Jogging along nicely thank you, especially in the garden!

Well, a lot of improvements - like replacement more of the draughty double glazing - will have to wait until my single solitary investment matures in September - but on the whole, the house is doing okay. The garden had deteriorated quite a bit over spring and very early summer - the patch of grass you're supposed to be able to sit on (other people call it a lawn) was over a foot in height, for instance, partly because the operation I had made it impossible to use two hands to do anything, and partly because of the rain, I never seemed to have any free time when it wasn't throwing it down. But over the last month - woo hoo! The turnaround started when a couple of people stayed with me over the weekend, and at the end of the last day, they spent 45 minutes in the garden pulling up the grass that had consumed the border, including a beautiful, beautiful little sedum plant I brought from my last house, that I absolutely adore. And these two lovely people got a whole dustbin-sized bag of grass from out of the border, and then rescued the sedum and replanted it so it could breathe again. And I couldn't let that work go to waste! So ever since then, I've been reclaiming the garden - cutting back the grass, weeding the borders, mulching wherever I can find space, and using anything I can for the mulch, all of which I gathered last year - the oak leaves, the wool carpet samples, old cardboard, all of it is down now, in the garden, slowly feeding the soil and making sure I don't get nearly so many plants growing where I don't want them!

A parcel popped through the door

Well, it didn't - I had to go to the Sorting Office, as when the poor thing tried to get in I wasn't here ... but then I was, so I went out, of course. And came back with a parcel from the lovely OrkneyFlowers, I'm sure anyone who reads this blog will know her blog, but just in case, here it is http://orkneyflowers.blogspot.com/.

Well, the parcel contained some dinky little silicon spatulas, as I've been wibbling on about getting pesto out of badly shaped jars - I'm addicted to pesto - and also a measuring cup set, the posh stainless steel type, both of which will come in very handy - OrkneyFlowers' recipe for 15 minute scones is in cups, and these cups will do it proud, indeed.

Best of all, because planted, grown and packed with her own fair hands, is a healthy little plant packed in a toilet roll innard, the piggy back plant, or tolmeia menziesii - she's qualified, is our OrkneyFlowers!

This is little Tolly as he came out of his toilet roll ....

And this is Tolly after he'd been all potted up. He's now sitting on my office windowledge, the only windowledge in the whole house that doesn't have a radiator underneath it, and its on the first floor, so he should be happy with the sunlight, and overlooking his friends in the garden.

Thank you OrkneyFlowers!