A BIG Decision

 Hello All

Well it's blowing a gale and hailing out there at the moment. I was going to do a Tip Run but it really isn't the weather for loading up the car with the pile of wet stuff piled outside the garage and then un -piling it several miles away, when I could be sitting in my kitchen cleaning up some bee frames and potting on some seedlings. And let's face it I'm not even doing that now as I am sat at my laptop.

Looking around me, my kitchen is a typical  smallholder's space. The fire is on, with a couple of supers of honey keeping warm to the side, a clothes horse of washing to the front and washed plastic bags, a bunch of dried chillis  and baskets of onions on a line above. 

This reverie is not without purpose.

My husband of 58 years died last month. He had fought several life threatening illness over the years, Being a big strong guy, with a healthy lifestyle and being extremely bloody minded he had fought them all. The last year or two had seen him struggling with that fight and the last few months saw him doing very little other than worry about what he should be doing.  He hated that I became his carer and that he "couldn't knock the skin off a rice pudding" While we knew he hadn't long, he passed away suddenly. I am SO pleased for him. On the day he died he said " I've had enough Gilly" and so he had.

So here I am, sat in the kitchen of the  family home of 43 years, thinking of where I go from here. I shan't make any decisions for some time yet, in fact I am going to give myself a year ( four gardening seasons!) to see how I manage. I really don't want to give up the only lifestyle that makes any sense to me. 

If you will  bear with me I will use my blog to chart those seasons and weigh up the pros and cons of a crazy 78 year woman staying on her two beautiful Derbyshire acres

Gillx