SILVER LININGS IN THE BUNKER

Can another week have passed and we are still in the bunker?  Considering we are not allowed to go out other than for specified things such as shopping for food, exercise or medical reasons the time seems to fly by.  Helped of course by the lovely weather and the fact that we are lucky enough to have a garden and are not incarcerated indoors like so many.

So what have I been doing all week?  Well Monday I chatted with a French friend via Skype as usual and then spent the afternoon gardening - attempting to clear the area which runs along the boundary with the wood which didn't get done last year as I couldn't kneel nor crouch down having broken my ankle early in the year and followed that up with the removal of a skin cancer on my arm which then became infected after the stitches were removed so not ideal for grovelling in the hedgerow amongst the blackberry bushes and nettles so this year I have been trying to rid the area of two years' of overgrowth!!

 On Tuesday after spending the morning on the boundary weeds we set off to Sherborne for a month's shopping.  Having calculated that if we went once a month the 10 mile round trip would actually be less mileagewise than a once a week shop nearer home in supermarkets I don't usually shop in and in which I don't know where to find anything.  Also I would presumably come into contact with only a quarter of the customers I might have been close to if I shopped weekly so we went and it was lovely.  The A30 almost deserted in the sunshine reminding me of all those times I must have travelled this lovely route when I lived in Sherborne and worked in Yeovil back in the '60s.  Arriving at a near empty car park we found no queue and were both allowed to go in and in next to no time we had done our shopping and encountered at a safe distance about half a dozen other customers inside.  So now I have a store cupboard - well actually it is the spare bedroom but we aren't expecting guests any time soon and it is cool in there - full of groceries to last me a month if I have guessed correctly and together with our weekly organic veg box plus a fruit box and several litres of fresh milk each week we won't go hungry!! 

Then on Wednesday morning Mr M had a little outing on his own when he had to go to the doctor's for a routine Vit B12 injection.  Seems he parked and had to wait in the car till the nurse came out and took his temperature all togged up in her PPEs and as he didn't have a temperature he was allowed to go inside and within a few minutes he was all done and dusted and on his way home - we take our pleasures in quite different ways these days!!

Thursday morning dawned with no water supply!  You don't realise just how often you turn the tap on till nothing comes out of it!!  We washed in rainwater from the water butts and also used the washing water to flush the toilets but we had no drinking water and I wasn't sure if rainwater even if boiled was safe to drink.  Luckily our neighbours were happy to exchange a couple of bottles of spring water for the idea of using rain water to flush the loo.  And the supply was back by lunchtime.  Not the ideal time to be unable to wash our hands and rinse in running water as instructed though. It did all make for a late start on the gardening work though having to fetch pans of rain water and boil them and then collect more rainwater this time cold though come to think of it why didn't we just heat the water to required washing temperature I wonder - you live and learn!

This area cleared - had forgotten there were stones along the edge!

Friday more gardening and did the washing and other domestic chores.

This is what I was up against!

Saturday more of the same - we need certain little pointers to remind us what day of the week it is now that most are the same as each other.

Little vase of Christmas roses rescued from beneath the weeds!

So we haven't left the "estate" at all other than our couple of outings early in the week and I have discovered that I am no longer so stressed as what I am doing in the garden has been calming - mindfully weeding the area in front of me and not looking to see how much more I have to do or how long it might take me and the feeling of achievement when I stopped for the day.  After all we have however long it takes and maybe the rest of our lives to do what we are doing now.  Mr M was busy doing his own thing elsewhere, the birds were singing and the sun on my back it was lovely and I was reminded of the days when we took over an allotment when we lived in Guildford all those years ago and we'd stop and wipe our brows having cleared another area of the bramble patch we had been allocated!  We dreamed of having a place where we could live the Good Life.  Well that didn't happen but we did do a lot of the things we dreamed of such as keeping a few hens in our back garden, growing lots of vegetables, making jams and preserves with some of the blackberries and other foraged items, baking bread, spinning and weaving and so on and I realised that every cloud has a silver lining and maybe Coronavirus has one too and maybe we can do a lot of those things which had fallen by the wayside along the years.

So as well as gardening I am back to making bread and hope that with practice I will soon be as good at it as I used to be.  To that end a new toy arrived on Friday - a new Kenwood Chef something I used to have for years after my mother gave up her bread making and handed it over to me.  Sadly it broke down and couldn't be repaired and so I have been considering for some time whether to get another and what better opportunity than now.  I also plan to make yoghurt and will be off to the woods this coming week for some nettles to make soup what could be nicer with a hunk of home made bread.  Unless it is that same hunk spread with some of my homemade hedgerow spread some of which I still have in the cupboard.

I plan to harvest some micro greens this evening to go with my salad for supper as my Radish Farm is ready for thinning out!!  This idea of planting in toilet roll inners was passed on by a friend although why not just plant in the carton without the toilt rolls?  As you can see we are readying ourselves for bean planting too.  Tom and Barbara here we come!!!


Last Sunday we enjoyed a lovely steam train journey - one that we would have actually done had we not been advised that a rail holiday in Scotland might not be a good idea on crutches!  If you fancy a calm couple of hours on the train through beautiful countryside do as we did and pack a sandwich and a cup of coffee and watch this! 

Or for something quite different listen to this or of course both.