March 21st 2021

 

I'd rather lost my newly acquired blogging voice these last two months and consequently my blog has been conveniently "forgotten" as I launched back into Instagram posts and stories this year.

Lots has been happening at home but I haven’t had the energy levels to really cope with everything. I've retreated into gentle knitting and little bits of sewing as I've tried to resolve some hormonal issues and related low energy.  Having everyone here at home 24/7 is also hard for me as I really do love and need time completely alone.  Now that school is back and Chris is going to work a couple of days a week, I'm getting some essential alone time which I'm very glad to have.

The grey, cold weather along with lockdown has been challenging and it's very evident the difference a sunny day makes to my mood.  The house is brighter and warmer and I feel like I'm more like my younger self.

After a brief chat to my friend Lucy, it’s given me the nudge I needed to just write something.  Anything! She has jokingly referred to blogging every day in March as “Blarch” which made me laugh out loud when I read that on her blog and so I decided to try and rise to the challenge.

So I'll start with simple.  Life at the moment isn't filled with excitement or earth shattering moments - but then when is it ever? Even less so if you are a married 50 something with teenagers.  But as Brene Brown says,

“Joy comes to us in ordinary moments.  We risk missing out when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary”

I had my AZ covid vaccination this morning which I have to say I was (and still am) pretty anxious about.  So many folks I know have had an unpleasant reaction to it so by booking it I felt that I was booking in to being ill.  I am a real wimp and I've never even had flu in my life so I'm not keen on getting any flu like symptoms. My lovely daughter walked with me as she knew I was anxious.  On our walk home we noticed the big bumble bees in the ivy and how the birdsong has become springlike. It helps me to notice nature when I'm feeling worried.

It's now been 5 hours but apart from feeling like I've got lock jaw, nothing more sinister yet but I think generally it takes roughly 12 hours to start feeling any side effects.

Later in the morning Chris and I visited the local plant nursery which was filled with plants and was a blaze of colour. We bought a couple of peonies, including this hybrid, for the front garden.  I've wanted some peonies for years but Chris is less keen on them. We will have to see how they cope in the middle next to this glorious euphorbia wulfenii. 

Chris is the gardener, not me, but I am a great appreciator of gardens and his creativity with ours.  I'm very much a fair weather weeder, harvester, sniffer of scents and sitter in the sunshine - and not much else. He's been busy planting seeds for this year and as we don't have a greenhouse due to having a very small townhouse garden, we've moved around furniture to create a space for growing seedlings in our garden room.

In here are tomatoes, courgettes, sweet peas, squash, cornflowers, echinacea, cosmos to name a few.

I'm going to take it easy for today and try and do my last row of hexagons on the dolls quilt.