New year, old me

New year, when there are loads of articles about how to make a shiny new you for the next 12 months. But I don't want a shiny new me, I want the old me back. This time last year I was in hospital, after a serious belly ache and a trip to A&E I was eventually diagnosed with appendicitis. "You'll be out tomorrow, we do these all the time" the surgical consult said. Little did she know that the offending vestigial organ was totally gross and going to perforate. This ended up with a nearly week long hospital stay, two weeks signed off sick at home and a year I feel didn't go to plan. We'd bought a house autumn 2015 and I was looking forward to finally have a garden where stuff didn't just blow away, that could actually be sat in, and where plants might survive. The problem with appendicitis is that to get it out you have to go through a lot of muscle which is also in a really difficult place to heal, so although I tried to do garden stuff, it was very tiring and/or painful.

So for a whole year I didn't eat anything I'd grown (except a couple of berries from the blackberry hedge I never got around to cutting back). My poor garden was more or less ignored, after having cleared loads of weeds I didn’t have the energy to keep on top of it. Luckily I’d put black sheeting down on the worst part, but bindweed finds away.  I didn’t brew anything, had no fruit bobbing around in jars of alcohol, bake, or even looked after my little house plants that well.

These are the saddest chillis.

This was really brought home to me when I was cleaning the kitchen after Christmas. I'd brought some flour to make mince pies with (but never got around to it) so was going to put it in the storage container when I discovered some of my flours had flour mites in them! I had to bin four different flours. I’d been thinking about making a summer berry wine using frozen fruits after finding them in the shop, luckily I checked what brewing stuff I had before starting because all my yeasts, nutrients and other stuff was out of date. It took a really long time to find my hydrometer as well before start because it was still in a random box in the shed. For over a year.

Lots of tiny yeast farts.

 So that's why this year I want to go back to the me before. The brewer, the baker, yes, even the candlestick maker. I know I need to be better at getting off my arse and actually do things. I’ve got a self imposed knitting ban for the weekends, it’s so easy to sit and knit and do nothing else, so now it’s an evening only activity. I’m hoping that’ll allow me to do some of the hobbies I’ve put to one side. Already I’ve tried to do more this year, I did start my wine eventually, and started growing some mushrooms a friend gave me for Christmas. I even got one of my spindles out again which felt good (but trying to spin and watch a tv show that has subtitles really doesn’t work).

Mushroom. Mushroom.

And I’m hoping to keep up with this again, share progress on the garden and other projects.