Spiders, Ugh

Spiders, ughNot a fan of spiders, any, really.  But I can manage to catch them and release them outside, if they are daddy long legs or something I recognize.  I am also not too squeamish about squashing them if they are in my house space but I do always feel bad about doing that since I know they are useful.  And I have been known to shriek and leave the room quickly and yell for my husband if it’s big and nasty and fast.  All gametes of spider phobias and dislike and acceptance all in one place so I can understand others being freaked by spiders.

Had to make an emergency run to the vet on Friday.  Not for any sick pets, thank you, but I was dangerously low on cat food.  Our fuzzy babies are all on special diets and while it wouldn’t hurt them to eat something else for a day or two, we’re trying to get our two big boys (one of ours and our daughter’s cat) to lose some weight and that’s what I needed.

Luckily they had about 5 bags of the food and I snatched up 3 of them.  I paid cash and the lone young lady working the desk had to go get the safe key from the vet and go get change from the safe.   As she is handing me my change, I notice a rather large daddy long legs close to the bottom of her shirt.  She is wearing a nurse-type of shirt – buttons down the front but does not tuck into her trousers.  I tell her she has a spider on her shirt.

She immediately goes totally rigid and says “I HATE spiders” and her voice is quivering.  I tell her to get close and I will brush it off.  But that dang spider with all it’s little spidey eyes saw me coming and started working it’s way down her shirt and the minute I reached for it, he went underneath her shirt.
“Opps” is my comment.

If it was possible, she got even more rigid and says in a squeaky and timorous voice “It went up inside, didn’t it.”
“Yep”.  She starts squealing because she’s still trying to hand me my change and has dropped a coin.  I tell her to forget my coin and run to the back and get help.  She manages to scoop up my coin and practically throws it at me as she is dashing to the door that leads to the back of the vets office.  Now she is yelling, “Spider, spider, spider, help, get it off me.”

Poor girl.  I can feel for her.  I think she had her shirt unbuttoned by the time she hit the door.

Missing Spring

This could be taken two ways:  I miss Spring, the season, in that it really isn’t here yet, or, I probably won’t be around my home this year when Spring comes and thus will miss the start of the season.  I am meaning the second part here.  In the three plus years we have lived in this house, I have been diligently planting spring flowers.  The first year, in my misunderstanding of the British countryside and wildlife, I planted around 100 tulips, all of which made the local deer quite happy and me quite miserable because I ended up with 3 stalks and 2 tulip flowers at the end of it all.  While I was exclaiming proudly to my new neighbor, who had great experience in this matter, she informed me that the tulips would not see the light of day as the deer would eat them all.  Yep.  At least I had also planted daffodils and some lilies and those all grew and were lovely.

So each year, I planted more and more daffodils and added crocus, more lilies, and anything else that looked like it might be unappetizing to deer (getting the lowdown from my neighbor).  I say, “I planted” as if I did the actual work but the house came with a gardener and I would get the bulbs and he would plant them where i said, “they would look good there, don’t you think?”.  Of course, he always agreed with me.  And more and more bulbs went into the ground.

As the house garden came already planted with some lovely rhododendrons, various grasses, some of which flower, some camellias, some fuchsia, some azaleas and a couple of lone rose bushes, my garden was looking more and more lovely each spring.  Plus there are plenty of different varieties of green bushes around and some red bushes, black bushes and other stuff that my gardener knows but I still have no clue.   Now I have to ask my gardener “Is there room” and I have not purchased any new bulbs for this year other than some tulips (yes 20 tulips – all in netted pots so no deer can eat them).

So Spring comes, starts early, green shoots start coming through the ground, all over the garden, sometimes a bit early and then get covered with snow again, but they keep coming.  As we walked around the garden this weekend, I realized that almost all my daffodils have pushed through the ground.  The crocus are about to burst into bloom.  The rhododendrons  and camillas  and several other bushes have plenty of buds, and the roses are retaliating as well.   My garden is so dang beautiful when all these flowers bloom.

And then it hit me.  We are going on holiday soon – a slightly longer than usual holiday – actually leaving my daughter at home for once, instead of the other way around when she jaunts off to work in Africa and leaves us behind.  AND there is a very good chance that I will miss the blooming of the garden in a big way!   I am sure that everything will not bloom and die during the time we are gone but I am also fairly sure that most of the daffodils and crocuses will be up and well on their way to being gone by the time we return.   How sad for me!!!

