Weight Loss Results

Hello folk!

Here I am with our newest pet! We haven't actually decided on a name for him/her yet, so if you have some ideas we'd love to hear from you!

So far we haven't actually determined his/her sex either so our possible names are Prunella, Purple Pete or Scruffles (thanks to Katy Oke). He/she's from Vancouver, Canada and I'll be doing another posting on our recent trip to the West Coast shortly.


But now for something completely different ........



Today is my birthday. That means that it's exactly a year since I started the Weightloss for Wildlife campaign and it's time to report on "progress". I guess there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that I haven't made any progress since June. The good news is that I lost a good few pounds during the first half of the year and I've managed to keep it off since June. So, the final tally is:

Beginning Weight: 95.5 kg or 210.5 lb or 15 stone
Ending Weight: 87 kg or 192 lb or 13.7 stone
Weight Loss: 8.5 kg or 18.5 lb or 1.3 stone


Those of you who were kind enough to sponsor me will be getting a personal note or e-mail about this in the next couple of weeks. Once I hear from everyone I'll let you all know how much money I've made for wildlife projects.

The chart at left is of our weekly "weigh-ins". As you can see, John has been accompanying me on this adventure, but slipped up a bit towards the end. We're both determined to continue trying to lose weight next year. I don't suppose anyone is up for another challenge?

I do feel better for having lost the weight. Apart from my clothes being more comfortable, I find I have more energy and can move around a bit better. It's a good job I have more energy as there's an awful lot to do around here. In fact, I'd better get on with something right now!

Bye bye for now ...........................

A trip to Paris.

Yuck! Britain is now experiencing 8 hour days and 16 hour nights. It gets dark SO early. Everything is damp underfoot, too, so it's really mucky. John and I have both had horrible colds. Mine is on the mend but he's in the middle of his. This hasn't put an end to our social lives, however. We had friends to dinner on Thursday and I went to the Food Fayre quiz night last night. My team won and I'm now charged with watching the Lottery draw tonight to see if we won anything as our prize was lottery tickets! This morning we braved the cold and wet and went out to help clear pathways on our local bird reserve. We think it did us good, but were glad to get back to our warm house and hot soup!

While we were lunching Mr. Magnificent came begging for peanuts and I was finally able to get a halfway decent shot of him.

My cold started on the way home from our visit to Paris. In all our travels I've never been there before! We had a ball! The metro and the busses were on strike, but we managed to get around quite well. It helped that we were the guests of my cousin Jaques. You may remember that he and his partner (Catherine) and her daughter (Flora) visited us in May. This was the return trip. We stayed in Flora's father's apartment, just a few blocks away from Catherines' home and Jaques' dental clinic.

It was fun to go on Eurostar from the new St. Pancras International Railway Station. This is an old and very grand Victorian red brick and glass station which was abandoned in the 60s and was nearly knocked down. It has now been renovated and supplied with a high-speed line and now it takes just over 2 hours to get from London to Paris! They've moved the Eurostar terminus from Waterloo to St. Pancras, which is good for us as it's only one stop on the tube from St. Pancras to Euston where we can get a fast train to Crewe followed by a slow train to Church Stretton! We made it back from Paris, Gare Du Nord to C. S. in 6.25 hours

Jaques picked us up from Gare du Nord on Friday night. It took us over 2 hours to drive to his place - a trip that should have taken 20-40 min. The traffic was really grid-locked because so many people who usually take public transport had to use their cars. Here's a picture of a familiar landmark taken as we drove through Pigalle. Catherine was late getting home, too, because of the traffic but she prepared us a lovely meal and it was good to catch up with them and see where they live.

We decided to do "car" things at the weekend, so they took us to Versailles on Saturday. It's a most impressive palace, lavishly decorated and ornamented. The picture is of the great mirrored gallery. It's beautifully light with huge windows overlooking the gardens. The mirrors facing the windows reflect the light into the room and give it a great feeling of space and grandeur. The gardens are interesting, even at this time of year. They are so formal - I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like it at and at such a huge scale.

On Saturday night Jaques took us out for dinner to a favourite restaurant where we had Tournados Rossini .... oh it was heavenly. The restaurant (called Sud Ouest)specialises in the cooking of south western France and was informal and friendly. There were lots of groups having family dinners and celebrations. We met Ivan and Audrey, Jaques grown up children. I hope all these young people will come to visit us here one day - they are all so polite, friendly and fun to talk to.

On Sunday we broke our fast in the traditional way with croissants and coffee and then went off to explore the old town of Paris. This included Place Des Voges and the Old Jewish Quarter where we strolled and window shopped while munching on cheese cake and poppy seed cake. While we were in the area we visited the Picasso Museum. It was very interesting to see a lot of the studies he did before he made a large painting. They also had a special exhibition about the making of the painting "Guernica" and this was also linked to some graphic and thought-provoking photographs of current atrocities of war.

We had a big lunch out and Catherine prepared another special dinner. This was "Raclette". There is a hot plate on the table and you melt a special kind of cheese which you pour over sausage, ham and/or potatoes. Yum, yum.

