Taking a rest from pruning bushes .

 I had to have a rest from all that lopping and chopping bushes and trees, and from trying to pull up weed membrane and old carpet . My whole body is aching from it , one elbow in particular .

Do a couple of things , a bit more gentle . I needed to repot this Haworthia . I lost the label years ago , but it this a lovely white variety that my husband was gifted  by a very kind gentleman work associate to take home and give to me .With the appropriate CITES permissions he was allowed to bring it all the way from Cape Town in South Africa  . This was such a wonderful surprise and thoughtful gift for me . I never expected anything .No one ever thought of me back at home with the children while he was away .

  Usually my husband would be gifted bottles of wine ....nice for him , but , I've never acquired the taste for alcohol . 

The other lovely gift I was surprised with was an L.P. of Chopin's Nocturnes Piano music to dance to -  I was so surprised and delighted ! 

 Anyhoo .... so I got the Haworthia  sort of half potted up . I need to get some nice horticultural grit or something nice to mulch around it . It was trying to climb out of it's original 3"pot ! It has room to spread out now .

If you know what this one is called , like it's proper Latin name , please let me know so that I can give it a new label .  I'll sort that out tomorrow and I might have an even better idea for it .

So the next job was to re-paint our old fire back . This we bought from a reclamation yard many years ago , somewhere in Kent .

It is probably the heaviest thing we own . We had help lifting it into the car .

It was a miracle that it didn't fall through the floor of the boot and I have no idea how we got it out when we got home .

It has been in the inglenook of two thatched 16th century cottages and now stands outside as our fireplace here is not big enough for it to be put into . Well actually it is big enough , but it would be hard to manoeuvre it behind the woodburning stove  . 

 I found a couple of paint brushes and an old pot of metal paint .

Goodness knows how long we've had it . It was hard on top , but I managed to make a hole through it .

        This was a nice easy job , I didn't have to be too precious with it .  I could just slap it on .

                  Poor old Mr Fairfax .....oh sorry ..... General Lord Fairfax .

   My husband says I wouldn't have liked you . He also says that you wouldn't have liked me !

             I'll like him better with some pretty flowers around him .

It's a bit too early for putting out hanging baskets with Pelargoniums  just yet , but I will be thinking about it .

But then again , this window-box has survived the Winter . I had just forgotten all about it . I guess it is on a more sheltered South facing windowsill .

There are trailing Pelargoniums , Erigeron little white daisies , an Agave , and a Petunia !

They are saying we will be having cold winds blowing from the North in a few days time  . 

I'll see if I can find a piece of fleece to go over it , but then it has survived that strange icy haily snowy few days of weather we had towards the end of last month (17th January I think ) .

One last bit of thrilling news . The Voodoo Lilies are coming up !  Well they thrill me anyway .
 

                            So that just leaves this job to finish tomorrow .

Please forgive any spelling mistakes as I am too tired tonight to check it all over !  🌿