I thought Saturday was for taking it easy

 Today was always going to be a busy day.

We had only just finished breakfast when our friend and landscaping contractor; Jason pulled up at the gate. I have already mentioned that we have engaged the services of a team to sort out the garden drainage and, hopefully, our friendly landscaper will then come in to replace the paving in front of the house and the low wall that borders the front lawn.

I spent twenty minutes talking Jason through the various aspects of the job and then we spent another forty minutes chatting at the gate with his mum* who, by coincidence, happened to be walking past with her dogs.

Once Jason had left I headed in to the kitchen and prepped and blanched two of the celeriac stems that I had unearthed yesterday. 

These activities consumed most of the morning. After lunch we threw the dogs in to the Defender and headed in to Redditch for a walk around the Abbey Fields.**  30% felt that it would be valuable for our dog boarder to see how our dogs behaved on a walk and with other dogs, so she had arranged this session in advance of their stay at the end of the month.

If I am totally honest I really didn't fancy a walk around a muddy field in the cold, but it was much better than expected and we had a pleasant hour getting to know our dog boarder better. She had already got a "good vibe" from our dogs as she has sussed that our three are well socialised and well behaved. This bodes well for the future, as our last experience with boarding kennels was awful. I think we both have a good feeling about Kate (the dog boarder) as she seems caring and practical ... this will allow us 30% to go away and not worry about the dogs.

Having walked with Kate, we then headed home and had a quick cup of coffee before heading out again. This time it was over to Worcester for a check up at the eye clinic. It was pretty much as expected, they are concerned about my intraocular pressure, but it could simply be a side effect of the four weeks of steroid treatment prescribed and recently finished.  They want to see me again in a week to see if the IOP has reduced. If there is no reduction I will be prescribed another set of eye drops.

Well, that's just about it for Saturday, at some point the blanched celeriac got put in the freezer too. I said it was a busy day. I didn't say it was exciting or interesting.

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* Grubby Sue

** This was a bit of a blast from the past. 30% used to live very close to the Abbey Fields and we would walk Sell-by-date there most days. That was twenty years ago, as we have lived in the village for twenty years, this September ... we're still classed as newcomers.