On Monday Jaques and Catherine went back to work and Flora to school so we were on our own. We decided to walk to Montmartre, which we did in about 45 minutes. It was interesting to pound the streets - you have time to look at the architecture, smell the food smells coming out of the restaurants, stop and goggle at interesting activities. We climbed up the various stepped streets to the top of Montmartre and visited the Sacre Coeur Basilica. It's very impressive inside and out and the view over Paris from the front door is spectacular. Unfortunately, it was a bit damp and misty and not very good for photography.

We weren't impressed by the shops in Montmartre as they were all touristy and selling tacky gifts. It was a pity as the small streets looked interesting and it might have been fun to wander around. However, we slowly descended from the Sacre Coeur, fending off pick pockets and street vendors and found a small bistro where we had a delicious lunch of lamb stew and polished off a bottle of Beaujolais. Then we took a walk down Boulevard Haussman looking into the windows of Galleries Lafayette and Printemps. These big department stores have their windows decked out for Christmas and have those wonderful moving displays we used to love as children. John and I are still fascinated by the animations and spent a good deal of time watching all the details and having a good laugh. By the time we'd finished window shopping it was time to wander home to get ready to Jaques et. al for dinner which was in a local creperie.

On Tuesday we set off on another walking adventure. We thought we might take a bus, but only one passed us and it was full and overflowing. We managed to walk from Clichy to the Tuilleries Gardens on the Seine in about an hour and a half. We were heading for the Musee d'Orsay where the Impressionist paintings are, but when we got there we found it was half closed because of the strikes so we decided not to go in. Instead we found another restaurant where we had another good lunch and then we strolled home again taking a very circular route which included walking along the left bank of the Seine, up a boulevard where we found an Art Deco church from 1938 which we found very beautiful inside and out, around the Arc De Triomphe and back along various streets and boulevards to Clichy.

It was good to be able to see Paris on foot as it meant for a more leisurely pace. Neither of us had a huge agenda to follow. There are lots of places we would like to see including the Louvre and Notre Dame, but they will wait for another time. In the evening we went to a Japanese restaurant. The food was fresh and delicious. We had sushi and skewered meats along with soup and salads. It was a great treat for us as there is no Japanese restaurant in Church Stretton.

Next day, Jaques went off to a congress so Catherine took us to the Gare Du Nord where we had lunch and then said "Goodbye". We were home by 8:30. We both agreed that we'd had a wonderful trip, the French were very friendly and helpful and we really enjoyed ourselves.

Catching up - Our New Car!

We finally have a new car. When we first came over here, we thought we would have to get one straight away, but our nephew, Nick, was selling his Rover and we bought it.

Ronnie the Rover did well for two years, but then things started to go wrong. We finally polished it off, as I mentioned in a previous posting, so we ordered a new Toyota RAV4 and were able to pick it up when we got back from Belgium.


Since then we've been driving around and really enjoying the luxury of a new car. The picture of John and the Rav was taken on one of our test jaunts. We took a day off from our computers, data bases and projects to go to Lake Vrnwy which is in mid-Wales. It's a reservoir that's managed as a nature reserve by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). They're doing all sorts of neat things there including managing a huge organic farm. We were able to buy some lovely organic lamb there. We've already enjoyed the lamb steaks we had and this weekend we're trying out one of their legs of lamb. If it's as good as expected we'll be ordering boxed lamb halves for the freezer.

While we were there, we had a picnic lunch of pasties by the lake, visited the various hides (not much to see this time, but we'll come back later) and took a hike up one of the tributory valles to Rhiwargor Falls. As you can see it was a beautiful day with lots of lovely sunshine and we really enjoyed it.

Autumn here is a long and luscious season. It's still progressing slowly with more and more colour developing as the days continue. It's also a time of mists and frosts and a few weeks ago we were delighted to see this hot-air balloon rising up out of the mists as it drifted slowly up the Carding Mill Valley.

We have a lot of balloons over the Mynd, it's probably the best way to view the whole spectacular structure, but not everyone is as pleased to see them as we are.

Many of the local dogs get spooked by the sound of the burners as the balloons pass overhead. Lovely Ella was so badly scared once that she took off and was found several miles away on the far side of the hill. Since we often see the balloons before our neighbours do, we phone them when there's one on its way and they take Ella inside till it's gone!

Please stay in touch!

Our trip to Belgium

I've just been putting our photos from the trip to Belgium on CD for the Rayners, so I thought I'd share a few.

We went over on Eurostar, in mid September, for a few days and had a wonderful time. We arrived in Brussels in the late afternoon and picked up a hired car at the station. Things rapidly (but temporarily, I'm glad to say) went wrong after that. First I managed to get us completely lost. We found out later that we were heading due south out of town when Mechelen is north! Secondly, we were in rush hour traffic, so the car was doing a lot of stopping and starting. After about half an hour there were frantic beeping sounds coming from the dashboard and we realised that we were overheating.

