Today looks and feels like autumn

 Goodafternoon everybody!

yes, today is a dull day, cloudy, windy, sometimes a bit of rain, temperature around just 17C, it almost feels like a day in autumn. It should be somewhat better tomorrow, but the whole week we will not reach much more as top 21C. We could do with just a whee bit better weather, it still is August, but doesn;t really looks like it. May be we will have an excellent and warm fall, who knows?

It was a quiet week, although I went here and about to get us some things for a near by projec. we will do it in slow pace, but it has to be done. Firdt will be to paint the outisde of the garden doors,  the paint is starting to bladder here and there, so it will need a light sanding, perhaps a ground cover and then the paint. It isn't a very big project, can be done in may be two days(with drying etc). Every day a couple of hours may be. Jan can do a part, I have more in mind for the inside of the house. Some doors could do with a new coat of paint, so that will be a longer time needed. So I went to buy us some paint, some rollers and paint brushes, masking tape, all such things.

I really have no idea how long it will take, I just do a bit each time, take a few days rest in between, then a next small part and so on. Where are the times I had more than enouh energy to do those bigger jobs in a day or two three in a row???? But slowly and secure does the trick too, so hopefully before winter it will be done. Cross my fingers.

I did arrange some drawers in the kitchen and some re-arranging in the grocgerie stock room, all looks better again. So I am not completely lazy, there are things done LOL. 

Also some garden work done, mostly a bit of pruning, weed control, dead-heading, trying to keep it look still good. Oh, we have started to harvest a bit of our tiny cherry tomatoes, pity there is not much sun to let them ripe quicker, but all together we will have a nice small crop. Jan tasted one or two and says they do taste really good. Well, they should, after the long wait, hahaha.

Had a long telephone call with my friend Heidi, she missed a little bit her daughter who was on a short vacation trip with some girl friends. They were in a holiday cottage and lucky for them just had some good weather days. Séverine had a great time with those girls, made several small trips(all here in the Netherlands), they did cook once or twice themselves, of course also had some take away meals or something like it, it was a trip of four days. I am glad she had a good time, she had a bit of a tough year, so some fun and laughter and relax time was a good thing.

Okay, not much more there is, so better i finish my post, may be do some blog reading or web surfing and then prepare dinner.

Wishing you all a wonderful week, stay safe.

We might be kind of in between cat-siitting family, LOL

 Goodafternoon everybody!

Yes, I am late, today, although I didnlt sleep that long. But I took it easy in the morning, slow start, then did some organizing with bills, bank account forms etc, all nice and as it should in their binders. Then I made a short stop in the garden, removed some weeds, cut off most of the leaves of the tomato plants( so they can ripe well, because they are starting to have color, but are not good to pick yet), dead headed some flowers.

It was nice just after we had some rainshowers, some of them quite heavy, but they didn;t last too long. And with a little bit of sunshine peeping around the clouds, it suddenly felt real nice in the garden for a moment.

The weather here is more or less a bit unpredictable, one day cloudy, with temps of just 19C, another day there is sunshine and some rain, a real rollercoaster type of weather. Could you call that real summerweather?? I don;t think so, but perhaps we will have those temperatures till far into autumn, who knows.

The visiting cat still is visiting us, and as the title of the blog already said, we feel like a baby sitter family or something. Yesterday night I saw him sitting outside too and just at that moment it was raining very hard, so we tried to let him have a dry spot in the house, but after a little sniffing around it seemed he wanted to go outside again So we let him go, he can find some small dry spots near our kitchen and he did sit there. So it is our idea he has a proper house, but the people perhaps work at day and let him out in the morning, or may be they work in shofts, so at night too. or he might have a cat door in his house and just likes to go around. But he is often to find in our garden near the kitchen door, on a little cabinet we have there. It is a rather dry and sheltered spot, so I put a small blanket for him there and he seems to like it. Well, we will keep an eye on him also when the weather will get worse and colder.

This week passed by rather quiet, although I even had almost two days with some extra energy, so I took advantage of that, cleaned some windows, cleaned some furniture, Jan did go through our stash of videotapes and dvd's, Not we only have a few left, the rest is in a box to put outside with a lot of other stuff we are gathering for the bulky waste collection service one day soon. It really is amazing to see how much stuff a person can collect over the years and has trouble parting with it, LOL.

