Weekending & Winter Garden Plans

I have a confession to make. July was a bit of a tough month. I’m not sure if I have shared here but towards the end of October last year, a very dear friend in South Africa told me she had stage 4 appendix cancer that had spread. She was very upbeat about doing whatever it would take to beat it.

Then in January another close friend here in the UK told me that she had been diagnosed with stage 4 skin cancer. The doctors told her that it was too far along for them to do anything. They offered her treatment of course but the prognosis was not great.

In July, both these strong Christian women lost their fight and passed on to glory within 5 days of each other. I have peace knowing that I will see them again but that does not stop me from grieving their loss.

Last week, our conveyancing secretary announced that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer. It has sent me into a bit of a questioning what it is that is causing this seemingly rise in incidence of this disease? Stats in the UK is that 1 in 2 women will get breast cancer and 1 in 3 will get cancer of some form. That is very hard for me to digest.

So the questions that have been swirling around in my head are: Is it our modern stressful lifestyle? Is it our genetically modified over sprayed food? Is it just that we are more aware of it these days and it is highlighted so much?

I don’t know and I know that regardless, our times are in God’s hands. But I have decided that we need to do what we can as individuals and families to look after our health.

So we have decided that we are going to take a more serious approach to growing our own food and buying organic where we can. We will only buy organic meat and just cut down on our meat consumption in general as we all know how pricey organic meat is and we do still need to observe a budget at the end of the day.

So our winter garden project is going to be establishing and preparing a small orchard, which we will put in the area pictured above where the mushrooms are growing and the raised beds…well that is still to be decided as DH and I have differing opinions on that.

Now, we have a HUGE garden. Let me correct that…we have a lot of space, a lot of lawn and only a few measly planted beds. Do you know what that means? It means that it could quite easily cost a small fortune to establish and proper garden. So what’s the solution?

Propagation! Whether by intent or accident I’m willing to take advantage. Above I have about 20 new foxglove plants, all self-seeded from two that I bought in the spring. This weekend I potted them up and will nurture them over the winter and next year I shall have an impressive display of foxgloves.

I’ve also discovered one area along our patio that is absolutely crammed with plants. They are all squeezing each other out and none of them are really thriving as a result. So once the weather cools down that will be our autumn project, to move as many shrubs as we can into new beds.

I shall also be propagating new hydrangea plants from the ones have bought this year, I do love hydrangeas! They grow so easily and always give an impressive display.

Another little thing that I did over the weekend was some batch cooking. I joined Slimming World on Saturday as I just cannot shift the 5 or so KG’s that have crept up on my. It is of course all down to my weak will power. I know the principles of good old Slimming World eating and I know that it works, but an ice-cream here and a doughnut there are things I just have not cut out.

I finally got to the point where I am sick of making excuses and need accountability so I joined up. Working and eating correctly can be tricky but pre-planning and preparing is one of the keys to success so that’s what I did in-between trying to get the weeds under control in my garden.

That’s the end of this little nonsense post. I’ll be back tomorrow with another post about taking the American SAT (not to be confused with the British SAT’s). I know that it won’t appeal to all but there are a few people who are interested in taking this route with their homeschooling and I get tonnes of questions. It’s easier for me to create an informative little series of posts that anyone can dip into at any point.

Hoping your week is off to a fabulous start everyone 😊

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