We pulled over and then went through a couple of hours of pure farce while we tried to phone for help. The phone menus were all in Flemish so we couldn't understand them but we found some very kind people who helped us. There was the young security guard in the supermarket and the lovely couple who had been to a photographic exhibition and who got on their phones and called the rental company and gave them a good telling off! We thank you all!

Eventually the rescue truck arrived. The mechanic spoke excellent English and was able to show us that the fan had broken and fallen off its mounting!!!!! He did a temporary fix and then led us to the motoway so we could drive to the airport and exchange the car (by this time it was too late to go back to the station!). We finally arrived at the hotel in Mechelen about 10:30 and they were kind enough to arrange an afterhours spaghetti dinner for us.


The wedding, next day, was fantastic. A civil ceremony in Mechelen city hall, was followed by a long meal of many courses at the Montreal Hotel which lasted all afternoon and well into the evening. I pondered long and hard over which wedding photo to include here and finally decided on the one to the left. In all the others there are problems - eyes shut, serious faces, etc. etc. This one sums it up. These two haven't had it easy up till now and there's a long road ahead.

We really enjoyed meeting the Vankeerbergens and their family. Many many thanks go to Chantal and Jean for working so hard and putting on such a wonderful event. Everyone was kind and welcoming and the two groups got on very famously. There was lots of chatter in "Franglais", some of us tried to practice our french and others were working on their english.



It was very good to see the whole Rayner family together and having such a good time. Here's a picture of the three "kids" cutting up as they always do! Each one has chosen a different path, and each of them has found success and happiness. Looking back through my photos I'm struck by how radiant Caroline is. As we say over here - she's really chuffed!



On the Sunday many of the visitors and quite a few of the Vankeerbergens went to Brugge for "Moules et Frites" (mussels and fries). This is a picture of Bernadette's parents, Chantal and Jean Vankeerbergen, and John and Valerie Rayner. At the "girls" table (shown below) are Bernadette on the left and Caroline on the right.

Monday saw John and Valerie driving us to Brussels for the day. We visited the little pissing boy and the little pissing girl, but couldn't find the little pissing dog. Does anyone detect a trend here? We also did some rubbernecking, taking photos of interesting buildings, eating, drinking and shopping. We really had a jolly day, so decided to return the favour by taking the Rayners in our car to the Ardennes on Tuesday.

It was a fabulous day. The sun shone, there were hints of Autumn in the air and the scenery was wonderful. Here are a couple of pictures from that day. In the first, John and Valerie are enjoying a viewpoint and in the second you can see the view we were admiring.

Next day we drove into Brussels with no problems, returned the car, had lunch in a hotel near the station and then boarded Eurostar for the return trip home. We boarded just before 3 pm and arrived at Church Stretton station at 8:04. That's a tad over 5 hours for the whole journey - Brussels to Waterloo on Eurostar, tube from Waterloo to Euston, Virgin Pendolino train from Euston to Crewe, Arriva Wales local train from Crewe to Church Stretton. I think that's marvellous and a hell of a lot better than going by plane which scares me and is definitely more uncomfortable.

Old Codgers!

We've just filled out applications for our free bus passes and had to have photos taken. I thought you might enjoy these more serious photos of the two of us, hot off the press!!!!!

The reason we have to have photo passes is that we will get free travel on any local bus service in the country. It sounds like an amazing deal and I'm looking forward to using it. We might be able to gad about all over the place by hopping from bus to bus.

We already have free local bus passes for South Shropshire, but this will really extend the range for us.

We also have Senior Rail cards which enable us to get up to a third off all railway journeys. Do you get the feeling they're trying to get the wrinklies off the roads?

I'm going to use my photo as the one on my profile for this blog. It's a bit closer to how I look right now than the old pre-chemo one. Before I had cancer I had straight hair - now it's curly and I love it! It's still very fine and soft, like baby hair. I thought that would have changed by now, but it hasn't so I'm wondering if that's one of the side effects of the beastly Arimidex.

It's a dull grey day today - perfect for staying in and playing with computers. I've been updating the Scrappies web site and would welcome your comments and constructive criticisms. I've also added links to the Shrewsbury Museums, Food Fayre and Arts Festival Sites on the side bar so you can find out more about the things that occupy our time.

When you've time, drop me a note.

Summer Summary

It's actually been a long time since I posted any news other than weight loss on this blog, so I thought I'd give you a pictorial summary of the summer!

We'll start with the picture of John and Margot Hewings (from Toronto), with us, at the Studio. They visited in late May and early June, then the four of us headed off to Stratford for a gathering of some of our old Swansea friends.

Following that visit, we headed off to the Lake District for a few days on our own. We stayed at the Pheasant Inn which is located by the side of Bassenthwaite Lake in a place called Peel Wyke!!!!! Wyke (or Wick) means somebody's homestead and Peel is derived from Piel. We think that there was a Piel tower (a sort of fortified tower) at this spot hundreds of years ago.

Here's a picture of some Ivy-leaved Toadflax that we found growing on a wall. I really love the name of this plant, and it's pretty too!

