Saturday 19 May 2012

I'm Home - Thank you

I got home yesterday around six in the evening.  I have a lot of Exeter photos to blog at some future stage so I’ll be making a number of ‘virtual visits’ back there.  But for the moment we will look at what was awaiting me at home.

My immediate reaction was that I had a lot of people to thank for things.



Son-in-law-and-friend-who-loves-otters drove me up to Pensby yesterday despite him having a busy few days ahead so my first thank you is to him.  And again to him and to Daughter-who-takes-photos for their hospitality which was as excellent as it always is.  I really do feel at home in their house.  Then there are thanks due to the latter for the plants she gave me and the use of the greenhouse while they were away – the Nasturtium seeds and Sweet Pea seeds I planted are already growing well.  Cars never travel between Exeter and Pensby without having some of the back seat or boot occupied by plants!


And then I must thank Misty for her company while the honeymooners were away.  And there aren’t many girls I’ve said that to after they’ve been sick on the carpet at my feet!

Daughter-who loves-food sent me a long letter while I was in Exeter but most of my other mail was waiting for me back home.  Ignoring the bills, which had been put to one side, I had a big pile of parcels (some from Amazon), a lot of postcards and a couple of mailcrossing envelopes.

One of the parcels was from Friend-über-special.  I had recently asked her what exactly a hanging bag was (as opposed to a hanging basket).  Her response at the time was that they were “ long rectangular bags made of extremely heavy green plastic, with five pairs of "x" shaped holes cut in one side, from top to bottom.  There's a loop at the top for hanging.  You buy very small impatiens or petunias or anything you think might cascade properly, stick them through the holes and fill the rest of the bag with potting soil, and then hang the bags on fenceposts or from hooks on a wall.  Thus you get bouquets of color as high as you'd like them, wherever you'd like them, regardless of whether you live in a tiny apartment with a concrete balcony or have a shady garden where the sun only reaches the tops of the fenceposts.”  But, typical of her, she didn’t content herself with that description – she sent me some as well.

I want to rush out and get some compost and annuals to plant in them.  (In fact I did before I even finished writing this post.  Planting will have to wait a day or so until the rain has stopped.)  

Partner-who-loves-tea had e-mailed the postcrossing registration numbers of all the postcards so I could ensure they were registered as soon as they arrived. But I had no idea what they said or what the picture was.  Some of the postcards were from friends rather than postcrossers.  They are all super but two in particular caught my eye – an Irish letterbox and a German one.


I love postboxes. So postcards of foreign ones are a delight.  If you are interested to see all the other cards I got I suggest you wait a couple of weeks and visit my postcrossing blog.  

Thank you to Partner-who-drinks-tea for taking me down to Exeter and then coming back North and working away while I relaxed.   Thank you to Son-who-watches-films for making his Mum meals when she came home from work last week and thereby making life a little bit easier for her.

There were two mailcrossing envelopes waiting for me – my first ever.  The idea behind mailcrossing is that you join a group with options as to its size – in my case a group of five. You then create an original design of envelope and send it to the other members of the group enclosing some inexpensive little item.  I shall post about the envelopes at some stage but suffice it to say I am delighted with the ones I got.   So many posts to write – so little time!  Ah well, it makes a change from me complaining that I have so many books to read and so little time.  Which reminds me …


Thank you to the Oxfam charity shop in Exeter for all the excellent books I bought there.  After you’ve bought nine you get a tenth for free.  Somehow I managed to reach that number (and over!).  A few book tokens spent in Waterstones increased the weight of books in the car home. In theory I should now find the same number of books to give away to charity shops to clear space on my shelves.  That’s going to be a major task.  So I’d better make a start and stop this blogging lark…

12 comments:

  1. What a wonderful bunch of mail to await your arrival home. I bet it was fun opening all those packages and reading the letters and postcards. :)

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  2. And now it is OUR, your readers', turn, to say thank you - thank you for another post full of good things to look at and think about!
    By the way, that red mailbox has writing on it that is definitely not German, but Dutch. So I imagine it either stands in a place in Germany that is near the Dutch border or was maybe, at some stage in the past, Dutch territory, or you meant to type Dutch and wrote German instead.
    My mother-in-law bought some of those hanging bags several years ago. I saw them when the plants in them had only just begun to grow, and my main impression was that of plastic, not of plants. But they probably look a lot better once the plants grow.
    And Misty does remind me of Pukky, with her colouring. Her face is very "girly", isn't it?

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  3. I have missed you and don't know why you don't come up on my blogger dashboard for me to read. I have to go back to read all your May blogs. I love your comments about cats! So true. I will try to post a photo of a fortnight lily -- shouldn't be hard to do as they are all over our back garden, seeding themselves. Then I helped them along by taking ripe seed pods and scattering seeds in some bare spots in our garden. I love them. They look like dancing butterflies. I thought I had signed up to be a follower of your blog, but I double checked just now and I hadn't, so I suppose that is why I was not receiving prompts when your blogs are posted. As for Blogger and Google Chrome I get hot under the collar when I even think about them!!! I'll be back.

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  4. What a delight to have "fun" mail waiting when you get back home. (Not just bills!) I bought some postcards at the spring market yesterday but I'm afraid none of postboxes. I'll see if I can find something else for you among the ones I bought!

    Right now your post + the weather outside contribute to inspire me to maybe go and find some more plants for my balcony today...

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  5. 'There aren't many" girls who have been sick at your feet and whom you have then thanked for their company. Does this imply, I wonder idly and completely irrelevantly, if there has been more than one?

    I remember the Oxfam Shop in Exeter. In fact I can remember the book sections in quite a few charity/op/goodwill shops in Exeter.

    We'll be back before too long.

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  6. A lot going on in a short time span! Sounds like my life. I have seen the petunias in a hanging bag and they really cascade nicely. I also need to weed through my books.

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  7. Sounds like a good and very successful trip. Enjoy the plants and all the books. I hope the rain stops soon for you so you can get out into the garden.

    Take care & God bless, love, Carol

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  8. Librarian, that's interesting. The sender was German so I just assumed it was a typical German box.

    Chris, glad the floowing bit has been sorted out. For the last few days I have been a bit less critical of Blogger, since daughter-who-takes-photos pointed out to me it's FREE and you get what you pay for! I should remember that.

    Dawn Treader - thank you! And hope you get some interesting plants for the balcony.

    Carol - the fasin has stopped today was glorious but too busy to blog at the moment.

    GB - There were certainly more than one who was sick at my feet in my college days. Not that I would name names but my Best-Person knows who one was!

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    Replies
    1. Carol - for fasin read rain. Thst's quite some mistyping I managed.

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  9. This is just a test. For some unknown reason, Google blog which has been working fine all morning has decided that I am not who I say I am and won't recognize my posts! I just wanted to see if I could post on your site, as a check.

    arrrgh!

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  10. YAY! 8-) Looking forward to seeing what you get up to with those hanging flower bags...

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  11. yes, you will need to share when the bag is dripping with blooms! that would be such fun to come back to lots of mail, not of the bill sort.
    most of my bills now come via e-mail, doing my bit to save trees!
    welcome back!

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