This evening I will be frying two pieces of codfish, every now and then we like having some fish for dinner. Healthy it is too, and it makes a change. Just a few boiled potatoes to go with it and probably some green beans. Simple but still tasty I think.

I think I will go watching some tv, perhaps knit along during the watching and then soon it will be time to make that dinner.

Wishing you all a wonderful week, in safety.

Our sparrows are happy.

 Goodafternoon everybody.

We are having probably the last lovely day with around 23C, next week they expect a few days of much lower temperatures. like 17-18C with rain etc. May be next weekend it will get better again. 

It was a much better week this time, recovered on sleep, so a bit more energy was there. Between the usual things we had twice a pop-in visit of our neighbor. He is having vacation and is doing some DIY jobs. We could help him with some small tools and when returning them I invited him for a drink. It was nice to have someone on visit, specially for Jan it is good, while he doesn;t get out much and this way he speaks someone else. Our neighbor is a nice guy, sometimes we don't see eachother for longer time and then a few times a week. (We also take parcels from the post for him when he isnt at home).

Our birds specially the sparros, are very happy at the moment. I bought them a new type of birdseed container The old one was also good, but that one was always attacked and emptied almost by the crows and that costs a lot of birdseed.

Now I have this one and it is a pleasure to see the sparrows hope in and out, and make a lot of noise, hahaha.

During the week we had several visits of the neighboring cat, one day I was in the room in the morning watching some tv and suddenly saw something moving. You guessed right, it was the cat, looking around in the room. Well, I like him, but it is better he doesn;t come into the house, so I gently removed him.

Friday I seemed to be quite filled with some energy, so I changed the bedsheets, but also cleaned the whole bedroom, taking of the dust with a moist tissue of all that was in the room, removed a few small spider or dust webs in corners, and then went through with the vacuum cleaner. I felt quite happy with myself, LOL. Even did some gardening also, so it was a well spent day.

Yesterday I bought me a clematis plant, I was on the search for a long time for a new clematis, but couldn;t find it. Now I found one, even with discount, but this one was still looking good. So I will put it in a big container, together with something that will give some shadow on the roots, and we will try growing it near our sitting area. It's a clematis from the "So many purple flowers" it will grow not higher than about 3 mtr. and will grow not too wide either. I foud a picture of it on the web, I think it is the one I have, it has not so big flowers, but many smaller ones. Looks real nice.

I hope that tis one will survive, our other two clematis plants are completely disappeared. I think Jan pruned them too hard, and may be the roots drowned a bit when there was a period of much rain. Oh well, it is nice to have something new too.

Okay, time for me to finish now, my laundry is ready, so I have to hang it out to dry and then I will go to the garden to first remove a bad growing rose from the container and then plant in that the clematis. 

Wishing you all a wonderful week, stay safe, 

A week of mostly trying to have some sleep recovery.

 Goodafternoon everybody!

Our weather still is a bit strange, it isn;t cold, but not summery temperatures either, here and there some rain, today it is very windy. I just returned from some work in the garden. Small jobs, like a bit of pruning or deadheading , a few plants needed repotting and that was about all.

This week hasnt been very busy, but not too good either. It had to do with Jan. soemhwere Tuesday he started to have some nasty pain in the belley, more or less as he had a few times before, but not as bad as then. You can imahine that Tuesday night he didnt get much sleep, but I neither. The pain didn;t become worse, thank God for that, and even Wednesday evening it became less. That was something to be happy about. So not yet need to call a doctor(and you just see, our doctor just was on vacation!), the only thing was that the stool didn;t work all too well and certainly with Jan we have to be careful with it. It still isn;t on "normal"behaviour, it's coming difficult and rather slow. Let's see how today will go, I hope better, because otherwise I don;t know what to do.(Jan isnt very much for calling in doctors if not really necessary, you know him). Now you  can understand a bit about the post title. Almost not sleeping Tuesday night, the Wednesday was a day of trying to get some sleep, sitting around and feeling tired. And even the day after I didn't feel still great, although much better after some recovery sleep. 