After our trip to the Lakes, we welcomed Joy and Glenn Johnson from Sydney, Australia to our home. The weather was appalling and we don't have any photos. They were with us during the floods that took away the bridge at Ludlow. The bridge has been replaced temporarily, but it's a shocking sight that meets your eyes as you cross it. The house beside the bridge has lost one of its walls and is leaning into the river at a crazy angle. You can see right into the bedroom, where there's a beautifully made up bed and some of the furniture, still poised and waiting to slip into the river!

Early July brought the Church Stretton Food Fayre. We worked very hard for several days, moving chairs and tables, making tea, washing up, helping people in the craft tents, directing traffic, manning the entries, counting the money and doing whatever we were asked to do. We enjoyed it very much and the Food Fayre was a great success. More about that in future posts, I'm sure as I am about to become Vice Chairperson.

Late July brought the Arts Festival. Again, I was pretty heavily involved with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition part of the festival - doing the entry forms, data base and helping with setup and breakdown.

Before it ended I made a quick trip to Heathrow to pick up my twin Aunties - Sue and Lou. They came over for a three week stay which included a 5 day trip to Scotland. We stayed in a lovely hotel in Lanark and took the train to visit Glasgow and Edinburgh. The weather was kind, the people were friendly and welcoming and I think we all enjoyed ourselves very much. Here they are on a boat trip on Loch Lomond. Highlights of the trip included visits to Edinburgh Castle and Rennie Mackintosh's masterpiece the Glasgow School of Art.

At the end of August, Bill Fenner and Lois Tilton were over from Arden Road. We "did" Wales, with a day trip to Caernarfon (Carnarvon) through Snowdonia and an overnight trip to South Wales where we visited the "Big Pit" (the Welsh National Coal Museum, which includes a coal mine) and St. Fagans (the Welsh National History Museum). Both of these were great, and FREE!!!!!

This picture shows us getting back into the car during our trip through Snowdonia. You'll notice that we have a "new" car. It's actually a hired vehicle because we managed to kill our Rover by driving up to Liverpool and back with the radiator cap off!!!!

More later ..... I'm off to pick apples!

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGHGHGHGHGHGH!

You've probably guessed why I have taken so long to send out my latest weight-loss update! I'm afraid I've been slipping backwards for the last couple of months. I'm still a stone (14lb, 7kg) lighter than I was when I started but I've just not made any progress at all.

I could blame it on all our visitors, but that wouldn't be fair. The truth is that I've been eating larger amounts of things and going for the high-fat, high-calorie foods whenever I've had the chance. So, if I want to make lots of money I'm going to have to be a lot more self-disciplined in the next 3 months. Wish me luck!!!!!

Life here has gotten a bit quieter in the last few weeks. The visitor season is mainly over now and we're getting on and catching up with all the work we didn't do during the spring and summer. Our volunteering activities take up a lot of time - mailing lists, databases, web pages, etc. The garden has been terribly neglected, too and we're starting to work on that. Today's jobs include making a new stick pile and picking apples.

The heavy rains of June and July have resulted in a bumper apple crop. I've already picked one tree. We gave some away, ate a lot and made apple sauce from the rest, now we're ready to bring in the best of the eating apples which I'll try to store "as is". Our Bramley cooking apples are ripening slowly. The outsides look a bit scabby, but the flesh is crisp, tart and white and they freeze well. In addition we had a good crop of crab apples and flowering quinces and I've cooked them to pulp. I had to freeze them because I ran out of time, but I plan to defrost them and make jelly as soon as I have a few spare hours.

It all sounds very domestic, doesn't it?

Hopefully, I'll have better news next time I write.

Send e-mail when you can!

So Far So Good!

Hi y'all!

We've had several enquiries from concerned friends and relatives about the floods, so I thought I'd make a quick post to say that we're fine. There's a lot of water about in the fields and on the roads, but we haven't had any in the garden or the house (touch wood).

This summer there have been 3 major flooding events in the borderlands. Last summer we were in a big drought. We've gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. Last summer the stream went completely dry and we were assailed by the stink of rotten fish and fresh water shrimp. This summer the stream is roaring down it's bed and at times it has risen to within a few inches of the bank. The stink this year came from a dead young badger up on the bank. We think it may have been hit on the road and crawled home to die. Another one was found dead on the road at about the same time, but John and Clive buried it.

We have been flooded by volunteer work, however. Everything came at once - mailings for Scrappies, the food fayre, the opening of the summer exhibition at the museum and now we're in the throes of the arts festival. Add in numerous visitors and our trip to the Lake District and you can see that we've hardly had time to draw breath.

Weight loss has been sporadic over the last couple of months, but I'm at a new low today: 85.8 kg (189lb, 13stone 7 lb).

Yippeeeeee!

Send e-mail!!!!!

Mid-May Update

Hi!


I'm stuck indoors with a cold and no voice. Since I can't talk to anyone I thought I'd settle down and do some mail, e-mail and blog catching up.


