Staying Home: Day 99

A rather backwards day, as gardeners were coming this afternoon to cut the out of control hedge round our garden. I think when our estate was built, the gardens were given low wire fences and hedges were planted instead of rather than the tall wooden fences that have mostly replaced them. Our garden now has a wooden fence on two sides, but still has most of the original hedge - some of the flowering beech bushes (at least, I think that is what they are) have died, so there are some gaps and some other shrubs. In the spring the bushes grow pretty quickly and get out of control. We used to cut them ourselves, then my brother used to do it with help from M, but it has now got beyond us and for the last year or so we have paid someone to come and cut it for us. The bushes must reduce the size of the garden considerably, but as we don't have any other plants except grass - I really cannot overstate our horticultural incompetence - I appreciate having something leafy there.

To avoid the hedge cutting I decided to work this afternoon instead of this morning, as our bedroom is as far away from the noise and pollen as possible. I spent a bit of time outside reading, while we waited for our grocery delivery, then M and I went for a walk round a nearby lake. It is walkable, but we didn't have time to walk there and back as well as round the lake, so we drove down and then did three circuits. It is a man-made lake. This area is sandy and sand extraction has been one of the largest industries here. The lake is a worked out sand pit which has been filled with water and turned into a country park. I had never noticed before that on one side of the lake there are some dead trees sticking out of the water.

The gardeners turned up early, while M and I were still out, but it took them quite a time to cut the hedges. H was most put out as she had planned to spend the day in the garden and couldn't settle to anything else. She did eventually get to lie in the sun for a while after they left, before she and her BF went out for a walk. The Prime Minister has announced more easing of the coronavirus restrictions from next week, including opening pubs, restaurants and hotels. We are also going to be allowed to meet people indoors as well as outdoors, though only people from one other household at a time. That means that H and her BF will be allowed to move freely between each other's houses when he decides to go home - probably in a couple of weeks when he is going to start working in the office at least some of the time. It also means we can go into R's house and vice versa, and won't be dependant on dry weather so we can sit outside. 

We had a much more successful attempt at BBQing tonight. Our neighbours had passed on some lighter cubes they didn't need, and we managed to light it properly and get it to the right temperature for cooking. I had ordered some ready made meat kebabs with the grocery order, and we had those with corn on the cob, baked potatoes, and coleslaw, followed by apple pie.