Spring is such a joyous time here because it comes after such nasty winters, whether there was a lot of snow and rain or just cold weather.  Everyone here loves Spring.  You can hardly get into one of the local DYI stores or gardening stores because everyone is there getting ready for Spring.  When we lived in Houston, wasn’t such a big deal.  There were flowers blooming all year-long so nobody was overly excited for Spring.  But HERE, it’s a lovely occasion to celebrate the season, watch the glorious colors and plants come to life in your garden, shake off the winter doldrums, and start being outside a lot more.   I have fallen into this category of being delighted when spring arrives but this year I will be in the tropics, in a rainforest, and not staring at my garden, just delirious with joy at all my daffodils and crocuses and tulips and rhododendruns and such.  Not the best of planning on my part.   Well, luckily, we will probably be here for next year’s spring as well.  I think I’d better go get some more bulbs.

Just Going Through The Motions

We feed everything that wanders through our yard/garden, practically.  Here in England, we have grey squirrels, foxes, badgers, jays, starlings, woodpeckers, magpies, crows, tits, wrens, robins, pigeons, and other small birds, and feral cats and neighborhood cats.  I don’t feed the deer but only because I have experience with them becoming a nightmare in the garden with little blessings of deer poop everywhere that never goes away or gets cleaned up.   Unfortunately, the larger birds have pretty much chased away the smaller birds but I have heard that there are fewer tits and robins and wrens around the last couple of years anyway.  I believe that is so because the first two years here, we had plenty of all kinds of sizes of birds.  Now we are low on all bird life!  And to my everlasting sorrow, no hedgehogs.

 

The cats that wander through have varied over the years.  At one time, we had as many as 6 coming and going during the day.  Now we are down to just two, one tabby and one long haired golden colored kitty.  The tabby will come up to be petted if I stand in one place long enough.  The golden cat is too skittish and never comes near me.

 

The squirrels are up and down the feeder and adjacent trees and around the yard all day long.  They race along the fence railing, jumping over the posts and fight each other for supremacy in the feeder.  When one of the cats comes into the yard, the squirrels scatter, run up into the trees and curse and curse and curse until the cat leaves.  I can always tell when a cat is in the garden because of the noise the squirrels make.

 

The golden cat has decided that a very good place to sit is almost directly under the feeder.  The squirrels have decided that if they want the peanuts, they are just going to have to race a bit faster to nab one and race away from the sitting cat.   For awhile, I don’t think the golden cat was feeling well because she (no idea if male or female but she looks too cute and sweet to be a male) would just sit and watch the squirrels and never budge.  Or was she just luring them in for later???

 

Standing in the house one day, squirrels in the feeder and on the railing and suddenly a streak of gold as the cat races from the side of the house and up the feeder pole to land on the railing herself and swipe a paw at a squirrel.  Wowzer.  She had never done that before.  Since that day, I have seen her several times make a run at the squirrels, never quite catching them but almost giving them a swipe.  She then settles into her spot and the squirrels come and go again to the feeder with her just watching them.

 

I think it’s all for show!  Nobody is hungry since there is food out for them to eat.  Today, the golden cat came running into the back garden and ran at a squirrel who jumped up to the railing and sat there scolding her.  Another squirrel was sitting on the ground just about 4′ away from her.  She turned around and saw it and made a half-hearted run at it and I swear she could have caught it before the squirrel decided to leave.  It’s almost as if they are playing tag!  Tag, you’re it now you run away because I really don’t want to have to go to the trouble of killing you and eating you. Yes, we are ancient enemies.  I am the hunter, you are the prey, but let’s just go through the motions and be done with it.

The Joys of Cat Carriers

Currently, 3 cats share our home with us.  They graciously allow us to live here and in exchange, they are happy to bother us for food and sometimes sit on our laps or come by for some furry loving.  Two of the cats are ours and one is our daughters – living with us right now because she works in Africa where he can’t go.

One of our furry babies has been overweight for years.  Always the vets would say “feed him less” and we’d say We DO!   Finally we got a cat expert who realized that his hormones were running rampant and no matter what we fed him, he always thought he was hungry.  So much money and much special food later and many trials at keeping him separate at eating time, he is losing weight and has only about 1 1/2 kg to go.  The result has been wonderful in that he doesn’t act like a fat walrus quite so much anymore and has some more energy to run around with our daughter’s cat who is a good 9 years younger.