First, my weight-loss report. I'm happy to say that I'm still loosing weight. I'm not going as fast as I'd hoped, but I'm still averaging about .75lb per week and that's not too bad. I've now lost about 16lb (1 stone, 2lb or 7.4kg). This is in 5 months so I'm doing about 3lb a month instead of the 4.5 I'd hoped for. I pulled some old jeans out of the back of the wardrobe and can just get them on now. They're fine around the hips, but my waist is still non-existent! So I've come down from a size 20(UK, 18 US) to size 18(UK, 16 US).


Secondly, we are now enfranchised for the first time in about 35 years. We voted in the local elections a couple of weeks ago. One of our candidates won, the other didn't! We were never able to vote in the U.S. although we were able to cast a vote in a local election in Hamilton back in about 1970.


Finally, the rest of the news:

We've just had a visit from my cousin Jaques, his partner Catherine and her daughter Flora. They flew over from Paris for a few days. It was lovely to see them. The last time I spent quality time with Jaques was when I was 19 and took the Orient Express to Istanbul to spend 6 weeks in Turkey with my family. Jaques was 15 then! I have only seen him briefly since then. He was kind enough to come to London for the funerals of my Mum and Dad.


Jaques and Catherine (shown resting in the garden after a busy day of trying to talk in French and English at the same time) are serious runners. On Saturday they did a 15km circular run through Little Stretton, up to the top of the Long Mynd (a climb of 1000ft or about 300m) and back through All Stretton. It only took them a couple of hours! Jaques is now in training for the Mont St. Michel marathon and Catherine is getting ready for some runs later in the summer.



While they were out, Flora and I went for a horse ride. We rode through fields full of sheep and lambs and woods full of bluebells. At one point the skies opened and we got soaked but it was still lovely. The birds were singing away, there was even a cuckoo calling in the woods, and the flowers were gorgeous.



In the picture on the left you can see Flora on her horse, Blueboy. Blueboy has some cow parseley hanging out of his mouth. Both our horses were chomping away at grass, trees, shrubs and roadside weeds as we walked along.


We spent Friday at Ironbridge visiting a couple of musuems in the World Heritage Site there. In addition to the Musuem of Iron, which we have visited before, we went to Enguinuity. This is a hands-on science museum. We all had a lot of fun playing with all the science "toys".



One in particular was really good. It was basically a flume with dams. You could regulate the water, make it rain, use various mechanisms to pump the water back to the top of the flume and generate electricity. We were running about from one end to the other, making waterfalls, controlling water wheels, getting it to rain, etc. etc. Here, you can see Flora using a wheel to pump water into the big red bucket.



Another energetic occupation was spinning a wheel to move a locomotive with the aid of pulleys and gears. John and I had a race with a couple of wall climbing robots - mine beat his to the top of the wall, but only just!

We had such a good time with Jaques, Catherine and Flora that we're planning a visit to Paris later this year. This will be my first proper visit to France and I'm really looking forward to it. After that we'll be visiting other friends in other parts of France and I hope this will be the beginning of our long-awaited travels in Europe. There are so many places I want to see and so many things I want to do.


Meanwhile, back at home the wildlife in the garden continues to delight us. Two weeks ago we had our first visit from a female pheasant with 3 chicks. The weather was dreadful, so she would gather them in every now and then and brood them to keep them warm. It was really delightful, when she stood up, to see the chicks dropping to the ground from under her wings and around her legs. We haven't seen the chicks for a week or so, so we're not sure if they've wandered off or if the fox has got them - could be a bummer.


Pinhead is still skulking about the garden, but Mr. M. chases him off whenever he sees him. It will be interesting to see what happens when the competition dies down at the end of the season. I expect the two of them will feed and walk around together during the late summer, fall and early winter. Then there will be another battle for dominance of the harem.


Last night we had our fist visit from a baby badger. He/she came with Mum and stayed very close the whole time. It looks like an adult only smaller (about half the size) and a bit fluffier. When they finished eating they ran off shoulder to shoulder touching all the time.


John has been working very hard in the garden. We decided to renovate the bed that's behind the house. It's a small sort-of-rectangular bed enclosed by the main house, the garage and the living room. In late summer it has a beautiful fuschia, but the rest of the year it looked rather scruffy. There is a "before" picture to the left. The "after" picture is below, although they are not taken from the same place.



John has dug a small pool for a wildlife "puddle" where the birds and animals can get a drink, he's also moved some plants, added some ornamental grasses and covered the whole lot with a mulch of pebbles. At first we were worried that the pebbles would stop some of the birds from finding goodies in the ground, but they have come back well and I don't think it's a problem. This is also a bed where we see bank-voles and wood-mice collecting seeds that have fallen from the bird feeders. They seem to have come back too, so we're happy that we haven't disturbed them too much.


I think that rushing to finish that bit of gardening and also working on Scrappies membership data-base and several mailings both for Scrappies and the Arts Festival made me a bit over-tired - that's why I have this cold. Hopefully, this last couple of days of rest will have me back up and about in double quick time. At times like this I realise that I am not the energetic woman I once was. The anti-cancer drugs are taking their toll in terms of fatigue and pain. I'm not complaining. I've been to sites on the web where others have far worse symptoms than me, so I'm happy to be doing very well most of the time. However, I can't wait till the summer of 2010 when I'll be able to stop taking the Arimidex and I hope that a lot of these silly aggravations will go away.



