Cleaning up my greenhouse

Today I am clearing my twenty-odd tomato plants, eight cucumber plants
with cucumbers attached, and a dozen or so pepper plants. I have had
to throw every single plant out, barring a water logged chili pepper
plant.
I spent all summer nurturing these plants, twice a day watering,
feeding, spraying and loving. Space, effort, money and most
importantly my time.
In August my tomatoes were healthy green and swollen. I went off on my
holidays at the start of September, handing over the care of my two
greenhouses to my much trusted neighbour. On my return from my
holiday I discovered not one single plant had survived. Well one left
and it is a chili plant which is water logged and half dead.
I don't know what went wrong, some were water logged, some were bone
dry, none of the plants appeared healthy. One greenhouse was closed up
and clearly never ventilated, the other destroyed in the wind with
little done to rescue it's contents.
I want to cry over this, my friend who came in to help me clear up did
cry as she saw every week the progress we had made. I can't say
anything my neighbour, as I am sure she feels guilty enough. It's
hard, when they were gone in the summer I looked after their crops of
tomatoes and peppers for three weeks, it never occurred to me that
things could go so badly wrong.

Saunas and Storms

I treated myself today to a sauna. Well to be perfectly honest I had
some difficulty shaking off all the ankle biters the last couple days,
especially Sol. So yesterday I bought this little pink plastic
mobile phone that contained sweeties, and I used it. But not to make
calls, no I am not that crazy, but to bribe my four year old into
going to the creche for a while. She did, and the others duly
followed. Kids got rid off now it was my turn to look after ME,
something that does nor happen so often. Our hotel has a lot of
facilities including a gymnasium, Turkish baths, sauna etc. So I did
the Turkish bath first, I lasted about 20 seconds! Didn't like it one
bit. Unperturbed I tried the sauna, ooh it was warm, smelled lovely
and it did me the world of good. I have circulation problems and
despite the warmer climate I never get my feet thawed out, well the
sauna was magic. The first time in a long long time my feet were warm.
After the sauna I did a lovely jacuzzi followed by 20 lengths on the
heated indoor pool. And just when you thought that this was the end to
my story I had another jacuzzi. Lol I am spoiled. Finished up just in
time for kids
to be collected!
Now back to yesterday ....
It was warm and we decided to head to the beach. We watched forks of
lightening move up the coast from the waters edge. Eventually it was
hitting our town so we headed up to our apartment for a much needed
siesta. That night we watched the most amazing electrical storm over
the water from the same beach we had been on earlier in the day.

Sent from my iPhone whilst away in the sun

Riding the Furious Baco is fun!

I have to say that the hotel we are staying at is amazing. We watched
a Temptations Tribute band last night and the kids danced their little
legs off at the mini disco. The hotel animation team have worked
excessively hard to keep the children entertained. Yesterday they held
a paper aeroplane competition, darts and rubber ring racing (lol).
Ashley won the rubber ring races but failed miserably with his origami
like paper plane.
We made it to the theme park today. Port Aventura is an impressive
place, there are five countries each with different styles of rides.
We only managed two of the countries so we are planning on going back
for more fun Friday. They do all the Disney thing at night with the
fireworks too so it's going to be fun. We did not make it to the
Dragon Khan today but we did go on Stampedia which was a bone shaker
double roller coaster where two sets of cars race. We also got on the
Furious Baco, and oh my goodness I have ridden some rides in my time
but that was a scary one. It's a strange one you are suspended out to
the side of the track with your legs hanging, then you think it's
going to be like any other ride with a slow start you realise how
wrong you are in that assumption. Like a bullet out of a gun the
forces are instantaneous and whizzing round upside down just a couple
feet from the lake is an exhilarating experience.

Sent from my iPhone

Blogging from Salou

It was a long day yesterday, probably one of the most tiring I had
experienced in a long time. Anyone who knows me will know I have been
wrestling with a flu for the last fortnight. Due to restrictions
imposed on our country anyone with swine flu symptoms will be refused
flight travel. Swine flu is contagious until day 7 of the illness so
I figured I would be ok.
Come hell or high water I was getting on that plane. Doped up with
three sorts of meds I managed not to start coughing till we were
flying over France, so there was no turning back.
The early start was okay, 5:30 found us on the road. We reached our
hotel 1:45 Barcelona time. The afternoon was spent lazing in our
apartment. We all came alive at seven at night!
There was a medieval restaurant just out side the hotel, that was as
far as our weary legs would carry us that night. Food was good and
two of the children were put in the stocks, literally. We checked out
the entertainment, the beach by night and the supermarket - I think we
will be happy here.
This morning was lovely we booked half board today and the breakfast was
Buffet style with much as you could eat of every single food you can
imagine. So the nine pounds I lost while I'll is going to go straight
back on again. I will let you know what dinner is like later LOL.
Tomorrow we are going to Portaventura the theme park, the kids are
bouncing with excitement and we still gave two weeks to go of this.
One final comment will be an apology from me to everyone reading this,
apart from making you jealous I have to say all spelling mistakes will
have to stay till I get home and run the spelling and grammar
checker. Blogging from an iPhone is easy and suits me fine, but the
keys are small and the spell check does not do English I think.
Sent from my iPhone