Murphy's Law!

Do you know Murphy's Law? It's the principle that if you drop a piece of bread and butter with jam on it then it's sure to land jam side down. We've had two jobs lined up for the house requiring several workmen and a day each of labour. That was the general idea. One week later and the scaffolding is still up, because the wrong part meant that the solar panel work could not be completed.

That was last week. This week the two charming workmen who adapted our Aga returned to line the chimney that serves the wood burning stove in the sitting room. We had sheeted everything up, the weather was good, it would soon be done.  I would have a good tidy-up before family came home at the weekend.
Stove out.

Ladder up. The liner ready to be fed down the chimney.

"Can you pull a bit harder?"

It's stuck!

And now the chimney pot is loose.

And that's the current state of play!

Sometime next week, hopefully, the scaffolding is going to be moved round the house, the chimney cleaned with chains(!!) and the chimney pot re-set. Murphy's Law!

The scaffolding gives me the opportunity to have a bird's eye view of the garden. This wall looks very bare now that the dead tree has been cut down and you can see how parched the lawn looks with week after week of glorious warm, dry weather.

The fir tree in the foreground is looking rather sickly.

'Stop moaning' says Vanilla, 'just enjoy the sunshine.'

Okay.

We are eating well from the garden with rather a lot of courgettes. I took a peep under the leaves of my squash plants and discovered - courgettes!

Only one squash growing so far.

The onions are small and have folded their stems and stopped growing, the 'Blue Lake' beans are cropping well

and the coriander is setting seed. It smells wonderful when you brush past it.

I've cut our wisteria hard back. It's a disgrace, not one flower this year. Walking down the road to the fields I passed my neighbour's wisteria giving a second burst of colour.

After weeks of sunshine the fields are golden, the crops cut and ready to be baled.

A balloon floated overhead as we walked back home.

And tonight. just in time for Friday Skywatch, the most amazing sunset!

The tail end of Hurricane Bertha is supposed to be arriving at the weekend - I hope the chimney stack stays up on the roof!