So that's all for now, folks! Please stay in touch!

Rhubarb Margaritas!

Well, here we are - slap bang in the middle of England's lovely, long drawn out spring. It starts in February with snowdrops and hellebores, then there are crocusses in March f0llowed by crowds of daffodils in every garden and along the sides of every road.

Now, though, the daffodils are fading and other delights are taking their place. The bluebells are coming out in woods and hedgerows and there's a haze of blue over everything as the forget-me-nots come into full bloom.

Another spring delight is the rhubarb. I started picking ours this week, so we're experimenting a bit. I really like it cooked with sugar and ginger and served with ice-cream, but this afternoon we just had a few stalks left over so we quickly stewed them in the microwave and then John used them instead of limejuice in a couple of delicious margaritas. It may sound awful, but they were really good! That's a picture of it on the right, along with some more rhubarb leaves that are just coming up.

Even the indoor plants are getting in on the act. Here's a picture of one of John's venerable cacti. It is smothered in little yellow blooms.

Needless to say, the bird-life is getting quite exiting too! John has been busy for the last few months making nest boxes. We think we have at least three blue tit families, one great tit and one robin in the boxes and there are numerous other nests in the hedges and shrubs around the garden. Somewhere two pairs of bullfinches must be working on a family. These are lovely colorful birds and they really add a touch of class to the garden even though I know they're eating all my apple buds! I think there are a couple of jays nesting near by too as they've become regular visitors to the garden. These are larger than American blue jays and very beautifully marked birds so we're very pleased to see them here.

We saw our first babies this last week. One was a little dunnock (or hedge sparrow) and the other was a blackbird. There is great competition for all the food we put out. The robins have been following us around the garden as we worked, coming in to within a couple of feet of us to pick up exposed insects, worms and grubs. Sometimes there are pitched battles at the feeder between robins or blackbirds from different territories in the garden and they all seem to have a feeding heirarchy which depends more on agressiveness than size.

In this third picture you can see our blue azalea. This is the first of the azaleas to come out. In fact it put out a few blossoms in November and December, too! Stalking across the drive in this picture is Mr. Magnificent, our dominant cock pheasant. See how short his tail is? That's because he has a very active sex life and he's broken all his tail feathers off!!!! This pheasant is the one we called "Darkie" last year because of his dark coloration. This year he seemed to get bigger and more pompous as he built his harem of 7 females and so we re-named him to Mr. M.

Lately he has had some competition. A new cock has appeared on the scene. This one is called "Pinhead" on account of his rather small head and neck! Pinhead is a skulker - he doesn't stalk around majestically like Mr. M. - he creeps around and hides behind the plants in the hopes of catching one of the females when the boss is looking the other way. We were mightily amused to watch him the other day. He was hiding in the Phormiums waiting for some females to come over and eat. When they did he took off after them like a bat out of hell. They, of course, rushed back into the "woods" where Mr. M. was lurking, and Pinhead followed them right into his rival's patch. The next thing we saw was Pinhead tearing out of the woods, closely followed by Mr. M. They chased around the garden for a while till Mr. M. took to the air and almost landed on top of Pinhead. This was too much - Pinhead took off and flew away with Mr. M. in hot pursuit. The last I saw was the two of them lumbering past me and over the hedge, flapping away and squawking madly.

The weather has been glorious so we've been spending a lot of time out of doors. There's a lot to do and we've probably done less than a quarter of the spring clean-up so far. We should have started earlier, but ....... oh well.

Volunteer activities have kept us busy when we've come in out of the sunshine. I've been doing mailings for the Arts Festival and data bases for Scrappies, there's Breeding Bird Survey activities for John and of course, we're both still working on the Birds Egg identification project at the museum.

We're also playing host to Her Majesty Little Miss Frankenpussy again. In fact she's fast asleep on the floor right next to me as I write. She's snoring gently and every now and then she makes a little chirping noise. She's such a delight to have around the house, we'll miss her when she goes back home.

So that's about it. If you add domestic duties and visits to neighbours to the above you have the sum total of our lives at present. I don't think I could ask for anything better!

Stay in touch please!

Happy Fertility Day!

It's Easter (Oestra?) Sunday and I'm happy to report that we're in shorts for the first time this year! It's a beautiful day and we're just getting ready to go out and do some gardening. Work around and in the house has been on hold for a couple of months as we gallivanted about with a steady stream of visitors. They're the main reason why I haven't been updating my blog and why this weightloss update is so late.

I'm pleased to say that I continue to loose weight. My average weight loss is .7lb per week. This is a bit less than I'd hoped, but not bad considering how many big meals and dinners out we've had. This week I dropped down below 200lb for the first time in many years and I've been able to wear a few things that I'd hidden in the back of the closet. In one of the local shops there are a couple of pairs of light coloured trousers which I promised myself if I dropped below 200. They should see me through the summer in good style.

