Glad to be back at home

I thought I'd take a break from the (belated and backdated) holiday blogs to say that I am quite happy to be back at home again. For one, the temperature is a normal sort of warm rather than a quite lethal and unrelenting dry heat. Our house doesn't have air conditioning and we don't need it, this being Scotland. I will say that we about froze at the airport. The temperature when we left Sharm El Sheikh was about 43 C (109 F) and when we landed in Manchester the pilot said it was 16 or 17 C (60 - 62 F). The pilot was a bit off though. The thermostat in the car on the drive back home said that the outside temperature was 11 and 12 C (51 to 53 F).

We can also brush our teeth and drink the tap water with impunity. Making sure that we've got enough water with us was something we got used to as the taps were not for drinking water. To top it all off we can flush the toilet paper again. Egypt like Greece has a rule that you have to put the toilet paper in a little bin by the side of the toilet rather than casually dropping it in the water after use as we westerners do. (This is the part of the story where my niece Annie will say "Eww!")

I must say that my dear friend Helen did one terrific job of tending things while we were away. Everything is thriving! Now that I've done the mowing and a bit of weeding, I thought I'd share what's going on.

The tomatoes are fruiting like mad. I've never had trusses with as many tomatoes on them. These are the plum tomatoes.

These are the beans, happily running up their canes. Just before I left I planted some orphan marigolds along the edge of the garden. They're doing well too.

Here are the sweet peas. Again, I have planted too many plants per wigwam forgetting that when sweet peas get into their stride they are very vigorous. I may have to buy some more vases to keep the bounty of sweet pea flowers in.

The hedge gets cut next month and it really needs it, doesn't it?

The hanging basket by the back door seems to be at its peak. I think it looks beautiful.

Here is the biggest surprise that greeted us on our return from our travels. The stone wall was built! This is a dry stone wall meaning that there isn't a single bit of concrete holding this wall up. If kept properly it will last for hundreds of years.

You can see the now redundant wood fence leaning unwanted against the house. I wonder if we can reuse it somewhere else. . . .