A Saturday Afternoon Ramble & A Perfect Storm

Grab your walking boots and hiking stick cos we're going on a bit of a ramble today.  It's ok though.  You don't have to do any hard work - the only rambling I'm doing is here on my blog.  I have too much 'stuff' trapped inside my poor little head and have to let some of it escape.  So this post may just be a stream of consciousness rather than a properly planned one with a specific theme, colour co-ordinated photographs and "matching underwear" (so to speak!).  

The hens are out causing havoc in the garden.  I've moved my tiny chard seedlings to a safe place so that they can't be chickenated.  The sweetcorn is definitely 'hatching'!  I'm so pleased as I really thought that by leaving the seeds out in the freezing shed over winter had killed them.  The same cannot be said for my tomatoes and peppers though - there are definitely no signs of life there and so I shall replant some new seeds in to the compost so that it doesn't go to waste.  Planting them a couple of weeks later won't make much difference now that growing season is well and truly here.  I'm sure they'll make up their growth in quick smart time.

Now then.  I have a 'thing' about boxes. (Ok bear with me here - I told you it was a ramble!!).  I hate throwing them away and try to find various uses for them where I can.   A case in point are the lovely strong little washing powder tablet boxes.  I've used some of these in the past for craft storage to good effect.  We use the pouches of cat food (Aldi's own - £1.99 for a box of 12!) to feed the three moggies and these pouches also come in decent sturdy little boxes.  One of my huuuuuge annoyances is the fact that the recycling men won't take cardboard boxes. Cereal boxes, cat food boxes, blah blah blah - we flatten them out and hide them in with the freebie papers we accumulate during the week - and they just weed them out and leave them in a soggy heap at the bottom of the recycling box.  Have you ever heard anything so daft?! So a flattened bit of soft cardboard is more difficult to recycle than a two inch thick glossy magazine is it?!  GAH!! 

Anyway..... here's what I did with the last batch.  My Honesty seeds are just beginning to peek through.

And in these cardboard loo roll tubes, hopefully baby leeks are forming!  I can transplant the whole tube directly into the ground to ensure they get a good start on the straight and narrow!! ;)

Plastic milk bottles are another annoyance. It's such a waste! And there are only so many that you can keep around the house for watering things with!!   Dudley Council will only recycle tins, glass, paper/mags (but not cardboard, obviously!!) and garden waste.  Whilst I know that we're lucky to have such a service, why they cannot extend this to plastics is anyone's guess. 

What about you lovely readers?  Have you any bright ideas for re-using/recycling everyday packaging?  I have a fear of becoming like Mr Trebus who was featured on a Life of Grime some years ago - remember the old Polish guy who would never throw anything out?! That's me that is!!

On another tack... I escaped last night!!  (Not from the loony bin I hasten to add.) 

Mr B was spark out on the settee, DD was out with her friends and DS was upstairs attending to matters of a highly important nature, i.e.  brutally assassinating all manner of zombies and alien life forms which dared to cross his television screen from his Xbox.   A normal Friday night in the Pod then?  I felt a little restless and couldn't put my finger on why that was.  I ventured out into the garden to sit for a while but still felt like I somehow couldn't settle.   I went through here.....

And just stood for a while... watching.    It was completely still.  Completely and utterly quiet in all directions.

I stood for the longest time, just breathing and being.   I had bare feet and the nettles are out in force so I couldn't stray out onto the path, but it didn't matter.  It was so peaceful just standing there, watching dusk fall across the field.  The hedgerow birds chuntered noisily to themselves as they settled down for the evening, and a male blackbird bustled about, kicking up a cacophony of  shrieking every so often, scaring the life out of me each time he did so!

Eventually, as it grew more dim, my ailing camera couldn't cope with the light levels so I can't share with you any pictures of the two tiny bats which were zipping around just over head height.  Minnie cat came out with me and sat on the path for a while, her white coat looking ghostly against the darkening surroundings, before she went off to terrorise the local vole population.

Eventually, lights were switched on in the houses over the way.  They reminded me of those little tealight houses you see at Christmas' their windows lit up with a cosy orange glow.  I really must get a better camera!

Best of all though was watching a strange deep purple cloud holding low over Wychbury Hill, like a darkening bruise.  I thought it was just night drawing in, until the most brilliant flash of lightning lit up the skies beneath the cloud, followed by a deep grumble of thunder.   The air was electric and suddenly energised and the band of pressure I had felt around my head for the last hour or so became quite pronounced. I smiled to myself.  Now I know why I was feeling so restless.  I stepped back into the garden and locked the back gate and marvelled at quite how dark it had got in such a relatively short space of time.  The "purple bruise cloud" was travelling quite quickly and was almost over the top of our house.   Mr B had come out looking for me to check that I was ok, bless him.  He looked at the skies and at the ensuing lightning which was racketing around over the rooftops and asked me whether I'd "been out doing your Wytchy dances in the fields"!!  He knows me so well!  And so followed the rain, plopping fatly here and there to begin with, instantaneously becoming torrential within seconds.  I stood there for a while letting the rain plaster my hair to my head and breathing in the cleansed air.  My son wandered downstairs to ask whether we had heard the thunder, looked at my grinning wet face and, shaking his head, wandered back upstairs again.

I watched the remainder of the storm ricochet around the field and back with a towel on my head and a cup of coffee steaming in my hands, feeling completely calm again.    It's the simple things in life isn't it?