{"id":2728,"date":"2021-07-14T20:53:22","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T20:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2728"},"modified":"2021-07-14T22:03:42","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T22:03:42","slug":"wednesday-14th-july-2021-day-485","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/07\/14\/wednesday-14th-july-2021-day-485\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday, 14th July, 2021 [Day 485]"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the day dawned, there was not a cloud in the sky and we knew that we in at the start of a period of high pressure which is going to remain stationery over the\u00a0British Isles for the next few days. As we had nothing\u00a0particularly\u00a0pressing this morning apart from updating our Waitrose<\/em> order and the weather was so fine, we allowed ourselves the luxury of lingering in the back garden (and Mog’s Den<\/em> of course) to assess which flowers and plants are doing particularly well this year. After some\u00a0<\/span>rain but also some warm days then the garden is at its finest so we took a lot of enjoyment lingering over various plants. For example, there is a beautiful little shrub with a host of ruby-red flowers called ‘<\/span>Penstemmon<\/em>‘. A small plant was sold to us \u00a0by a friendly\u00a0trader down in Bromsgrove some years ago. The ‘<\/span>Penstemmon<\/em>‘ has now\u00a0spread to about a yard\u00a0wide and a year deep so I may be able to\u00a0detach part of it and start off a new clump\u00a0elsewhere. Eventually, Meg and I started on our walk – I\u00a0left Meg on one of the ‘top’ benches which\u00a0overlooks the rest of the park whilst I went off to collect our newspapers. But Meg was soon joined by a mutual friend and I was pleased that Meg had that little bit of company\u00a0and then we struck off for\u00a0home.We had a\u00a0<\/span>salad type lunch which was easy to prepare – just as well as I needed to leave the house just after 2.00 for a doctor’s\u00a0appointment (rare these days)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

After I had been to the doctor’s for a series of checkovers (generally OK) I\u00a0popped into our local Asda<\/em>\u00a0primarily to see if they had a gardening section and\u00a0specifically if they had any seeds. I had in mind to buy some Swiss or Ruby Chard as they look colourful and grow well in the shade (of Mog’s Den<\/em>) but \u00a0Asda<\/em> had hardly any seeds at all. But I did pick up a\u00a0couple of\u00a0<\/span>rectangular vegetable troughs which were being sold off at a discounted price of \u00a32.00 and then got home and treated myself to a low\u00a0alcohol lager. Then I started a major task that I had set myself for the day which was to attack the mountain of weeds (brambles, nettles and other lovelies) which I needed to chop up into 8″ size portions and then bag them. As our \u00a0brown (i.e. garden waste bins) are being\u00a0emptied tomorrow morning, then today was an ideal opportunity to\u00a0attempt to attack the pile of weeds and get them disposed of tomorrow morning. In the event, I\u00a0managed to fill about five sacks and then these got disposed of via our own and neighbour’s bins – this has got most of the job done but there is\u00a0still about one quarter of the total to be finished off in the morning. I must admit that the\u00a0combination of thick and\u00a0long brambles on the one hand and the slimy branches on the lower layers makes this a most unpleasant task but\u00a0thankfully it will soon be over. In the middle of the afternoon, my plant arrived – a heavily discounted pussy willow which is about a metre and a half tall and which will not get any taller but should get bushier and eventually give us a display of lots of pussy willow catkins. Once the old\u00a0vegetation had been removed, I shall be moving into the more\u00a0pleasant phases of finishing off Mog’s Den<\/em>. Basically,I need to put my planters in place (hardly an\u00a0arduous task), fill them with a\u00a0mixture of compost and topsoil (again, not a difficult job) and then sit back and wait for a few\u00a0more of my ordered plants to\u00a0arrive to populate the planters. I am of a mind to make the\u00a0smallest of vegetable gardens near the beets and I thought I might transplant a bit of mint from another section of the garden and then sow some\u00a0coriander seeds (or\u00a0even get a complete coriander plant from a local supermarket)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier today, I had called in to see how my two neighbours were doing health wise. My immediate next door neighbour is recovering\u00a0from a \u00a0heart procedure undertaken last Monday and my other neighbour is recovering somewhat, from the stroke she suffered last week. The family has been given precious little information\u00a0and, in truth, the MRI scan was only done\u00a0<\/span>yesterday – a positive sign is that our neighbour can\u00a0walk with\u00a0some\u00a0physiotherapists’ assistance. Then it looks as though she might go to a\u00a0specialist unit which helps both to rehabilitate stroke sufferers and also gives the opportunity for longer term assessments to be made.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The government’s ‘mask’ policy seems to be in some disarray tonight. Although, in theory, all legal constraints will disappear on Monday next,\u00a0<\/span>ins practice many organisations (Transport for London for one) are insisting on their use.Tonight, m<\/span>ore than 1,000 scientists sign letter urging 19 July to be postponed as they accuse government of pursuing ‘herd immunity by mass infection’<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the day dawned, there was not a cloud in the sky and we knew that we in at the start of a period of high pressure which is going to remain stationery over the\u00a0British Isles for the next few days. As we had nothing\u00a0particularly\u00a0pressing this morning apart from updating our Waitrose order and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2728"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2733,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2728\/revisions\/2733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}