
After swiping the skirting boards with varnish first thing this morning, I pottered outside in the sun with the intention of drinking a cup of tea and half-heartedly pulling the odd weed until I could go back upstairs and fit the skirting to the wall.
Oh dear.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Eight hours later I came in at 5pm absolutely knackered!
Yep, somewhere between drinking the tea and and trying to walk back into the house, my brain made my feet turn left instead of right and I attacked the garden.
I filled my green bin with brambles in less than half an hour and I still have another week to go until it is emptied by the council so the rest of the huge pile at the bottom of the garden will have to wait until then.
I made further inroads into cutting the grass, first strimming as it was so long and then mowing on the highest setting. The chickens are now sporting an attractive green layer in their chicken pen to rootle out the bugs and tidbits from.

Elevenses for me and a warm seat for Fleagle. Like a hobbit, Fleagle had already consumed breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses and brunch by 11:30am. You can see her thinking about her forthcoming lunch...
I cut the grass inside my greenhouse, laid down weed suppressant membrane and piled in some stones. Once the industrial clingfilm arrives, I'll be almost ready to put in some tomatoes.

Before: lots of scrubby grass, and my red, white and blackcurrants and a vine in middle. Each currant plant has its own comfrey plant as a soil nitrogen fixer. I also chop off leaves and lay them round each plant to decompose and release nutrients.

After: grass strimmed then membrane and stones laid down. Two more bags are needed to finish it.
I cut back dead growth from last season's perennials and piled them up to go in the shed for kindling.
I was almost at the end of giving Marybelle a beakicure (a manicure for beaks) as hers was starting to hook over and make picking up grain tough, when suddenly I ran out of steam. Literally, bang. That's my lot. My face was burning just like it does when I get really run down.
Realising I had seriously overdone it I cursed my stupidity all the way back to the house, expecting to see it was around 2pm. Nope, it was almost 5pm.
I'd been out all day in the hot sun with no food or fluids since midday.
I drank a pint of water, scoffed an emergency salmon bagel, then ran a deep bath to scrub myself clean. I carefuly applied ointment to all the various cuts and bumps a good day's gardening usually sustains, including several head lumps (one from a tumbling compost bin that I swung the wrong way and headbutted) and one head cut from smacking it on the shelving rigging in the greenhouse (that's coming down asap).
It was then I noticed my face in the mirror. It was bright red and my nose resembled a Belisha Beacon.
I actually felt a bit relieved - what I thought was chronic fatigue exhaustion was actually normal tiredness from dehydration and the hot face because I was burnt rather than from a dodgy immune system.
Hoorah!
So I'm sitting here now in front of a halogen heater (because I have those chills you get when you've had to much sun) trying to find a cheap watch to wear in the garden so I don't do it again.
Tsk, tsk. No matter how old I get, I never learn.
Most amusingly, Fleagle and Georgie are asleep on the other sofa.

The boundaries are drawn
Until I put the cushion between them, they had both spent the better part of 10 minutes hissing, snapping, growling and generally trying to outstare each other in competition for the whole sofa.
Children eh?