{"id":2899,"date":"2021-08-14T20:30:31","date_gmt":"2021-08-14T20:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2899"},"modified":"2021-08-14T22:11:39","modified_gmt":"2021-08-14T22:11:39","slug":"saturday-14th-august-2021-day-516","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/08\/14\/saturday-14th-august-2021-day-516\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday, 14th August, 2021 [Day 516]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was a fairly conventional Saturday with no\u00a0<\/span>particular things in prospect for us, apart from going to church in the late afternoon. Having completed a few household chores, Meg and I wandered fairly slowly\u00a0down into the town and thence to the park. Here we were\u00a0delighted to \u00a0meet up with our\u00a0University of Birmingham\u00a0friend and another of the park regulars – I quipped that we are now the Bromsgrove Literary and Philosophical Society\u00a0having their weekly meeting. Having had our coffee, I started off to collect our weekly supply of newspapers and it started to smatter with rain. So I\u00a0organised an emergency umbrella and\u00a0having ensured that the rest of the\u00a0group could more or less keep themselves dry, I set off to collect our weekly\u00a0ration of newspapers. Upon my return, the\u00a0little\u00a0group had\u00a0relocated themselves to a spot where the trees\u00a0afford a little more cover and the bandstand was in close proximity in case we\u00a0need to make a\u00a0sudden\u00a0dash for it. Realising that the weather may be\u00a0worsening, Meg and I struck off for home\u00a0and our two friends were going off to the little cafe in the park to treat themselves to something warm. As we set off, though, the rain\u00a0stuttered to a halt so we did not get\u00a0really wet on the way\u00a0home but just a little damp.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Lunch was a little\u00a0special today because I had ordered some\u00a0lambs’ liver for lunch. Having\u00a0cubed this and dried it off, I then\u00a0panfried it but added a goodly layer of\u00a0onions and some onion gravy I had made to complete the meal. As\u00a0vegetables, we had a baked potato and some Cavolo Nero (kale) which is particularly delicious. In the past, I am pretty sure that I have added a little red wine to my lambs liver but I forgot to do it today and the\u00a0results were still pretty good. After lunch, I had intended to give the lawns their weekly cut but, in truth, whilst the sun was shining the grass was\u00a0still pretty wet from this morning’s showers so I decided to postpone this particular treat until tomorrow.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Halfway through he afternoon my small-scale\u00a0dustbin arrived,\u00a0courtesy of Amazon\u00a0and well before the\u00a0anticipated\u00a0delivery date of next Tuesday and Wednesday. \u00a0I have bought one of these mini dustbins before and it is now residing in Mog’s\u00a0<\/em><\/span>Den<\/em>, filled with a\u00a0large bag of gravel. I now intend to use this new one as a storage container for garden peat and\/or topsoil. They are about 18″-19″ in height and have a lockable lid\u00a0with some clips to hold on the lid. Whilst these are a little ugly to the purist, it is well worth having something with a completely secure and lockable lid as I know to my cost that\u00a0light plastic dustin lids can easily blow away in the winter gales. Also they are superb height and have a capacity of 50 litres. My original\u00a0intention was to mix peat and topsoil in approximately equal\u00a0proportions so that I would always have a handy supply when it came to planting out. But then I had\u00a0some\u00a0second thoughts and thought it would probably be a better idea to have peat in one\u00a0container and topsoil in another so that I could mix them in absolutely the proportions that I needed for any particular planting. Although they are cheap\u00a0enough at less than \u00a312 (delivered), I toyed with the idea of buying yet another but decided to\u00a0improvise. Going to my compost area (nicely hidden\u00a0behind some tall fir trees), I\u00a0resurrected an old builders bucket and found one of these plastic trug affairs that would serve as a huge but highly effective cover and so I utilised this for my topsoil whilst keeping my shiny new dustbin for garden peat. I wanted\u00a0something a bit more professional than half-filled plastic bags\u00a0which however well you try to close them always seem to attract slugs and snails from somewhere.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This evening we went to church as we always do on a Saturday evening and attendance was a little down as you would expect in the middle of August when so many are on holiday. I had brought with me a little\u00a0bottle of damson gin which I\u00a0intended to bestow upon on of our chatty Liverpudlian parishioners to whom I promised it\u00a0last week – as she wasn’t there this week, I shall have to used to taking it along each Sunday until she\u00a0<\/span>reappears. Tomorrow, I hope that the weather is a bit better because I want to get a little\u00a0bit of planting done and the lawns cut. Our lawns generally look OK and then\u00a0suddenly look straggly and overgrown and I have to, as the gardening books say, ‘Choose a fine day<\/em>‘ to get the mowing done.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was a fairly conventional Saturday with no\u00a0particular things in prospect for us, apart from going to church in the late afternoon. Having completed a few household chores, Meg and I wandered fairly slowly\u00a0down into the town and thence to the park. Here we were\u00a0delighted to \u00a0meet up with our\u00a0University of Birmingham\u00a0friend and another of […]<\/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-2899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2899","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=2899"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2904,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2899\/revisions\/2904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}