The picture above is of one of many mute swans we encountered last month on a narrow boat trip with Joy and John. I'll be doing another post with more information about that and our other doings as soon as I have a bit of time to myself. In addition to our house and garden chores the volunteering has just kicked up another notch and we're deep into web pages, data bases, mass mailings and other time consuming activities. And it wasn't long ago that I was lolling around the house saying I needed a job because I was bored! AAAAARRRRRRRRGHGH!

Stay in touch, please.

Monthly Weight Report

I can report much better progress this month, thank goodness! On the 17th of December I was 95.5 kg. On the 18th of February I weighed-in at 92.4 kg, so I have now lost 3.1 kg or 6.8 lb. Now I have to keep that rate of weight loss up for the rest of the year!

I'm also happy to report that I've picked up some more sponsors and have 36 all together. I mustn't let any of you down - I plan to take you for all I can get!

Many of you wrote in answer to my last report. Because of this I tried various forms of hot drinks and finally settled on weak, black, tea. I brew a small pot in the morning and then dole it out during the day, topping it up with hot water to make it weaker and warm enough to drink. I've also managed to cut out those evening snacks of bread and butter, replacing them with dried fruit and nuts. Fortunately I can eat lots of dried fruit without ill effect! Thanks for all the advice and encouragement. Feel free to continue writing - some filling, low calorie recipes would be useful if you have them.

You might think that some of the weight loss would be due to increased exercise, but in fact that isn't the case. The weather has not been all that good - we were even snowed in for a few days - and we haven't really been doing much extra. Now, though, we're hitting the garden more vigorously and we're trying to get some walks in so we'll have to see if that helps or if it makes us so hungry we'll start to eat more!

Any comments? Please feel free to e-mail me about this message.

Crow Ploughs!!!!!

On Thursday morning we and our visitors were treated to a really interesting and funny display from a couple of crows. Here's how John described it to the Shropshire Birds List:

"I saw what was, for me, a new example of crow behaviour this morning. Two Carrion Crows were foraging in several centimetres of snow on my back lawn in Church Stretton, picking up mixed seed intended for finches, blackbirds etc. They started off using a familiar back-and-forth bill "swiping"technique to uncover the seeds from the newly-fallen snow. After a few minutes, one of the crows pushed its head *completely* under the snow and started running forward, with its head entirely beneath the snow surface. This went on for 2-3 metres. It did this in an area where there was no bird food. After a few seconds, its companion started doing the same. It was great fun watching these energetic corvid snow-ploughs create long furrows through the snow cover of my back garden, although what they were doing is a mystery to me. Maybe they were trying to find food items beneath the snow or maybe they were collecting snow to drink or maybe they were just playing (it looked like fun) - I have no idea! The complexity of crow behaviour never ceases to amaze me."

Gotcha! We're snowed in!

Well, we got blasted, didn't we?

I shouldn't have suggested that it might be spring already.

The picture on the left is of my lovely clump of bamboo, now flattened by snow. After I took that, yesterday, I went out and shook off all the stems (getting totally covered in snow in the process). They sprang back somewhat, but after another hour of heavy snow they were right back to the positions shows in the photo. And this morning they were almost completely buried in the heavy, wet, white stuff!

We had a visit from Trevor (John's old school friend) and Chris last weekend and were able to go out for walks and admire all the pretty flowers that were out. The village green has been covered in a carpet of mauve crocusses and the banks of snowdrops are really magnificent. We also had a smashing Sunday lunch at the carvery in the Railway Inn in Marshbrook. We realised we were in for a treat when we met not only the owners of the local restaurant, but also the owners of the local deli! It has to be good if they patronize it!!!!

On Wednesday it was the turn of some old McMaster friends to visit. Dolly came down from Chester and Jane (with daughter, Kim) came over from Canada. It was a cold but sunny day and we enjoyed a good walk over Rectory Field and along the Allen Coppice Sculpture trail. There are some more animal sculptures now - more owls, a woodpecker and various other lovely things.

We knew the forecast was for snow, so seeing Mary at the top of the hill we asked if our friends could keep their cars in her drive overnight. She said yes, so we moved them up there.

In the evening we kept switching over to the 24 hour news channel to keep an eye on the weather. They were calling for "heavy" snow to roll in over night. I was so exited by having friends there and the thought of snow that I couldn't sleep very well and got up to watch the first of the snow. I was able to watch a mouse collecting peanuts on the patio for about an hour before I finally felt sleepy enough to go back to bed.

In the morning it became clear that no-one was going anywhere. I really didn't expect to get much snow, and actually we only had a couple of inches on the ground, but that's enough to paralyse things in this country and we watched story after story of traffic and travel chaos. Jane called her mum and told her she was waiting it out and we sat around talking and trying to decide what to do.

Early in the afternoon, Dolly decided to go for it and after we'd walked up to Mary's with her, saw her off and looked at the state of the roads, Jane decided to leave too. Both sets called later to say that they'd had easy journeys with very little traffic and clear roads. That's because all the media had asked people to stay home and stop contributing to the chaos!!!!!

