A spring weekend

So. While I’ve been loitering lazily at work this last few days, The Builder has been a busy busy busy, playing out in the spring sunshine.

I was at work until 6 on Friday and got home just before 7 when it was too dark to go outside and look at what he’d been doing. I declined the invitation to go out with a torch to see whatever it was, deciding to wait until the following morning so I could look properly. Marlo had stirred from his bed and been down to investigate and seemed to approve. I waited with great patience.

Until half past seven on Saturday morning when I dragged The Builder protesting, kicking and screaming from his bed and made him put on his dressing gown and slippers and accompany me outside so I could see what had been going on. My goodness but he’d been busy. He’s de-turfed and bricked the rest of the paths in the ornamental garden (I do so enjoy having so many different bits of garden that they need descriptors!) except for the path up by the border. He’s also tipped over and buried the concrete “altar stone” we found where I want to put the grape vines. Plus he’s boxed in the bed. All it needs now is some soil and a trellis and we’ll be ready to roll!

Meanwhile, I wandered off for a hard day’s slumber in the salt mines at Psalter Lane, getting home at around half past five. I do like this time of year. The days are getting noticeably longer; it’s light now when I leave in the mornings and it was still light when I got back yesterday, to find The Builder still hard at it, dig, dig, digging away, having virtually finished digging the last bed in the ornamental garden. My goodness, but it makes a difference to the way the garden looks. It just needs planting now! (Actually, I have some things ready to go it; I just lack the time to do it, having spent this morning ambling about the countryside looking for a small - that’s *small* - bag of ericaceous soil to fill the hole I’m intending to dig to put the Japanese Maple in. You can buy this soil, but only in bags of 60 and 75 litres, which is MUCH too big!!!!!) I’m on the evening duty tomorrow. I might do some planting in the morning, if the weather, which has been beautiful, holds.

In the meantime, I have been considering my health. I am pleased to report that my blood pressure has been steadily falling since I bought my digital BP monitor. It is true that I take it on Saturday mornings before I get up, when there is very little for me to be stressed about. However, yesterday it was 127/92 with a heart rate of 66, a very considerable improvement on the 150/98 (72) that it was when I started monitoring it 6 weeks ago. Emboldened, I decided to use the test-your-own-cholesterol-levels kit that I bought on a whim some weeks ago. Now that was fun. You drip a drop of blood onto a testing strip which, after 40 seconds or so, turns a fetching shade of grey. You then have to match it against a master strip of many shades of grey and decide where your grey fits. Hmm. Clearly not this pale grey with the cheery, bright green face with a huge grin above it. Nor, I think, the next shade along, with the green face and the slightly less cheery grin. Might be the next one, with the yellow face and cheery grin, within acceptable limits. Ah yes, but it just might be the next one up with the yellow face and straight across mouth, just over acceptable limits. I don’t *think* it’s the next one up with the orange face and the down turning mouth and I’m absolutely certain it isn’t the shade of grey with red, cross and grumpy face above it. No, I think it’s the one that looks ok … Oh I don’t know. Let’s go and have an egg and cheese sandwich while we think on it. But surely they could make the test a colour other than grey and where you can see the results reasonably clearly! Perhaps I’ll book into the SHU wellness clinic and they can run a complete physical, in work time :-)

I’m back at Psalter Lane today. The library has been open since 1 and I’ve had precisely two queries, if you don’t count the occasional cheery hello that passing students offer as they go past. It is very boring when there is no one to talk to and no students to help. I have been reduced to looking at picture books of stately homes, historic monuments and garden design. I was here yesterday too. It was much busier!

Steve next door has been made redundant from his railway welding job and is therefore at home during the day (he was a night worker so was at home, but in bed during the day). This means that he has been watching The Builder at work. I think he is hoping that some of the excess fruit crops (when the trees have settled in) may come their way. I wonder how long it will be before my two tiny, minute grape vines produce grapes