To keep him on track, we take him into the vet monthly for a weigh in.  Sort of like an animal Weight Watchers.  I get the encouragement, he gets on the scales, and everybody goes “oh how wonderful!”.  And because we have 3 cats that all periodically need to go to the vet, we have 3 cat carriers.  I was having trouble finding one big enough for him without using his airline crate which is a monstrous heavy duty thing. Finally I found a good one at Amazon – my shop all for almost everything when I don’t want to leave the house.  It folds flat when not in use and is big enough for him at his top weight.

I had it out last week for his trip to the vet for his weigh-in.  Of course, nobody wants to get into it when they need to so it’s always sneak up on whichever cat needs to go to the vet and stuff them inside the carrier and quickly zip it closed before the cat can escape.  At which point, the cat inside starts crying piteously and all other cats in the house rush to the carrier to mock them.   “Ha, ha – it’s you and not me!  See you later sucker!”  Lucky, I have learned through bitter experience to make sure ALL the zippers are closed except the entrance zipper as it is harder to catch a cat after they have run out of the carrier because you forgot to close one of the zippers.

When I came back with my fat boy last week and let him loose back into the house, the young fellow, my daughter’s cat, decided the carrier was a great place to play.  What fun to pop in and out of the top and sit there and hunker down with just his eyes at exit level to see if he can scare any cats wandering by.   Or just fun to go in and have a short snooze for a bit.   As we are basically slaves to our cats needs and wants, of course the carrier is now sitting out in the dining room so he can play with it and use it when he wants.  But I know when it is his turn to get in it for a trip to the vet, it will suddenly become a dangerous and avoidable place where it will be a chase to end all chases to catch him and stuff him inside his current loving play area!  Oh the joys of having cats and stuffing them into cat carriers!

Boilers/Furnaces/Icy Windows

When we were first moving to England, now over 3 years ago (yes, wow!), they asked us what we wanted in our house.  Having been in and out of Houston, Texas for many years, the first thing we asked for was air conditioning.  That request drew many a laugh from the various real estate agents, leasing agents, and human resources people dealing with our move “across the pond”.  We did know, through years of television and movie conditioning, that England was probably cold and damp and rainy but we just assumed it would be hot on occasion too.  The cold and damp far outweighs the warm and sunny or hot.

So obviously we didn’t get a house with air conditioning.  There are some available but well beyond our price means and few and far between.  We actually found our house by ourselves.  We got three days with an agent who drove us furiously around burrow and dale and roundabouts to various houses in one village or town or another with us usually having no clue where we were in relation to my husband’s job or in relation to anything.  We found a house on a hill in a lovely neighborhood and a great back garden and fantastic master bedroom and said we wanted this house.  Well, took two weeks with the owner putting more and more obstacles in our way until we said forget it and had about 2 weeks left on our allotted time (before our furniture and household goods arrived via sea) to now find a house.  We found this one in the paper and fell in love with it immediately.  It backs up to a golf course down a long driveway and few neighbors.  Not the best kitchen I wanted but private and enough room, we thought, no air conditioner – ha ha – but nice, really, really nice.  And luckily, the owner was willing to get out in time for our shipment to arrive.

So we moved into the house and we are still here.  Some winters we have been dealing with a really flaky boiler which we have learned is the British equivalent of a furnace.  In the states, furnaces are huge things that take up an entire closet and lots of tubing and duct work to take the heat through the house and blow hot air out grates in the floor or wall or ceiling.  Here the boiler is this small box that sits on the wall and runs furiously in the winter.  I’m sure there must be other parts to it in various walls or the attic (loft) but my focus is on this small box and the blinking lights.  When the lights are on, we have heat and when they are blinking, we are in trouble.

Two winters we have been in trouble.  Last winter, during the coldest part of the winter, we had blinking lights and the blasted thing was out for several days.  Odd – to us – the automotive rescue service – their automobile association – AA – came by to bring us 4 small electric heaters which work amazingly well and could heat up a whole room to unbearable levels in a couple of hours.  The boiler worked for a few weeks and then, in another very cold week, it started the blinking lights again.  This time, my husband was able to look inside and attach the small hose that had come undone.  Now we automatically check this hose whenever we get the blinky lights and it seems to fix it most of the time.