So we thought the worst was over. We were wrong. Yesterday it started snowing again. It snowed all day, sometimes heavily, and we ended up with more than 8 inches on the ground. The pictures of the driveway above and John feeding the birds (to the left) were taken yesterday and there was more snow on top of that.

Overnight last night the thaw started. Now there are avalanches of heavy, wet snow falling out of the laurels and onto my shrubs. Many of them are bent to the ground and some have snapped or have root damage. It looks as though there's going to be even more pruning this spring than I'd planned! We've shaken off some of the most vulnerable plants, but there's still a lot that will just have to fend for themselves.

The forecast shows a drier, warmer trend for the next week so you can guess where I'm going to be and what I'm going to be doing before our next visitors arrive next weekend!

Keep those e-mails coming, please!

It isn't spring, is it?

No, it can't be spring yet, but the signs are all there. Masses of snowdrops are appearing in the garden and along the hedgerows, the pheasants are chasing about all over the garden, the blackbird and the tits have joined the robin in singing for mates and territories and the village green is covered in crocuses! Now, where have the badgers gone? We've hardly seen them this winter as I think they go into a more sleepy mode (they don't hibernate, however).


The peanuts are still disappearing so we set up a time-lapse camera to see who was taking them as we'd seen a mouse earlier in the winter. Well, the badger did show up, but he only ate a few nuts (very different from the summer when he scarfed the whole lot!) and the rest were cleaned up by the pheasants at first light.


We did see a badger the other night for a brief spell, but he didn't stay long and he didn't eat much. However, soon after he left, a fox came onto the patio for a few nuts. The cheeky thing walked right up to the living room doors, he must have seen us, but he didn't seem very nervous at all. That's the first fox we've seen for about a year, so maybe we have a new one to replace the one that disappeared.


Today the sun has been shining all day and it's been quite mild, but it's going to freeze up tonight under the clear skies. It should all look lovely in the moonlight. We're planning to take advantage of the good weather and cook out on the barbeque this weekend. I've got pork for kebabs and I'm marinating a butterflied leg of lamb - yum, yum. Have to try hard not to eat too much as I've done well over the past couple of weeks and have begun to really loose weight.


We have the first of a stream of visitors arriving today. They're staying for the weekend and then another lot are arriving mid-week! So we've been scurrying around to do shopping and cleaning so we can enjoy our friends and not do too much when they're here. To add to our housework, we had a couple of very successful trips to Ikea this week and then spent a lot of time putting together some furniture for the bedroom and a new oak filing cabinet for John's library.


Here's a picture of the bedroom furniture. We bought the bed at the end of 2005 and we've been very pleased with it. Not only does it look nice, it's wonderfully comfortable to sleep in and it's one of those adjustable beds, so we can sit up and read in comfort. This week we bought the bedside tables and chests of drawers to match.


It's lovely to get rid of the horrible plastic stacking baskets that we'd been using since we moved into the flat in Columbus. Everytime I looked at them I remembered lying in bed in the flat after my lumpectomy and during the bad parts of chemo. So it's good to have all that behind me.


Amd there's more good news - I had my yearly checkup with the surgeon this week and have been given the all-clear again. Hurray!


So on that pleasant note, I'll leave you ...... keep those e-mails coming, please!

Monthly Summary

It's time for the dreaded disclosure ... and it's not good news. I've only managed to loose a pound this month. If I continue at that rate, you won't owe me much at the end of the year!

I realise that this is going to be the worst month for eating because of the continuous round of holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. and it's also the worst for exercise because of the bad weather, but those are just excuses and I'm going to try harder next month.

I've now cut out sugar from tea and coffee. I did this at Christmas, at the urging of John's family who all said I'd get used to it. I haven't gotten used to it yet - they still taste pretty awful - so I have a choice of going without tea and coffee or putting up with it. I won't put sugar into drinks for the next year and I refuse to use sweeteners. If only I could think of a hot drink with a very slightly sweet taste that wasn't loaded with sugar. I'll experiment with herbal teas over the next few weeks, but I don't really like them very much.

We're also cutting down on our fats. I've stopped spreading large amounts of butter or marge on my breakfast and lunch bread and we've gone back to cutting the fat off our chops. When we moved back to the UK we got rather lax at doing those things as we were enjoying the comfort foods of our youth. My aim for the next month is to increase the amounts of fruit and veg that we eat and cut down even more on the fats.

Exercise is still a problem. In the past we've joined a gym, but the nearest one is in Shrewsbury and that's a long way to go and will take a lot of time. Everyone around here says we should just go walking, but we're finding it difficult to get motivated - the weather has been lousy. We have been out a few times - braving the howling wind and stinging rain - but not enough to make a difference. This month we must make much more of an effort to get out and walk and stop making excuses to stay indoors in the warm and dry.

Does this all sound a bit negative? I AM a bit disapointed with my performance last month, but it's made me all the more determined to work harder at it in the remaining 11 months.

So stay tuned for a better update next month, and don't forget - it isn't too late to send me a pledge of support!