And so begins a very busy week

I'm trying desperately not to think of what's coming up; I mean, 3 marathons in 4 days? Really? What was I thinking!!!!

In the meantime there have been interviews and conference calls aplenty. My favourite interview so far was with Jules from BBC Radio Kent. She's lovely. We had a nice chat about how special the London marathon is and that this will be my 10th running of it, which means it's 10 years since mum passed away. I can't believe how those years have flown by and yet here I am, still banging on about the need for more investment in dementia research and still running marathons. You never know where life will take you do you.

I've been concentrating on crochet and gardening to keep me sane with some community work thrown in as we've entered our pretty village into Britain in Bloom in the small village category. I'll share some photos of what we've been doing over the next few weeks. I love the idea of it as I am a keen conservationist  and spent a happy few hours on Saturday creating a stumpery behind the village pavilion whilst helpers brought old stumps and branches for me to create a perfect habitat for invertebrates and small mammals.

Here's a sneaky peak but I haven't got time to show everything we've been doing at the moment. Someone found an old roller in the undergrowth and gave it pride of place at the end of the stumpery!

Eat your heart out Andy Goldsworthy! He's actually one of my favourite landscape sculptors and I have many photos of his amazing work.

My crochet blanket grows and grows and I'm still enjoying it enormously. I'm up to week 12 now and the CAL is on week 15 so I'm catching up slowly but surely but after today I will have neither the time nor inclination to do anything other than eat, sleep and run!

Nearly a square again

Corner detail

She may look all sweet and sleepy but this little lady has helped my crochet efforts enormously by playing football with my yarn whenever she spots it. She's a very good dribbler!

The only thing for it was to make centre-pull balls from my hanks of yarn. I know you can get snazzy machines to do it but I rather enjoy the process of preparing the yarn by hand. I just used an empty toilet roll, dangled one end through the hole, wrapped the hank of yarn around my knees (Mike was busy or he'd have held it for me as he's well accustomed to this sort of task) and wrapped the yarn around in a figure of eight, turning the toilet roll as I went along. When I'd finished I just tucked the outer end under the outer threads, gently eased the ball off the roll and squished it down. Easy-peasy and not as pounceable as a ball.

Sitting and crocheting by the window is always enjoyable as there's always so much going on in the garden. The white posts are marking the area in which I grazed the horses last week and have been left for a while so Mike has a guide line to mow along.

Mr Pheasant with his harem. Mr and Mrs New Duck haven't produced any ducklings yet.

Which reminds me - this is what pheasants love to do; create a dust bath in the flowerbeds. They don't care if there's a plant in the way either!

This pair of moorhens seem to be building a nest in the pond at the moment. They always make me smile when I see them flying as they have really long legs which dangle floppily below.

The first batch of apple blossom appearing from the hairy buds

Glorious, pristine white flowers of the cherry set against the coppery coloured new leaves which turn green when mature. Just look how blue the sky is: perfect!

Yesterday ended with this swoosh of clouds. There was an almost violet tinge to everything.

Last week I had a good deep-tissue massage with Mary Massage Lady who worked into the knotty bits of my muscles, including my neck which had seized up again. She gave me strict instructions not to do any knitting or crochet for a couple of days and I was very good and did as I was told for once.

I shall be heading off into London tomorrow to collect my running number and do a bit of leafleting for join dementia research, then there's just the small matter of 3 marathons to run in 4 days!