Adventures in August

It should have been so simple; eat, sleep, run, repeat in training for my 10 marathons in 10 days. But that didn't take into account the exceedingly dry weather which made stiles wobbly and already unsecure footplates unsteady. I was running well, it was hot but bearable, everything felt good. When I placed my foot carefully onto the top footplate of a stile I suddenly found myself lying on the rock-hard ground with my left leg bent in a strange manner with my left food underneath it but twisted onto its side. Ouch, I shouted at the Universe! I observed my foot and thought it didn't look quite right and I wasn't wrong. I found just how sore it was as soon as I stood up. Oh bother, that meant I had to limp 3 miles across the fields to get home. I phoned Mike to let him know I was coming home slowly but didn't tell him what had happened as he would have freaked out with worry, bless him. By the time I was about .5 mile from home it stsrted hurting and was stiffening up. Hmmm, not a good sign. On further investigation at home it had started to swell up and there were signs of bruising all over the place. This was 2 weeks before my 10 in 10 and was a bit of a shock to say the least! So straight away I started following the RICE protocol which means Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation. I sought advice from all my running chums and they rallied round with lots of helpful suggestions such a Arnica cream for the bruising, Kale soup for healing, hot/cold treatment on the areas affected,Ibuprofen to reduce the swelling. I've been using my wobble board to get back the muscle memory that I've lost due to the sprain. It's great for proprioception and I'm starting to heal nicely now. The sad thing is that I wasn't recovered enough for the 10in10 so have had to postpone to a different one later in the year. In completing the 10 days I will have climbed circa 28,000ft - YIKES! Hopefully I'll be back out training again very soon. With apologies for the formatting but blogger isn't very helpful since it was taken over by Google!

Sneaking in a post before July is over!

Now where do I begin? Knitting? Too hot! Mike's cardigan is virtually finished and just awaiting buttons. Running? Yep, lots of that as it's getting scarily close to my 10 marathons in 10 days challenge (trying not to think too much about that!). Wildilfe? Let's start right there as we have been blessed with so much wild loveliness recently: The garden is certainly not looking its best right now and there are wildfires breaking out in the countryside. Everywhere is tinder dry and the village pub had a scary moment recently when their pizza oven caught fire. Thankfully it was spotted quickly and 2 fire engines came racing along the lane and put it out PDQ. Phew! Our wild visitors have been delighting us with their visits most mornings and first we have Mrs Duck and her babies:

Oh my goodness, she'd been sitting on a makeshift nest behind some large rocks in the yard and I really didn't expect her to manage to incubate the eggs without being discovered by Rooks/Crows/Badgers/Foxes but she did it! When she brought them round to show us she had 10 ducklings in tow. Sadly she lost one after a couple of days but atm she still has 9. They are a delight to watch and a great timewaster. I chuckled at one of the photos as the grass looks so verdant but that's only because it's right beside the water saucer and gets lots of duckling splashes. In the photo where Mrs Duck is sititng down, seemingly on her own, I didn't realise at first that all 10 ducklings were underneath her until a few of them popped out! The deer are still visiting every couple of days and are happily munching their way through crabapples/apples/pears and anything else they fancy!

My weaving continues with lots of samples and I am definitely getting better with my tension and beating. What I haven't quite mastered yet is the righthandside which seems to be slacker then the left. I'm sure practice will make perfect eventually (well, I hope so!).

There's been lots of run-training going on ahead of my challenge and I had a lovely day out at a Long Distance Walkers event a few weeks ago. It was absolutely baking hot but thankfully there was some shelter through woods. It was nice to meet up with some running chums and I tried out my new Garmin watch, which is way too snazzy for me as I won't use half its capability or functions but I did upload the route onto it and followed it OK. It was just over 32 miles so was a good leg-stretcher.

My next crafting project is for Christmas - yes, I know it seems a long way off but this project needs good light so I need to get ahead before the days get much shorter. I'm doing it as a virtual stitch-along organised by a lovely lady who used to run a Wool Store in a local village but decided to create a workshop at home to save the cost of rental. We'll be having a monthly Zoom meeting to see if we're all on track and I'm really looking forward to it. Shelley and I were very excited when my package arrived:

I hope everyone reading this is safe and well as there's just so much uncertainty all over the world at the moment.

Early one morning.....

.....I opened the curtains to find some visitors.....

At least they were grazing on the grass this time rather than the apple trees, some of which have suspicious bite marks and bare branches! They are pretty though aren't they so I had to forgive them. I've just started using my loom again as I got an annual subscription to Kelly Casanova's weaving school (I've been trying to get blogger to load the link but can't get it to work!) for my birthday need to improve my tension as I haven't quite mastered neat edges yet and of course I had a little helper......

It's such a relaxing pastime with a gentle rhythm and I hope I can master the basics properly so I can progress onto more exciting projects.

Another milestone reached

Yep, I've finally reached the grand old age of 65. Does that mean I'm a grown-up at last? Nah!!! We had planned to go for a nice visit to an Open Garden but as the weather was over 30 degrees we decided to save the trip for another day. A neighbour asked me if I was going to stop running now - heck no, I need to keep the arthritis at bay and I've still got more fund-raising to do and adventures to have!

Speaking of adventures, I went along to one of my favourite ultra marathons, the Weald Challenge last weekend. Just under 32 miles of unrelenting uphill/downhill and rutted tracks. The weather was hot, hot. hot but I didn't care and had a fab day out helping a lovely lady to acheive her first ultra marathon. I didn't take any photos en-route as we were keeping a close eye on the time so as not to miss the cut-off but we did have a photo taken at the finish:

I had some excellent comedy tan lines from wearing my compression socks!

I also got another of these trophies, my 3rd in fact, for being first on my age category.

At home I've been busy out in the garden whenever possible but had to stop planting my new border as the ground is rock hard and I can't get a spade or fork into it at the moment. We need a few days of rain to soften it a bit. In the meantime the yard looks like as if I'm starting a small garden centre with all the plants sitting waiting to go into the ground!

The wildlife continues to delight us with lots of new arrivals:

It's been a tough year for the ducks as there are too many Rooks and Crows around to steal their babies.

She brought them to show us, headed to the pond, came back later with 3, went away and came back with none. So sad.

Mummy Rook with baby in the wild garden

A young Squirrel

Meanwhile there's been lots of fighting between the male ducks who don't have a mate. They're really vicious!

Apologies for the poor photo but I managed to catch a photo of Mrs Mouse in my shed. I knew something had been eating my stores tulip bulbs but never saw anything until yesterday when she made an appearance when I was potting up some plants!

Around the garden there's so much to see:

The wild section of the back garden is full of wildflowers both in the orchard and the lower section and we were delighted to count an amazing 49 orchids as there was only 1 small group of 7 last year!

In the front garden there's just so much to see and it's teaming with insects:

The Shade Garden we created during lockdown has settled in nicely.

The Golden Oat grasa has florished this year and looks stunning in the sunlight.

The giant Cardoons are about to flower

I love how this pretty blue Nigella, aka 'Love in a mist', has seeded into the golden Oregano.