31.07. Last day of July

Hello! It seems like my promise of getting back to writing again has been hard to keep, it is the last day of July and this will be only the third post this month. But my recovery from the hip replacement operation last month is going slower than I was hoping for, and I just haven’t got the energy to do much at all. I have been taking a few photos over the week-end though, and I thought I would share them with you over the next few days.

23.07. Norway attacks

By now, most people around the world with access to a television will have heard about the twin attacks on Norway. I have received a number of emails and SMS yesterday and today with sympathy declarations and questions whether my relatives are safe. Living here in London, Norway and Norwegian politics seems very distant most of the time, and in the 12 years I have regarded London as my home, I have only been back to Norway to visit family on 3 occasions – the last time in 2006. But when a catastrophe like this happens, I think any person living abroad feel closer to their home country than ever, regardless of how many years they have been away. Although many things have probably changed since I emigrated, I have the last 24 hours got confirmed over and over again that one thing has not changed since I left; the Norwegian open society.

16.07. I'm back!

Hi, I’m back! Have you been looking for me? Wondered if I was ever going to write here again? Well, I must admit at some point I was wondering myself if I was ever going to get back behind my laptop. If you are one of my regular readers you will perhaps remember that I have been off to hospital to have a hip replacement operation. That was almost 4 weeks ago and I am now slowly recovering at home. Things didn’t go exactly according to plan; when do they ever (!!), but I am not going to bore you with too many details about the excessive bleeding I had the second week after the operation, the two trips to the A&E by ambulance after coming home due to the excessive bleeding and an operation wound that stayed open for three weeks after the operation… well, to sum it up; it’s been stressful and I am exhausted and not doing much else than staying in bed still. Although, yesterday, being 27 degrees and sunny, I did manage to go out in my garden and take a few photos, which I haven’t done for a whole month, so that gave me a kick up my backside to write a bit so I could post my photos.

18.06. Blogging break

Hello, this will be my last post in a while; I am off to the hospital on Monday to have a hip replacement operation. When I heard that it would be late June before I would get the operation I thought to myself; Oh, no, that’s going to be impossible with my garden, how am I going to take care of it while recovering? And all the watering I sometimes do during the summer? Well, I say ‘sometimes’, because it really varies, as the amount of rain we get here can really vary a lot. The last 3 months we have hardly got a drop of rain over the whole of South-East England, and several counties have declared drought already, although London have yet to do so. But the last 2 weeks it has rained almost every day, sometimes really bucketing down, and I haven’t watered my garden at all. You know, it really evens out over time usually…what doesn’t come down one month usually comes next month…so I suppose it’s just good timing if we get showers for the next few weeks then ;-) But watering is just one part of gardening and the rest will have to be just so so, like deadheading and keeping up with the pests etc…I guess the lily beetles will have a right feast the next month! But most of the lilies have finished flowering, only the Lilium regale are left and they are flowering right now, and when they are gone the lily beetles are welcome to have the remaining leaves and stalks!

15.06. Hip replacement

Hello, I have been mentioning lately my upcoming hip operation, and that I would write a bit about it in a post this week so I guess I just got to get on with it :-) I am so busy preparing for my operation though; the last 2 days I have, with the help from my son, turned my house upside down. Most of my sofa is now upstairs in my bedroom, apart from the corner section which doesn’t go up the stairs because it is too big. My coffee table and the living room chair is also upstairs, whilst my king size bed and night stand is downstairs in my living room! As I said; my house is turned upside down, all in preparation for me coming home after the operation. Because I live in a Victorian house with extremely steep stairs, climbing those stairs every evening and getting down again every morning, plus going down and up if I needed the toilet during the night to get to my downstairs bathroom is just out of the question. I therefore decided to move my bed downstairs. When I had my first hip operation in 2007 I thought I would be able to manage the stairs by the time I got home from the hospital, but it was such a frightening ordeal that this time I am making it very simple by not needing to go upstairs at all.

10.06. New neighbours

Hello, Friday already, don’t really know where the week has gone, except that I have been very busy. I did intend to write here both yesterday and the day before, but I was too knackered to even sit down with my laptop, let alone produce anything half interesting…but tonight I have some photos for you at least. As you may know if you have visited my blog before, my big project for the last 4 months has been creating a garden next door. I did it first of all because I was so fed up looking at the jungle of weeds that grew higher and higher. And secondly to get rid of the foxes that thought that garden was an excellent place to hang out with their friends…and nip over to my garden on a daily basis to dig up my flowerbeds…ugh, I have had some really bad experiences with the family of foxes that congregated on my lawn for weeks as if they owned my garden. Only when I got really close to them did they jump over the fence back to next door. Not scared at all, just at a rather leisurely pace, as if to say ‘I can hardly be bothered doing this but since you are coming right up to me I will saunter off.’ Luckily, my plan has worked; since tidying up the garden, I haven’t seen or heard a fox at all :-)

06.06. Homemade ice cream

Last Saturday I spent making ice cream, homemade ice cream – 10 litres of homemade ice cream! Actually, it wasn’t such a big job as it might sound, I did it in two batches, and each batch took only just over 30 minutes to make. So what do I need 10 litres of ice cream for? It’s actually not for me, it is for my son; it is a present for his 25th birthday which is on Friday, but don’t tell him – it’s supposed to be a surprise :-)

02.06. Red is the colour

Summer is back! After a short spell of cold windy weather we are now promised a long warm period. Today we reached 27 degrees in my garden and I have been outside most of the day. OK, so more warm weather means more watering the garden, but I am willing to accept that, I really enjoy leaving my cardigan on the coat hook :-)