Stepping out and making the most of the weather

After trying to publish this post for a good half hour last night, I finally gave in to the message that the laptop would not connect to the internet.  Strangely the iPad and the MacAir were quite happy to connect.  Funny old world.  


After a rather wet and windy night, this morning (ie Friday) dawned beautifully bright and clear.  Never one to miss a treat, I got two loads of washing through the machine, plus a few items washed by hand, all on the line by 11 o'clock.  By early afternoon the whole lot was dry; by this evening it had been ironed and put away.  Being able to take advantage of good drying weather in the middle of winter is such a bonus and I am going to make the most of it.  This is such a simple pleasure, laundry drying outside, and it certainly beats having it festooned around the house.

It was bread-making day today, and the warmth from the sun speeded-up the proving.  I have to follow the sun around the house, so I set the yeast to activate in the conservatory (late morning sun) and the bread proved on the guest bedroom window-sill, taking in the early afternoon sun.  I think I have finally cracked the bread-making; I can knock up two pretty acceptable wholemeal loaves without needing to check the recipe, and I've learned to be fairly flexible with the amounts.  These two loaves will last us a week and the taste is so superior to anything that comes sliced in a plastic bag.  We resort to shop-bought occasionally but the real thing is is so much better.

We took a walk into town this afternoon, not to buy anything but just to stretch our legs.  There's so much sitting around over Christmas what with eating/snacking, drinking, watching television, doing puzzles and reading, but not so much moving about.  I think we should have made a bit more of an effort to get out and about but we didn't.  Consequently we are both feeling the effects.  Well, a walk there and back notched up 7100 steps on the old pedometer and while it's not calibrated to 100% accuracy, it was probably about 3 1/2 miles in total.  That's fine.  We heard, and then spotted high up in a tree, a robin singing his heart out and it was so lovely we stopped and just listened for a while.  We took it easy on the way home as N's knee is still not right but a little gentle exercise probably won't do any harm.  He has an appointment on Monday at the surgery.

I picked some more of our spinach for dinner tonight - lovely.  The slugs don't seem to have attacked it which is always a bonus.  N and I have been discussing the planting for this season; he is keen to have a go at squashes now we have the space, which should be interesting.  The carrots in the old water tank should have been thinned out a long time ago but it always seems to go against the grain, pulling half the seedlings out.  Of course, if we had done what we should have done we might have had home-grown carrots for Christmas.  Lesson learned.  In future, the carrots will be thinned.

The decs are coming down tomorrow, tine to get the house back to some kind of normality.  And we both agreed that we need to start decluttering yet again.  Although we were pretty ruthless when we moved last year we have been surprised just how much stuff we still have.  We sorted through a couple of drawers today and found bits we'd forgotten about and plenty of things either in the wrong place or not needed at all.  We realised that when we moved, quite a lot of stuff simply got put in the nearest cupboard or drawer without being properly 'assessed'.  i think that will be an on-going project this year.  Black bin bags to the ready!