Megan Palmer

If you have a dehydrator, dice/slice the stalks. They shrink into nothing and are perfect for adding to soups.

I have jars of diced carrots, swedes, cauliflower, marrow, parsnips etc that I use for soups and making chutneys and pickles.

If you are simply wishing to empty your compost bin, do you have any trees or shrubs, vegetable or flower beds in your garden?

Compost is most often used as a mulch to improve the soil and would be more beneficial applied in these situations than spread over a lawn.

I wonder how I have stayed married to my long suffering husband.

I always mean “this coming weekend” of the week that we are in and “next” weekend is the following weekend.

His next weekend is the “next” weekend coming up at the end of the current week.

Forthcoming weekend activities are always clearly qualified with the actual date.

Pest

When voila is spelt as wallah.

Wallah is an Anglo Indian word to me.

Another peeve is the English pronunciations of place names.

I lived in the UK for 10 years before the advent of Google maps and sat nav.

I refused to navigate for my husband after one too many arguments when he was driving.

I invariably missed the turn off and the next one would be several miles down the road.

How was I to know that “boo lee” was spelt Beaulieu?

Or that “bister” was Bicester?

We survived my lack of navigation skills and are still married😉

Peat

We let our senior dog go last year, he was a 14 yr 6m old Brittany, Labrador, springer spaniel cross who had been suffering from severe arthritis and canine dementia.

He still had a good appetite and enjoyed a gentle daily walk but had lost control of his bowels so we were picking up poop inside the house for the last 6m of his life.

He was on monthly injections of synovan and non steroid pain relief which were no longer as effective towards the end.

We came to the decision to let him go whilst he still had a relatively good quality of life and we still miss him every day.

I still cry over his loss but try to remember all the good times we shared, we have had dogs throughout our 38 years of marriage and hope that I will be allowed to die with dignity when my time comes.

It is always better to let them go too soon than to leave it too late. My heart goes out to you, our pets give us such unconditional love.

I have downloaded a free app called Cam Scanner onto my Android phone that allows me to scan single and multiple documents onto my phone.

The free version contains advertisements when you open the app and has a watermark at the bottom of the page.

If the watermark bothers you, save the scanned documents/photos to the photo gallery of your phone and crop them so the watermark doesn't show.

The scanning app allows you to sharpen the images/resolution of the documents too.

Then you could plug your phone into your laptop, upload them and or transfer to the memory stick.

Here's a photo of a recipe showing the watermark at the bottom left of the page.

Awry

Our girls are producing at least 6 eggs every day and although there are 4 families in the co-op, there are more than enough to go around.

So dinner tonight was a quiche with caramelised onion, sharp cheddar in a homemade shortcrust pastry.

Plenty left over for lunch tomorrow.