This winter the fan went out.  We had a few days of awful whirling noises and then blinking lights and no heat.  Luckily we have those 4 electric heaters.  I just have to watch them to ensure the cats don’t sit too close to them.  Only took a couple of days to fix it this time but we didn’t get cold due to the electric heaters.  Our electric bill was sky high for that month but we were warm.

So we have gotten used to this radiator/boiler system which works quite well.  In most of our rooms, there is at least one radiator and we have to turn it down considerably to keep the room warm but not overly hot.  The cats know which radiators are running and that’s usually where we can find them, curled up in front of one of the working radiators.

I was talking to some English friends about the various differences between heating and air conditioning between here and the states and learned, to my amazement, that there are still many homes in England that exist without a boiler, furnace, radiator, or any means of heating other than the stove.  I’d heard of “cold water flats” and suddenly it made sense.  I didn’t know they still existed but apparently they do and aren’t that uncommon.  I know of at least 4 families with no source of heat other than a fireplace in one or two rooms and a stove in the kitchen.  One family I know uses electric heaters exclusively.  My friend complains about their electric bill – but they haven’t taken any steps to put in radiators or a boiler so I guess they are happy enough with their circumstances.

The old English standard stove – the Aga – was made for running constantly, year in and year out, and kept the kitchen boiling hot in summer and toasty warm in winter.  That stove makes sense if it is your only source of heat.  My friends were telling me how they gauge what clothes to wear by whether there is ice on the inside of their windows in the morning.  Ice on the inside!!!  My gosh.  I don’t think I’ve lived anywhere quite so cold since I was a child and actually had an outhouse for use rather than indoor plumbing.  I hated to go to the bathroom in the winter.

So all the progress in the world and there are still people with no heat – and they live just fine that way and have adapted to it.  My one set of friends would no sooner leave their home than they would fly to the moon.  They love it – heat-less and all.  I have other British friends who were just as amazed as I was that such homes still were around.   The world has many wonders – both modern and “old fashioned”.  I am lucky enough to be able to see both ends of the spectrum.

Cosmic Colds

When you have children, it seems like it is an open door for letting in all the little germs and bugs that float about and incubate in areas like schools and day care with sniffling noses, hacking coughs, sore throats and such. I went through all this when our daughter was young and attending public institutions and bringing home all manner of germs and such. One would think with her over the age of 40 now, that I would escape from her clutches as the harbinger of colds and flu.

Lovely to say that my daughter and I have an amazing cosmic connection. I like to think this came about because I was such a good single parent when she was under 1 year of age until age 11. That we connected in ways that will always keep us close and loving to each other. That’s all well and good except I seem to be cosmically connected to her health as well!.

Currently my daughter works on a rotational basis out of Africa. I am lucky enough to see her almost every other month on her time off work when she comes here to visit with us (actually she comes to see her cat but I’ll take it). Usually she comes home tired but healthy and goes back refreshed and healthy. So why is it, when someone who was obviously sick and contagious shook her hand last week, I GOT THE COLD! (and she’s still in Africa – not here for any of this)

The minute she told me about it via email, I could feel a scratchy throat coming on and sure enough, by the next day, sore throat and stuffy nose, then coughing and hacking. She’s not affected but I have a monster cold now. One that is kicking me in the butt and keeping me in bed in the morning until 11 or so when I drag myself into the shower and drag myself downstairs for cereal because it is the easiest thing to prepare.

As parents, we are always wishing to spare our children pain and suffering but who knew that such a good mother-child connection meant that I would get sick instead of her. Ah well. It’s not the first time I have shared her illness or her injuries or taken them on instead of her getting sick. Must have some good karma somewhere as a parent for me to continue to cosmically connect with her.

Weekends at the DIY

Had to hit a DIY this weekend and for anyone who is really behind on the times, a DIY is Do It Yourself.  On occasion, it is so much easier to just repair something on your own rather than call a repair person or the landlord or whomever.  This may not be one of those occasions.  So we thought we had a quick repair where the upstairs pipe had broken off under the sink in one of the bedrooms.  This was not an under the sink plumbing that I have ever seen before but it seems to be fairly typical here as when we went into the DIY store, there were plenty of like parts to get and they seem to come in an “all in one” type replacement part.

