buy!) list is getting ever longer.  However, I had a surprise yesterday when Keith suddenly set to and made me a shelf to go in the bottom half of the built-in storage cupboard.  We dragged out the contents which had not seen the light of day for many a year, and sorted through them. I didn't remember accumulating 7 cake tins (recycyling ones from Christmas choccies or biccies), but there was a useful wicker basket which my gardening stuff in the Back Place will be transferred into, and a little wicker shopping basket which I will polish up today and offer for sale.   Ditto a lovely old sycamore chopping board - too big for my needs.  Now my mixing machine, bread machine and slow cooker/electric pressure cooker are all stowed away out of sight.

Today we are going to pick up the Fleabay shower (brand new one) and this afternoon going to view the auction at Brecon.  There is a lovely modern pine dresser there (guide price £300 - £400) which would look great in the kitchen, but we can't afford it and I have a shabby old dresser already. 

Right this won't do.  Enjoy the sunshine (hope you have some too).

Further update: whilst we won't be bidding on the Nice Dresser at the Auction (fortunately it is a bit too big, either for the room or for us transporting it home), there is another piece we both like.  It needs a little tlc though, so hopefully will come cheaply.  On our way back we called in to the shop where we have our Unit, and came by a small pine dresser as a swop with another dealer for 4 pine chairs we had.  How's that for serendipity and synchronicity?  She desperately needed a set of chairs for a rental house her daughter's moving into, and the pine dresser is just the right size to go where the dark and gloomy slidey-door ex school cupboard is in our kitchen.  That can then be freed up to be sold in our Unit.  We've had it a long time - probably 25 years now.  It has served its purpose.

BTW, I have been sitting all day today, being driven or driving, and feel a bit brighter tonight. 

Oh, and remember I took 7 damaged jugs down from the kitchen beams?  Well, when I had washed the blue and white jugs from the bathroom, I ended up putting the four of them across the central beam (which has had stuff taken off it and was looking rather bare).  Photo to follow.