I planned to do some things this week, but as very often, they didnlt work out. Why don;t I learn from the past? I just know, that making plans isnt such a good thing for me, often it just works out very differently. Never mind that, I am for now glad that it wasn't necessary to call for doctor. Let's hope it only will go better with his stool and so in one or two days.

In between we did see some of the Olympics and I am very proud of our athletes, they did extremely well this time, they have 36 medals, which is amazing for such a small country as we are. And there were some of the medals that came as a surprise, because of amazing performances. So a deep bow for our sporters and for all of the participants. 

I made it easy for myself yesterday for dinner. I've made a big pan of soup and there is more than enough for today too. So a big bowl of soup, with perhaps a sandwich with dairy butter on it on the side will do perfectly well today too. And if we might feel a bit hungry later on we always can take a sandwich with a tasty topping. 

I hope you are all doing well, and I wish you a very lovely week to come and stay safe.

My hair looks better again.

 Goodafternoon everybody.

Our weather is a bit up and down, but not really summer temperatures. We have around 19-21C in our area, which is a bit low for now. Here and there some rain, but also periods with sun, little windy too at times. Would be nice if it soon will get a little bit warmer, so we could enjoy our patio a bit more. 

It is very bad in Southern Europe and part of Turkey too with very big and fearce fires, and they have temperatures of 338-40C or even  bit higher. It is really sad too see all the nature destroyed.

Last Monday I finally went to my haridresser too have shortcut again. Oh my, how wonderful that feeling is and easy too comb in the morning. I did wait far too long to make that appointment, but now I am settled again for a month or two I think.

For tomorrow I already have something on the planner. This morning I wanted to make some coffe, I still have an "old-fashioned"coffeemaker with paper filter and a drip stop. All worked well for a long time, but this morning suddenly the dripstop fell off and I cannot get it fixed again. Well, it isn't such a big thing,I can put back the dripstop when I quickly also put back the coffecan under it. Only if I want to pour some coffee, yes, the dripstop fells off, hahaha. It will do for today. Tomorrow I will buy us a new one, but one for less cups of coffee, we can do with one for around 6 cups, no need to have one for 12 or 15.

What else did happen this week? Not too much, we watched quite  a lot of the Olympics, there are events also live during daytime (our time). It is nice that we can do it if we want too. But in between all, I did some of the usual stuff, not interesting too tell about. 

Our tomatoes are really becoming tomatoes. Still rather small, but they need a bit more warmth and also sunshine I guess. So it will take still some weeks before we can harvest a tomatoe. I noticed however that we will have a few beans. The plant flowered and I saw that already a few beans are shaling from it. I don;t expect to have a big harvest, I even wonder if it will be enough for us for one meal, LOL. But it was a try, and now that I now they grow rather well  in a big pot, I can plant a bit more next year. Usually I am rather animal friendly, I could say, but that doesn;t include slugs. They do well in this weather with some rain, some sun, they like it and it is visible early evening and also very late. It depends a bit on their mood I guess. Sometimes I am in the kitchen at around 8 p.m. to make some coffee, look into the garden and see them crawling all over the stones. And then I am a very bad person suddenly. I go out with a small plastic bag and an old pair of sugartongs and try to pick up as much as I see. sorry for them, but I hate it when they eat too much plants and I don;t want them to lay too many eggs. Sometimes I do it early evening and again much later(then I'll have to go out with a small flashlight). But I am convinced there are enough survivers left, it's almost impossible to find them all. It is however funny when I am slughunting, I very often meet with one or two toads, and this week I noticed even three, so they made a family, LOL. There are less frogs now in or garden, although we still have the tiny pond and it seems there still is at times a frogg living in it, but I didn;t see any young ones. Perhaps the spawn was eaten, who knows?

Well, thias is about all about our not so imteresting life at the moment. But you know by this post that we are still in more or less good order, hahaha, and perhaps next week there will be some more exciting news, you'll never know.

I will go and watch a little bit Olympics again(it is nice now because there is quite some athletics at the moment), and then soon I must start with dinner, we will have a small ham of the bone, have to put it in the oven, and I think I will put in some potatoes to roast with it and make fresh applesauce.

Wishing you all a wonderful week, till next time.