What was amazing though is the number of people that were shopping the DIY.  OMG.  it was like Christmas sale week at the malls.  The lot was full, people were waiting for cars to move out of the way so they could park (although, it you went far enough out in the lot, there were some spaces).  Once inside, I was so thankful we were not going to the building section or the garden section as it seems like these sections were heaving with people as the Brits have decided that spring is here and they are busy working on their homes and gardens to fix up, spruce up, weather up, and/or maintain.  wow.  A whole lot of gardening and repairing going on across the nation, I’d say.

Didn’t take us too long to get what we needed even though we had a short list.  Took longer standing in the line to check out than it did to find everything we wanted.  But we managed.

Back home, the repair that looked so easy and uncomplicated for a plumbing repair did not work.  Something is wrong with the picture as the easy part would not screw into the part that is left behind.  My hubby worked and worked and worked on it until he had stripped the threads in the PVC pipe.  Back to the hardware store for another piece of plumbing kit that was exactly what we had previously purchased and lo and behold, hubby could not make it work either!  Dang, two 5.99 pound parts, both stripped now and both not going where they should and my sink still not fixed.  double dang.  How odd.  And how funny.  My hubby can fix things and do a good job sometimes but on occasion, his engineering and computer brain takes over and he keeps trying for a “re-boot” when a re-boot won’t do.  such was the case here.  So now we have three sets of plumbing parts that don’t work, but we probably can’t ever throw them away just in case we can use them elsewhere, a sink that still doesn’t work, and a lovely Friday in the DIY along with the rest of England.

Many, Many Tits

Stop right there and discontinue reading if your mind is in the gutter and thinking – WOW – she’s going to write about female anatomy ‘cuz it ain’t gonna happen!  I’m talking about the lovely little English birds – tits – Greater Tits, Blue Tits, Coal Tits, Lesser Tits (not sure they have these but there must be lesser if there are greater) and Crested Tits.    So there.

They are delightful little birds and quite colorful mostly, except for the Coal Tits which are pretty much black and white but still delightful.  We have many in our garden and they come to the bird feeders frequently.  We have them all except the Crested Tits and I haven’t even seen one of those but did see in a book that they exist.  The tits are our most frequent visitors although we have a large contingent of Blue Jays, Woodpeckers, Wood Pigeons, Robins, Starlings, some Wrens,and Magpies that show up regularly and maybe a few others that are not quite so frequent.  But I think I like the tits the best.

I have to admit that both my husband and I dissolve into laughter any time either of us go “Hey, there’s a couple of TITS in the garden!”  We go all Bevis and Butthead at that saying and then we look to see what kind they are and enjoy the heck out of watching them.  Everybody can enjoy a little sophomoric and idiotic fun.

Think I read somewhere that the English Starling and even the Wood Pigeon might be in danger but I think if that’s the case, the bird society could come to our garden and I’d happily let them have a bunch of mine to take elsewhere and repopulate.

Last year, my gardener told me I shouldn’t feed the birds so much when there were babies in nests as they needed to learn to hunt and catch the bugs and worms and slugs and such.  Good advice and it makes sense but my Tits and other small birds just went elsewhere and I didn’t have a whole lot of birds around or any birdsong during that period when I wasn’t feeding them so this year I expect I’ll just keep feeding them except on the days when my gardener comes.  Is that bad?  probably.  Because who knows if the next person to rent/own this house will be as happy taking care of the wild and feral creatures that meander through here.

Last year I put out a bunch of houses in the hopes that I’d get something to nest in them.  Didn’t happen but the houses are still out there and maybe some little new mom and dad bird will need a new house and find one.  Also put out a bunch of hangers that have wool and stuff in them that supposedly the birds will take to make their nests.  Can’t do much else unless I go build the nest for them and stuff them inside.

As I’ve stated before, the birdsong starts around 6 and is quite lovely.  Don’t know who sings what as usually I can’t see which bird has its mouth open when I can hear songs.  It won’t be quite so lovely come June when the birds start singing around 4:30 but right now I enjoy it.  Anyway, having Tits in the garden is great (Ha ha, ha ha) Love it  and those cute little birds.

