Confessions of a serial mower - "humming along" nicely

Well it was meant to be a quiet "me time" sort of day today. A leisurely shower, blow dry hair, paint nails, a bit of exfoliation - maybe a blog - you know the sort of thing.
GOH had to leave at some ungodly hour to visit a stud farm and farmhouse in Wiltshire he had designed last year and which is now complete. He has gone to do the "snagging" list as they call it - the little, we hope, bits and pieces that are not quite right or not finished to the clients satisfaction. A sum of money is retained at the end of a contract for six months or so, and is released to the builder when this final inspection is carried out and any work outstanding is finished. I went down there when the stud had an open day last autumn and was really quite impressed. "I wish you wouldn't act so surprised when you see the finished article" says GOH, "it doesn't give the right impression". He has been a designer for some 40 years now, man and boy, but I am still impressed when I see his finished work. I have to learn a new way of showing how proud of him I am! Surprised is not a good look!! It frightens the clients!
He is a very talented architect though I say so myself and has designed many buildings all over the country. He specializes mainly in schools and buildings associated with them such as sports halls and swimming pools. He designed and actually constructed by himself one of the first barn conversions in Suffolk, in another life, before Mousie. As such, he is quite sought after and even though he is now 60, he loves every day of his job, though the planning bureaucracy does wear him and the practice down. It is this proper job as I call it that allows us to live here and farm, without his income we could not afford the mortgage. Plain fact.

Anyway, was just settling down for a relaxing day on my own, when two builders turn up on the doorstep wanting to start the concrete floors in the barn. You remember, the ones dug out by the gravedigger. So clutching the shower towel round me I have to find the car keys to move my car and the trannie van. Can't find the van keys so have to ring GOH who is now with said client. He is not amused and I get short shrift but now know where the keys are! The hum of the mixer permeates the house as the floors get laid. It is not going to be a peaceful day I can tell.

Another knock on the door, by now my hair is at least dry. It is the fertilizer man for the lawns - you know my pride and joy - and as it has rained could he spread the organic lawn feed today. He also wants to chat and talk about the neighbours up the road and I just want to get dressed. It is now 9.15 a.m. Another hum permeates the house - the smell, and I mean stink, from the organic chicken manure lawn feed pellets!! It would seem that the last time he used this fertilizer I was away on holiday, so never noticed, and "the smell usually goes go in about 3 days, providing it rains"! Oh, that's alright then! Now have to shut all the windows and the back door.

The ducks and ducklings by this time have heard me and are also on the door step demanding their breakfast. I look down and there is more organic fertilizer on my step, this time it is fresh and in natural form. Lavender anyone?

Confessions of a serial mower - back to normal - copy

Rather a quiet day in Suffolk today - thundery, heavy, close sort of day as they say here, feels a bit stormy. Finished off the lawns that were a bit too damp to do yesterday. Delivered Parish Magazines - one or two people owed the princely sum of £4.00 for the yearly subscription and I had to pursue this. The most difficult customer was my old dad - "didn't know if it was worth it"! I rather thought 12 copies of our newsy little magazine, delivered to his door, was well worth the money but such is life. He saw me eyeing up his brand new lawn mower and hedge cutter and thought he best hand over the cash!! My brother was no better. Embarrassing or what, when your late payers are family and the church warden has to quietly mention the fact to you. Mum would always pay for all these sorts of incidentals. Money is not the issue here, dad is what you would call very comfortably off these days, as is brother. If its not for the farm or garden they don't like parting with their cash.
A real Suffolk trait.

Hopping Moon wondered if I had a photograph of a manatee (sea cow) a rare mammal found in the warm waters in and around the Everglades and South West Florida - www.manateecenter.com. I have pictures of the whirlpool effects they leave in the water when they come up for air, but they didn't reproduce very well.
I have printed the photo GOH took when we were there last February of a dolphin playing with a fish. That's about as exciting as it gets. No blog today just these little meanderings.
Lastly, did anyone hear back from the ASA when they contacted them regarding the CL competition. Just wondered if it was all now done and dusted and if CL emerged unscathed.

Confessions of a serial mower - travels with mum

Kitty B set me thinking the other day. Her blog discussed cremation as opposed to burial and it is a dilemma we all have to face in one form or another I guess. Either in advance for ourselves or when the inevitable happens for a relative.

