Monday 20 January 2014

Monday jobs with Sunday photos

 It might be cheap to have wood for heating but it is time consuming. So while it was fine yesterday we did lots of wood moving. We have a HUGE heap of long large logs seasoning up against the fence, of course this winters weather means that they are very wet so some have  been moved under shelter to dry out ready for cutting, but before we could shift them we had to make a space by moving a builders bag full of logs from one shed to another.
Then we decided that it would be a good idea to cut down a couple of the dead elms that are in our boundary hedge as they are ready for burning almost straight away. Dutch Elm disease wiped out all the big Elms back in the 70s but from their bases small elms grow for maybe 10 years before also succumbing to the disease.The twiggy bits snapped easily to make a good big box of kindling wood. Finally Him Outside cut some old pallets to make small stuff for mixing in with  the larger logs. We are waiting to borrow a log splitter as we have a lovely  heap of big logs nice and dry ready for splitting. A year ago Him Outside wouldn't have thought twice about doing it with an axe, but after the heart thing it seems wiser to make life as easy as possible. That's why we are so glad that we bought the small trailer for the mower - it's a great help.

Why is this blurred? Because I realised that if I didn't shift backwards PDQ it was going to land on my head!

Wood to keep us warm for several days and there are still some dead elms to come down another day.

So onto today, which according to the radio is Blue Monday. This is the day when half the population suddenly realise that they spent too much at Christmas, they have several days to wait until payday and their credit card bill has arrived.
Was it Blue Monday here? No off course not! Monday is bread making day. I'm making 1 round loaf in a cake tin at the moment as the other week a lot of the black  non stick on one of my  good deep bread tins all came off on the bottom of the bread. Although I've looked everywhere locally and in the Lakeland Catalogue I can't find another one as deep, plenty of shallow ones but they will make such a small slice of bread.I shall have to resort to ebay.

Him Outside was away early to work for the County Council and apart from bread making I tackled some routine housework.
Lunch was some delicious celery soup made from a few outside bits of a celery head. Cheap and Easy.
Dinner is a vegetable curry using part of a butternut squash, two leeks, an apple and some pepper from the freezer, with a large dollop of courgette chutney. In other words completely home made except for the curry powder and the rice to go with it. Cheap and Easy again!

I forgot to watch Call the Midwife last night as we had the snooker final on and I was deep into a library book -- One Woman's War by Eileen Younghusband. She was a clever young woman who joined the special services part of the WAAF and trained  to work with the new RADAR. She had to sign the official secrets act  so wasn't allowed to talk about her job until the 1970s.

Welcome to new followers - Catt on bloglovin and Bovey Belle in the little pictures on the right.
Hope you enjoy my tales of a quiet life in Suffolk.

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