Loving the Deliveries

Ever since the prairie days in the U.S.A. and the Wells Fargo stagecoach came rolling across the plains once a month or so, it has been exciting and a big joy to get packages delivered to your door.  Well of course, I’m not that old that I actually experienced the Wells Fargo wagon but I did love the song in “The Music Man” and the image that it provoked.  Now it is just as much fun to get packages delivered even if it is the Royal Mail, Fed Ex, UPS, DPD, or someone in a station wagon or car.  And even when you know what it is, it is still just a bit exciting and fun to open a package and see your new possession nestled snug in it’s miles of wadded up brown paper or rolls of puffed up air wrap.

I have taken to getting things delivered like duck to water.  You can get almost anything delivered to your door and don’t always have to be home either to get it.  Most stores will provide a delivery of some sort and their on line shopping is almost as good and sometimes maybe even a little better than wandering the aisles and trying to find your items.  Tesco, Waitrose, Ocado, Graze, Hello Fresh, laundry service, B&Q, Longacres, John Lewis, Just Eat, gourmet food delivery, diet craze, fish mongers, dairy products, American Food Stores, newspapers (natch) and the list goes on and on with the different business that will come to your door and bring your heart’s desire.  I have embraced it so wholeheartedly that there could be weeks pass before I need to step foot into a mall.

However, I try not to let that happen because I do still enjoy a good mall and a good stroll around the High Street.  The problem with the home delivery is that  it’s really too easy to sit at your computer and check off things to have brought to the house.  I can easily hit over 100 pounds with Tesco in just a few minutes.  So I try to limit my on line shopping to stuff that’s harder for me to carry by myself, like stocking up on water (did this when all the flooding started here just in case) or cat litter, or diet drinks.    That kind of thing.

But it is hard to resist.  Amazon has their “subscribe and save” service where you can sign  up to get certain things delivered every month or other month, etc.  I have done this with several items we use on a regular basis.  I can get our cat food and diet sodas there at a cheaper price than buying them at the store.  But yesterday I might have gone over the tilt meter just a tad.  My deliveries arrived almost at once.  They had to be passing each other in the driveway.  Amazon came with all my drinks and cat food (once a month), then some things I had ordered for Valentine’s day, then some wonderful must have items from ebay and then etsy, and finally my Hello Fresh box (provides 3 meals, recipes, and ingredients to cook.  rather clever and fun to try new things).  And Wednesday is my fish monger day as well. My front door should have been on automatic open yesterday.   I can see me getting older and older and never stepping a foot outside the door as the world is brought to me.  The potential is there.  I just love the deliveries.

Mushy Garden

We have been quite fortunate this winter not to be in one of the flooded areas in the south of England.  We almost were as we had looked at several properties in areas that have had problems with flooding but – knock on wood – so far, our rental house has been fine through all the rain.  Not that we haven’t had some problems as the conservatory has been pumped up as it was breaking away from the house.  But so far, we’re good.  No flooding.

That said, our back garden is mush.  Walking across it yesterday to retrieve some of the fallen branches and debris from the wind, it was like walking through a plate of mushy peas – I imagine.  Squish, squash, mush, splat, splash.  Our back garden has always been a lot more moss than grass but it is green so who really cares.  But now, it is pretty much turned into a swamp.  If the weather were warmer, I’d be looking for mangrove stumps or cypress knees or lotus blossoms in the middle of the yard.  I am still feeding the birds and squirrels and neighborhood feral cats and foxes and badgers so do need to squish across the garden periodically to fill the freeloaders bowls.  The mush pulls at my shoes and spits water up at me as I gingerly traipse to the feeders.  Rather unique feeling.

We have a lovely back garden that overlooks the golf course where we can see that the sand traps have turned into small lakes.  Yet still the golfers come almost every day.   And our garden was built up to equal the level of the house and to hold a deck rather than slope down to the golf course.  Underneath the deck, we can see the whole garden buildup straining against the brick wall that has already been braced against the pressure.  My hubby thinks that the broken gap between the dirt and the bricks has grown and the pressure has increased.  We are rather intimidated by it and a bit afraid to measure the gap in case we are right and it is increasing.  While I think we are OK and won’t flood, I think it is now a race.  We need enough dry days for the garden to dry and quit being mush.   If that doesn’t happen and we get more rain, I fear the brick wall might finally succumb to the pressure and the whole garden might slide down the slope to the golf course.  Gone will be the deck, gone will be my workshop under the deck.   Mush, mush, mush.  Still, not as bad as the Somerset Levels (had to ask my gardener what they were) but never had such a mushy yard.