Monday 11th July 2022 - Challenge Completed, DIY and Slow Growth

The challenge has been completed; we have cleared our bedroom, ready for the carpet fitters to arrive this afternoon. Such a warm day and I know I shouldn’t complain, but I think it is going to be a ‘sweaty’ job when we put everything back later on, after the fitters have finished. Actually, should I have said ‘sweaty’? Women are said to glow and not sweat, so perhaps I will glow and leave the sweating to Peter! The one thing I am sure of is; a shower afterwards is going to be most welcome and I am pretty sure, after a day of laying carpet, in this heat, the fitters will be welcoming a shower on their return home too.

During the past week, Peter has been doing some DIY; painting skirting boards and a wall, washing down the gutters, revamping the bench in our porch, re-cabling the TV aerial and satellite along with various other bits and pieces including mowing and keeping the vegetable plot watered. The tadpoles in our pond are slow to develop into frogs. I checked last year’s blog and on the 22nd July I commented on the number of juvenile frogs leaving the pond. Gazing down into the water this morning, hardly any of the tadpoles have started to develop legs. They seem to be feeding well on algae and vegetation but, in comparison to last year, growth is definitely slow. In 2021, we had so many tadpoles, and in an effort to deter them from eating each other, Peter was feeding them by dangling pieces of raw meat just below the water level. This year, with far fewer tadpoles, we felt this wouldn’t be necessary to do on a regular basis, so perhaps reduced protein is behind their slow growth. Today’s photo is of one of our alliums, one of a number of different plants in our garden grown to attract the bees and other pollinating insects.