Home, Garden and Exercise

Okay, a question to start you off and you can have one guess ... Who now has a gardener to help out as needed? I'll give you some time to think about it ...

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 time's nearly up ...
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and the correct answer is ... it's me!!!!!

She's lovely, very easy to talk to and is keen to take on the maintenance of my garden, hopefully starting at the beginning of June. The delay is because the nursery her son goes to isn't opening up until then. She is just restarting her business after maternity leave and is busy contacting people and getting organised. I'm in the diary anyway so I am a happy bunny!

In the meantime she is buying the compost and annuals for the pots and will be sending through a list of suitable shrubs for me to choose which I'd like. Just as she was leaving, Julie (a neighbour, not my friend with the same name) came over with a couple of magnolia plants for me. She'd complained about the quality of her original delivery so they sent her extra as replacements but she hasn't got room for all of them so passed some on to me. They're for containers but she can't remember the variety, so at the moment they are both planted in my biggest container and D will sort them out properly when she's here next. They just look like sticks at present so let's all keep our fingers crossed please. I'm now hoping that the recycling yard opens up by the end of the month as there is going to be a lot of green waste to dispose of.

Neighbour Julie also updated me about the other neighbour, yet another Julie, who was taken away in an ambulance the other day. It's nothing to do with coronavirus thankfully; an elderly woman, she had a nasty fall, has broken some bones and is still in hospital. So not the best news for her but in these strange times it's a tremendous relief to hear that, even though a fall and broken bones also carries an increased risk of death in the elderly, it's not the dreaded virus.

I recharged my Fitbit yesterday and set a daily target of 3,000 steps for starters. I know it's not enough in the long term, but baby steps will get me back in the habit of exercising without putting too much strain on my knee. I reached my target quite easily but will leave it set at that level for the rest of the week. So achieving that, together with the knee exercises, currently makes up my daily quota of exercise. I am looking on YouTube for some suitable stretching exercises if anyone knows of any please?

It's the quiz with J and L tonight but the rest of the day is going to be a pottering sort of day. I need to do a load of washing, want to sort some more of the photo files, and would like to make a start on creating some space in the garage.