Strengths and Weaknesses

I've been feeling distinctly wobbily since my diagnosis of severe osteoporosis last week. Held together with string and selotape, that's what it feels like. So it's weekly drugs for the next five years if the side effects aren't too awful, and lots of exercise like brisk walking and gentle weight training. I probably won't end up folded completely over, and I'll do my best not to fall and break something. Anyway, after a visit to the gorgeous Dr Wright this morning - lovat green tweed suit, no checks, purple striped shirt, purple patterned tie, the man has style as well as an handsome smiling face - I decided to seize the day, begin my new routine and go for a long stomp up and down the lanes, load-bearing heaven. It's not as if this doesn't happen every day anyway, but I have to be DOING something positive.The afternoon was just glorious, sunny and very windy, and we admired the remaining copper leaves still attached to the trees and hedges though most went in the overnight gales. Hugo was excited by the strong breezes and bounced along with ears erect and nose high in the air, searching every field with laser eyes for hares, squirrels, rabbits or birds, anything to give him an excuse to gallop off. He looks so self-important in this mode he makes me laugh. He didn't find anything luckily. Washing his feet, legs and undercarriage is not something I want to do too often, and lifting him into the bath is out of the question now.

The new kitchen table and chairs underwent a trial run on Sunday and acquitted themselves admirably. I should have changed the other one years ago; it's always been a bugbear for me. It was too small, though we did have a long dining table then too. It's on ebay now, beautiful photos taken to show it at its best, and hopefully someone will buy it. In the meantime the garage is housing it and its uncomfortable chairs. Good riddance I say. About time. And just in time for heavy use at Christmas.

On Saturday Nick arrived with his axe strapped to his bike, and worked like a beaver. He whistled through the front garden cutting down all the dead perennials, and trundled all the detritus around to the field behind the garden. As soon as there's a long dry spell I'll be out making fire again. He cleared out the excesses too, the extravagant overabundance of Japanese anemones and echinops and bergenia that are nice in small doses but not so appealing when they barge into other plants' spaces and take over. He also chopped a big pile of wood into neat logs, and helped me move some furniture. Now there are just millions of amber leaves waiting to be collected, and that's be a job I'll enjoy when they dry up a bit.

There's biblical sky again this afternoon, scudding low cloud backdropped by high, heavy pewter but relieved by a huge expanse of blue beneath. There's such power out there, such unrestrained force. It does put things in perspective. And I needed that today.