What can I say? Long Time No See! Sometimes Life just keeps Happening! But here we are in our new home, been here a while now. I'm crazy gardening at the mo with more seedlings than I know what to do with in the kitchen, utility and porch... It's been so cold and wet it hasn't been nice enough to begin hardening most of the plants off, though today I've finally got some broad beans and Cherokee Trail of Tears beans out in the front garden.

The back garden is looking wonderful after all of the rain we've had recently, though the lawn really needs mowing again. Here's the beautiful azalea in full bloom.



I did plant some peas and beans in root trainers that we kept outside (well, we stuck them in the blow-away green house if it was going to be horribly cold at night when they were just sown). Took so long to come up that I thought they'd all died, which is why got so many seedlings in house now as chitted some on wet kitchen paper and only planted when they began to sprout. But here's the ones that were planted outside. Soon as John gets the bean frame built we'll plant the Trail of Tears beans and the (climbing) Telephone peas. The broad beans and early peas will have a space in the other side of the veg patch when I've finished weeding it and moved the Love in a Mist (Nigella).



We have a female woodpecker who has been visiting very often the last couple of weeks to feed on Coconut Treats (suet with insect flavour!). She is very greedy and stays feeding even when we're out on the patio - usually she is very shy and flies off if she sees us. Suspect she may have a brood of hungry youngsters, so is catching food for herself when she can.



Today, 12th May, is Florence Nightingales Birthday, and also International ME/CFS Awareness Day. Had my 20th MEversary back in March. I continue to be disabled, am very limited as to what I can do, but as I hope you see from the above I still enjoy my life. You can see my previous International ME/CFS Awareness Day posts over in the right side bar, right underneath the Blue Ribbon Logo: MY ME/CFS AWARENESS DAY POSTS.

Have been having a lot of pain in my right shin for about a year now, so went to see my GP to get it checked out back in November (I think). She suggested I might be Vitamin D deficient (she told me that deep muscle pain can be a problem if you're Vit D deficient) and a blood test proved she was right. I guess that given I am fairly housebound it's hardly surprising. So am now on supplements, though they haven't had much effect on the pain in my shin yet. I'm also working on getting out and sitting in the sun to expose my limbs... Well, currently it's only my arms as far to cold to expose legs! LOL! But I wonder how many other ME/CFS patients are Vit D deficient. Pain is just regarded as part of the illness, I wonder if some of that deep muscle pain might be down to Vit D deficiency. Recent guidelines suggest anyone over the age of 60 should supplement with Vit D anyway. And also it appears that vast numbers of the UK population are Vit D deficient due to the advice to avoid the sun and put on sunblock - it's all been a tad overdone!

I also have high "bad" cholesterol, so have had to change my diet considerably - we're eating lots of fish now, at least 2 portions of oily fish a week, plus other fish too. As usual, exercise is something that can help with high cholesterol, but it's not something I can do.

So that's a bit of an update on what's been happening round here.

I've been really enjoying a blog called Young House Love recently. Two young parents in Richmond, Virginia, doing up their home frugally. It's a lot of fun to read, and I commend their efforts to be as environmentally friendly as they can be as well. It's made me think that maybe I should retrospectively take a look at the rebuild and renovation of this house. While we haven't done the work ourselves, it will still be fun to look back on it in the future. And we certainly took enough photos to be able to write about it all.

This is what we started with.



And this is what the house looks like now.



Well, about a year ago! Front garden is a bit different as we got rid of the gruesome poisonous laurel bushes and have replaced them with some climbing roses. We just got some trellis to train them up (over?) and John treated the trellis the other week, he's left some interesting patterns on the front drive!



We wouldn't normally make such a mess, but the drive has to be replaced as soon as we can afford it as lots of the flag stones are broken from the skips being dumped on them during the extension and renovation.



We've been in for getting on for a year now. And still have to get lots of stuff over from our old home. Hopefully we'll be able to do more sorting now that the days are longer and at least the worst of the winter should be over by now! Though have to say a couple of days this week it's felt more like winter than spring.