I have a fear of fire and thus I have instructions in my will that I want to be buried in the churchyard attached to the pretty Church of my birth village. Many late family members are resting there after their agricultural toils; great grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. As a family we have travelled all over but we seem to come to rest back in our beloved Suffolk village. Farming is very like that, you need to get back to your roots, in dry soil preferably under a spreading chestnut tree. We are a bit obsessed with chestnuts in our family. It is the name of my paternal farm, Chestnut Tree Farm.
When I was born one Christmas Day, a sweet chestnut was planted to commemorate this momentous event and it thrives today, tall and spreading and pink, on the farm.

Mum, now she was born in a tiny cottage in the village where we now live. She had no desire to be buried and this left us in somewhat of a quandary. “ What to do with mother”! She left no written express wish.
I inherited her very warped and macabre sense of humour and I am sure she has a wry smile about her now as she watches over me from wherever she is today. I say that not in jest, but because she could be, well, anywhere. Upon her passing much debate (polite word for it) ensued. I took tea with the Vicar, a modern, forward thinking man. He had spent many hours with mum during her last days, and he gave me some very sound advice. Whatever you do, he said, “scatter her to the four winds” if you want, but if you do you will never have a place to come back to. He added he had come across it time and again, after a while you will need a place to return to, a place to chat, to leave flowers, to just be with her.

Mum is now a very well travelled lady. Her ashes are indeed buried in said Churchyard with a little marble plaque and vase so I can visit her whenever I want and place some flowers and have a chat. But not all of her. Some are here with us at our home in a special little box. Some are scattered with her beloved mum and dad in our Churchyard here, the village of her birth.
The remainder are floating somewhere in the blue green warm waters off the coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico, scattered off our favourite barrier island, where dolphins play and manatees swim, and the sand is white and children scream and frolic in the gentle waves. She is forever on vacation. She never was in life; she rarely rested or ever had a holiday. She worked and worked and mothered and cared, all her waking hours.
She was planning to come with us to our secret island the year she died. So, with special permission and a lot of prodding, comments and raised eyebrows from the Customs Men in Miami, she went, safely encased in a jiffy bag, via British Airways. A trip of a lifetime. A trip after a lifetime.

Confessions of a serial mower - in Grandma mode

What a fun filled few days we have had with The Heiress. We have experienced many new treasured memories in just this short time. She walked unaided for the first time, teeny tiny little steps, quite by accident as she momentarily forgot herself and walked to steal her Granddad’s tea. She promptly sat down with the shock and excitement of it all, but we were there to witness it. She shrieked with laugher till we all cried, and has been gaining confidence ever since.
She has learnt to open and close cupboard doors and drawers whilst saying “open” and “close” every time, a hundred times, for at least half an hour at a time. Fisher Price has nothing on my poor bedside cabinet.
We have had our first picnic in the garden, under the sunscreen tent thingy we bought last year, only it wasn’t sunny it was windy but it served its purpose and indeed I may keep it erected for myself.
We have used the super duper coach built pram for the first time, a photo of which is accompanying this blog. She wasn’t too impressed at first but then she realized the pram was sprung and rather thought she was on some fairground ride I think.
She ate her first jelly – it seems she had never had a jelly – something I think I was raised on. If all else failed with me as a child, I was a particularly picky eater, mum would make a jelly or even a milk jelly, just to get something into me. Anyway, The Heiress is teething and her little gums are really sore. So, I followed my mum’s example and whipped up a jelly and it worked. She loved it and every meal this weekend seems to have involved a jelly in all sorts of guise. Plain, milk, with fruit, without. A spoonful of jelly, a spoonful of poached fish. I know, quite disgusting, but she loved every wibbly wobbly spoonful. Note my new improved language.
We are actually in training, as in a few weeks time, we get to look after her, on her her own for an entire weekend whilst her parents attend a non-child friendly wedding in Scotland. Its many many years since we have been entrusted with sole care of a toddler and we get the feeling we are being “hot housed” this weeked.
To this end we have all been obviously talking about the child abduction case in Portugal.
The rights and wrongs of leaving children unattended, even in seemingly the safest of settings. I am a born worrier and can and do worry for England. I would fear too much about whether a child choked, or drowned in the toilet, or fell, or turned the hot water tap on etc., let alone contemplate leaving them alone in a building however near I was. Is this just Grandma over protection, I think not. As I go upstairs to check she is still breathing for what seems like the hundredth time, and then hear her snuffly little angel breaths, I just know most of you think like me. She is the most precious gift we have ever been given. I feel my late beloved mum is guarding her with me.