Life in England

Sometimes it still feels unreal that we're living in England. Then I come home and this reminds me I'm not in South Africa anymore:

These parcels were left in front of our front door all day and still there at the end of the day when I get home.

London day out

On Wednesday Andre and I took a day's leave to go into London to renew his passport. Afterwards we enjoyed a breakfast together, walked around a bit and then went to the aquarium. Make sure your sound is on to watch the video below. (You can also click the link to watch it on vimeo and see it full screen by clicking the arrows in the bottom corner.)



Sea Life London Aquarium from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.

The English weather

Today it has rained lightly, was sunny, rained hard, hailed and was windy. All in one day. The plants in the greenhouse are growing so slowly. They're doing ok, some are basically ready to be planted out, but good thing I didn't get around to it this weekend as this week temperatures have been down to 4C again in the mornings when I get up. Which means probably even colder during the night. Not good for new baby plants outdoors. I had them outside in the sunshine a bit on Saturday and Sunday to get them used to living outdoors. The sunflowers and sweat peas need to get out very soon so we can only hope it will become a little bit sunnier soon. 

I walked through the garden in the rain this evening to go pick parsley in the greenhouse. I need to plant some closer to the kitchen. I walked through the rain in my wellies and felt very English!

I have planted out some of the lettuce plants and they seem to be doing fine outside. Not growing much but at least they're still alive! I also planted radish seeds which have just started peeping out above the soil.

No photos due to it being to wet!

*Update: This morning we had to scrape ice for the car's windshield before leaving home!! It was that cold! But then it turned out to be a lovely sunny day all day actually! This weather is so unpredictable :-)

More Swanage weekend

With the last Swanage video I promised more photos. Here they are! Wish we could still be there... it was so hard to leave and come back to reality! But I'm sure we will have many more diving weekends there.

Loved the cosy flat we had for the weekend. We had a
fantastic view across the bay from where we're sitting.

A walk through the park above the pier.

Above the pier, looking towards Durlston park.

Walking all along the cliffs through Durlston park.

Durlston park lighthouse

Swanage pier

The view from our flat

and we could even see the pier from our
bedroom

The one and only dive of the long weekend- and the
water was so murky they couldn't see a thing...

The dive boat which took them to the Fleur de Lys wreck.

Finally had some sunshine!

Felling the tree

We spent half the day on Saturday doing this:



Tree Felling from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.


We were pretty tired at the end of the day!!

Fallen tree

This is what I saw when I came downstairs this morning:

As we got into bed last night I heard a crack. It sounded like when you've turned a key in a lock and you haven't turned it quite all the way so it clicks into place. You know, just click. But now we think it might have been the tree...

Part-time Cat came to check it out a few times today too.

Apparently the wind was quite strong last night. Over the weekend there was even a tornado not too far from us. You can read about it here. So the wind has been quite strong at times over the last few weeks. We've been having rain on and off basically every day for probably three weeks at least now.

But then there's also this little visitor we've had, the badger. Now this tree is right next to the shed under which Andre saw the badger disappear that one morning. Next to the shed is also this hole which we believe to be the badger's work.

And next to the tree that fell over is a pile of soil which may be the badger's nest. 

Badgers eat, amongst other things, roots. So did this badger eat the roots of this lovely tree of ours? We still need to climb in there to see what exactly happened. Whether there are still any roots. We think not... It does look as though it came right out of the ground without much roots attached to it's trunk...

It's sad to loose such a big tree. It has yellow flowers which were just starting to flower. And just before winter it had this other climber with loads of white flowers. We're going to plant another tree. Don't know what yet. We'll be visiting the garden centre soon. But first I guess we need to visit the hardware store for a chain saw.

Weekend in Swanage

We're back home. We had a fantastic time in Swanage this weekend. Here's a fun little taster video of our weekend. More photos soon!


Swanage from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.

(Click the arrows to view fullscreen.)

Swanage

We're in Swanage this weekend. We arrived late Friday evening. It's a long weekend with Monday being a bank holiday. (The first Monday in May is always a bank holiday here. A bank holiday is what we  in SA would call a public holiday. It's taken me two years to stop calling it public holidays here!)

I booked us into a self-catering flat. It is up on a hill and has lovely views over Swanage bay and the hills opposite. This way Andre can be out diving and I can snuggle under the duvet and still see the sea as I'm doing now!

The weather is not great unfortunately. Doesn't effect my snuggling under the duvet plans, but there was no diving yesterday due to the weather. They had a dive booked on a boat for yesterday afternoon but all dives and boat trips were cancelled. It was quite windy and that makes for very poor visibility under water which would be dangerous. Andre's gone down to the pier this morning. There was talk last night in the pub that there would be diving today. The wind has calmed down at least so hopefully they'll be able to get in the water.

We met some of the other divers in the pub here yesterday evening for drinks which was fun. It was also my first time in a pub while a soccer (or football as they call it here) match was on. Andre and I don't really follow the football but of course it's a big thing here. People were sitting along one side of the tables only so everyone's eyes could be on the TV and there was loud cheering for every goal or attempt thereof. As soon as the game was over the pub emptied and we went for dinner at an Italian restaurant where we had delicious mussels in a creamy garlic wine sauce. We never eat seafood anymore so while we're by the sea for the weekend we're getting our fix of seafood! 

As it wasn't diving weather yesterday we went for a walk instead and Andre took some photos along the beach which you can see here and here.

Sunshine-y afternoon

It POURED this morning. We've had so much rain the last three weeks, I wonder when it is going to stop. Although it's really good since we have a hosepipe ban due to not enough rain. Thames water (our water supplier) said "...it hasn't really stopped raining since we imposed 'hosepipe bans' on April 5. We are alive to this irony, and our contribution to the endless talking point that is the British weather." -source

But it did clear up this afternoon. It was actually nice and sunny with a warm 16C. A temperature we haven't had in a while.

Lots of forget-me-nots everywhere

Are these bluebells? Lots of them too!

So I decided to quickly mow the lawn. Here you can't be thinking you'll mow it next weekend. It might rain next weekend. It's quite likely that it will. It might rain in an hour's time actually. So I got right to it and even did some work in the veggie patch too. Planted out some of the lettuce plants, not all since I'm not trusting the weather yet and want to see how they adapt to life outside in the British climate. I also sowed some radish seeds.

Apple blossoms

I promise to have some none-gardening blog posts over the weekend!