Diet, exercise, Hampton Court

So far the diet is going really well. I skip breakfast which is quite a sacrifice, but I have suspected for a long time that the small amount of muesli or banana I eat in the morning could be tipping the balance towards me gaining weight.

There is a NO SNACKING rule which the doctor is very stern about. If you need to snack, he writes, you should just drink water. You need nothing between meals. Your stomach is designed to go a long time between meals and you won't even feel hungry after the first few days. I think this is true. So far I have lost 3-4 pounds and some of it is off my double chin!! A visible difference. He predicts I will lose much more in the first week than I have but I think he must be predicting for men who burn calories faster. Few people burn calories slower than the post-menopausal woman, even very active ones. Went to another exercise class yesterday - arms and weights apart from the usual squats and abs exercises. Very good. The day before was a Hampton Court day.

Both Ichiho and Hilary were there and the tasks were to load the melon beds - the hotbeds - with compost or to move some semi-rotted compost from one bin to another. Chris and I did the first task which involved lots of loading and wheelbarrowing. Really, we work hard at HCP but of course, it's only for a short time. In winter we go home early so it's only three and a half hours of actual work and in summer it's four and a half hours. It can be a long afternoon in the summer.

We moved nearly all this to the melon beds.

Nasty stuff and not composting at the mo - too cold

Unfortunately, we tried to fill three of the beds instead of two but we hadn't moved too much stuff to the wrong bed. It won't take them long to rectify our mistake! Itchiho and Hilary both seem pretty fed up with the hotbeds which they have spent hours digging out. Hilary is getting some horse manure to boost the compost.

This is a pic of the new mound in the Magic Garden where we put some of the spent soil from the melon bed. The magic gardeners are still working hard on their landscaping.

My garden - spring

I observe two things this spring. One is that the tulips have had a really good year and more are blooming again than usual. Usually when they come up the second time half of them are blind (have no flowers). This year they all have flowers and many have baby flowers!

Note the baby tulips

I think my bluebells are Spanish - they are large and pale

 

The other thing is the ants are worse than usual, they have invaded my kitchen and I don't know where they are coming from. I have put down a fair amount of ant poison. They got into a pan of stewed plums - just hours after I had cooked them - I was so cross - the pan was swarming and I had to throw it all away. They also got into the biscuit tin and the cake tin - they have taken up residence in my husbands birthday cake and hollowed it out, and how they got into a tin I don't know. But clearly that tin didn't do its job and now I'm looking for new cake tins.

Which shall I get?

Gardening

People are often complimentary about our garden, but there is no reason for this, unless, like last year, clumps of  scarlet tulips have come up like elegant soldiers on parade, and clouds of forget-me-not supply a contrasting blue. But how often does this happen? Tulips either come up once and disappear, or come up in ones and twos at different times. Last year's tulips seem to have disappeared, and this year's are going to come up at different times because I am experimenting with different colours.

The crocuses came up and didn't bloom because the weather is so grim. The shrubs are always reliable and they look as though they are perking up a bit. But the fact is, the best things in the garden are ferns, grasses and mosses. Today we split some ferns that have been too successful - let's hope they don't die! but it's quite likely as the operation they have had has been radical and merciless.

I keep getting rid of shrubs and planting herbaceous stuff, but the conditions seem to be wrong for the small stuff as it just seems to fade away. I guess I keep the garden centres going. Last year I planted crocosmia and alchemilla mollis, which was just lovely, and a peach coloured heuchera, and a sea holly, and it is hard to know if anything is going to survive except forget-me-nots, which always self-seed all over the place.