Busy day

Yesterday was an exhausting day. It started well. I stepped out of the back door to go to the laundry room, when my eyes were caught by the sight of this magpie flying over with what looked like a branch of a tree its beak. It's clearly nesting time, but this "twig" was so big it was almost enough to ground the bird & it would certainly of been difficult to manipulate - or is that beakulate - into position as part of a nest. 

My first task of the day after breakfast was to prepare some potatoes & bake a flan case ready for dinner - a turkey & ham flan. Then I progressed with the ironing. One thing about all this warm dry weather is that it is conducive to getting the washing dried early in the week so I can get on with the ironing early in the week too.

Ironing, too, turned into a bit of a nature watch. As it was so warm, I had the back door open. An enormous bumble bee paid a visit. At first it didn't bother me, but then it started flying around my hands. At this point I started to get worried. I didn't want to get stung. Eventually it flew off & buzzed ineffectually, though noisily, on the window. I duly got up, unlocked the window & let it out. Peace once more!

After a tea break, & completing my jigsaw, I decided the time had come to tackle the front garden. My hands are now covered with scratches to prove the hard work put in. I pulled out the weeds, the remains of the fennel that had died in the snows of the winter of 2010-11 (I'd left it in all last summer in the hope of a revival, but there were still no signs of life), pruned some of the herbs that were getting overgrown. The oregano needed more drastic treatment. It was doing its best to take over the whole garden so I tried to dig up a large part of it. I never realised what long roots it had. Now the garden is looking a lot tidier. My next job is to add a little extra compost, before planting out my new herbs. But by this time I was too exhausted to continue on that day. 

So, come the afternoon, we decide the time had come to do the big food shop. In theory I write a shopping list for 6 days meals. The Fox then usually decides on one meal a week he fancies trying. Generally, somehow, that means we have food for 2-3 weeks with a minor top-up shop in the intervening week(s). But this was a big shop. 

Home after that & dinner. The Fox had to give me a hand. By this time exhaustion was well & truly hitting me. By 9pm I was in bed - so much for going to see the drama being put on at the library - & was quickly fast asleep. For once I never ventured out of bed, or even more than momentarily from the land of nod, until after 8 this morning.

So now I'm wondering what to cook today. I'm contemplating, after doing this, popping down to the shops on the Mean Machine, my electric scooter, to get some fresh fish. There's no signs of advertising boards for the Farmers' Market yet. We had wondered if they'd changed the 4th Thursday of the month to the last Thursday of the month, but it doesn't look like it. We're back to supermarket meat it would seem. We're thinking we might go over to Carnforth & the Booth's supermarket there. The standard of meat does seem to be so better & to be very local. It may be a little pricier but you can usually taste the difference, certainly on the prime cuts of meat & I'm hoping to roast some lamb at the weekend. And there you can buy slat marsh lamb which we have come to really appreciate & prefer.