Just Jo!

I had another candle lit bath last night. When I was all cleansed and pure again, I had great fun tipping the melted wax into the bath to look at the swirly patterns it made on cooling. Hmmm…. yeah…. next time I do that, I’ll wait ’til after I get out of the bath…. I spent an interesting time extracting wax out of places you really don’t want to know about! Let’s just say, it brings a whole new meaning to a ‘bikini wax’….
Yes…. um…. er…. that is probably a little bit more information than I’m truly comfortable sharing. And probably waaaay more than you really wanted to know….

So…. today…. yes…. this morning Olivia spent reading and keyboarding. She also read quite a bit of her RSPB magazine that she gets from our home ed group. I was Flickr-ing like mad…. my new obssession….
Then we walked over to Di’s. It was far too windy and blustery to cycle. We could have, but my hair’s too long and it whips round all over the place in the wind. I’d be blinded and crash into something. Not pleasant. I could have tied it back, but I didn’t think of that ’til we got to Di’s.
Di’s got a pond in her garden, but it’s not holding water in the marshy area very well, so that got sorted out.
But Olivia had to take a few photos first. I reallyreallyreally want a new camera. Olivia reallyreallyreally wants my old one.
“You can have it, love!”
The battery casing’s all cracked and you have to hold it all together to get a photo. What a palaver….
Olivia’s photos….

She was very pleased with herself….
“See? I can work it! It’s not a problem at all!”
“You have work to do…. Get on with it!”
So she did.
Di had some cobble stones that they lined most of the marshy area with….

Then they mixed up some soil and clay to add to the middle bit to plant some plants in (How was that for a clunky sentence?!)….

Then it needed filling with water….

An old friend of Di’s came round with a new friend of his, so we chatted and drank tea, then all wandered round to Di’s allotment. Olivia picked lots more broad beans and we had a look at one of the other allotments. Di’s is more a wild plant haven that she uses for her herbalism and edible wild plants, John’s is ‘proper allotmenting’. All laid out in rows, which Di doesn’t do at all. We talked to John last week and he said to feel free to have a look. Di wanted Olivia to just see a different way of gardening, a more formal way, not Di’s free and easy, hippy-like way.
By this time it was raining, we said our goodbyes to everyone and headed up to the High Street. I was wearing flipflops. They slip in the rain (’specially in the High Street), so I took them off. Olivia was again outraged that I would dare do such a thing.
I put them on again to get some shopping, then took them off again to walk on the pavement. If I kept them on, it would have taken me an hour to walk up the High Street. I also walked most of the way home barefoot….
“Please Mum! Put them on! It’s so embarrassing!”
“But I keep slipping on them!”
“That doesn’t matter!”
“So me slipping over, breaking an ankle and landing flat on my arse is less embarrassing than me walking barefoot?”
“YES!!”
“Grotty urchin!”
“You’re so embarrassing!!”
“Aaahh! My work here is done!”
I put them on when I trod on a bit of glass that then got stuck in my heel.
“Thank you, Mother!”
So I took ‘em off again!

I had an early bath tonight so that I wouldn’t need candles. Still too traumatised and humiliated to look a candle in the eye at the moment….