A GARDEN WITH A VIEW ON A MONO SORT OF DAY!

Just before we left for Church this morning - and we needed to be there by 9 o’clock to help with the breakfast, Mr. HCB said he needed to do some work on one of our fences - not the one that we had repaired last year, but one further along - but hopefully it would last until tomorrow.

However, as he came down the stairs, he looked out of the landing window and saw the sight in my main shot - and you can also see that the fence to the left is also looking rather precarious.  We decided that we needed to stay and see if we could sort both fences out, although Mr. HCB would have to do the bulk of the work, of course.

We donned our wet weather gear - although it wasn’t much protection against the wind and lashing rain - and out we went.  Mr. HCB tried to shore up the far fence but had to chop down some of our plants inside and some on the outside before he could get to it.  It seems to be holding, thankfully.  I moved lots of bricks and most of the woodpile, hoping that Hoggy had found somewhere else to hibernate for the winter and I guess he did, because I never found him.  However, I did find the little toad, shown at the bottom right, that frightened me - I know, it’s so small - but it jumped when I disturbed it and I nearly went over backwards!  You can hardly see it, because it blends in very well with its surroundings, but thought I would give it 15 minutes of fame on Blip!

Mr. HCB looked at the other fence and said there was nothing he could do as it was much too heavy for him or even for both of us to lift, so having done all we could, we came in and got out of our dripping clothes, and boy were they dripping. 

Just after 10 o’clock I messaged Alan, our fence man, who text me straight back to say we were two of his favourite customers and he would be with us this morning to inspect the damage and he was true to his word.  He said he will put up two posts on the outside of each fence and two on the inside and hopefully that will hold them.  It’s going to cost a lot of money - and not something we needed just before Christmas, but we do need to be safe, and you can see from the photograph how vulnerable we are, being right next to a public footpath.  

When I mentioned to our son who lives in Vietnam about the fence and sent him a photograph, his comment was “A garden with a view”!  As I told him,  not quite what we wanted but hey ho, in his words too, “It is what it is!”  However, I did mention to Mr. HCB that this is exactly the sort of thing that makes people of our age think about moving - because neither of us are as agile as we once were.  I was surprised that Mr. HCB agreed with me, but time will tell.  

We watched part of our Church Service online before Alan came - and will watch it again after Mr. HCB has watched football this afternoon.  We are grateful that we have enough money to pay for this repair and after listening to our Christmas Appeal at Church, know we are blessed and much more than we realise.

Hope you all stay safe, warm and dry -it’s wild out there at the moment.  M xx  

P.S.  Just spent half an hour on the phone with my Blip friend, Veronica49 - and managed to help her, remotely, to get into her Blip account and then to upload a photograph - do visit her if you are a Blip friend - to welcome her back.  She needs some encouragement, as you will see when you read her Blip for today.