Side Return

Here's part of our property I don't often show off. It's called the "side return," and it's basically an alley along the side of our house running from the back garden to the street. We don't use it for much of anything, except as a place to store the ladder abandoned by the dodgy roofers. But as you can see, at this time of year, even the side return is in bloom, with purple campanula all over the ground and a foxglove near the drainpipe. Those foxgloves appear year after year in that seemingly inhospitable location.

Things are continuing to look good for my mom. My brother says her UTI was essentially a false positive and her pneumonia "is not serious," so we're mostly dealing with residual effects of the flu. I asked my brother about Covid but he said she had a test -- the "big boy test," meaning not just a lateral flow -- and it was negative. He said she could be discharged today, but he wants to see her stronger first so he hopes they'll keep her a little longer.

I spent yesterday morning in the garden, planting some stuff we've had in pots -- hollyhock seedlings and a teasel. I also discarded the spent snapdragons and repotted a dahlia and a bunch of hyacinth bulbs.

Here's a garden problem that I've been dealing with. See those day lilies, sandwiched between a beautyberry on the left and some persicaria on the right, and almost covered by that blooming canopy of blackberry vines? Last year, those lilies were completely shaded out, and I don't think they bloomed at all. This year I'm keeping everything else trimmed to make sure at least the ones in the front get sun. Hopefully we'll have some flowers. A few years ago we transplanted a few from the back -- the ones really in the dark -- elsewhere in the garden to give them a better chance, but even they're not exactly flourishing. I think they still get too much shade in their new locations.

After gardening all morning I realized that my glasses were in my pocket, and while stooping and bending and squatting I'd managed to pop a lens out of the frames. So I walked down to the optician -- I didn't even bother to change out of my grubby gardening t-shirt -- and they put it back in. I also took care of another issue that's been nagging at me.

Back in 2016, when I first got my reading glasses, Dave got a pair, too. His prescription was much weaker than mine and within a few weeks he'd stopped wearing them entirely. But we spent something like £400 on them, mostly because of the fancy German ultralight frames. They've been sitting in his drawer untouched for six years.

Well, I asked the optician if they could put my prescription in those frames, so I'd have a second pair of glasses. So that's what they're doing -- for a rather shocking £160.

Mind you, I could probably go to the drugstore and buy a pair of off-the-shelf readers and be just as happy. So while I may pat myself on the back for economically using Dave's discarded frames, it's a false economy. Let's not talk about it.