IN & OUT MARCH 2020

My old fridge was inherited along with my house from my late father back in 2013. It was a basic full sized fridge freezer in the old style, with freezer shelves up top and fridge shelved with door insert and salad box down base. It began to get rusty marks on the exterior and earlier this year the light died. I could have bought a new bulb, but decided to buy a new fridge.

The freezer compartment was almost empty - all my frozen food still remaining fitted into one grocery sack. The shelves in the fridge fllled 2 bags and there were still 2 bottles of wine.

The Coronavirus was begining to make some stores limit their services or shut - so I decided to rush my purchase a week ahead of schedule and popped along to Rustingon one Saturday in March. I discovered that they were still doing deliveries, so picked a fridge-freezer and arranged for delivery that coming Monday. This meant no coffee with Liz at her place or local countryside walk, but coffee and gardening at mine - and an extra part-used rice milk for the fridge.

The new item was delivered on time - just in time - for the next day the lockdown began, and I might have had to wait weeks if not months for its purchase and delivery.

The fridge was at the top - with a two-part salad tub, but otherwise much the same. A few times I have forgot myself and gone to open the lower compartment and found a freezer instead of my vegan cheese or wine, but mostly I have recalled where the two main features are.

The freezer now has 4 boxes rather than 3 shelves. I do not know why 2 boxes are odd - the one at the bottom having holes in and at the top labeled something different - but I am hoping this will keep my annual crops long lasting from one season to the next.

Finally, for today, here is the view of the bush and flower border in the back yard - after Liz and I tidied it up on fridge delivery day - after we had tackled the front yard, cutting it back ready to have the repointing company give a quote for use later in the year. During the last week of the month, I ordered in 10 bags of mushroom compost from Culberry Nursery and began to use some in the poly tunnel, some on the finished parts of the above border, and then take the half bags down the allotment to top up my strawberry beds.