I'm likely to go quiet for a few days starting this evening. The shoulder joint replacement is scheduled for tomorrow morning followed by an overnight in the hospital's joint camp wing. Private rooms and lots of attention from the occupational and physical therapists. If all goes as the surgeon plans, home sometime Wednesday afternoon.
A firm that specializes in gently washing building exteriors will be here on Thursday morning to clean the front porch and the furniture on it so I can sit outside without getting my clothes filthy, when it isn't raining, with my Kindle Paperwhite well supplied with my favorite mystery series. I live on a busy street made even more busy by being one of the bus routes to the local elementary school, so all outdoor horizontal surfaces get very dusty. I was thrilled to discover an exterior washing service other than power washing, which usually knocks paint off.
A few people in the States still sit on their front porches, but the concept of a sitting-out garden is unknown, at least in this region. Here's a photo of one I saw last October in Minehead, on the coast of Somerset. The owners were determined to have a sitting-out garden even if it had to be vertical! The steps leading to it are nearly as steep as a ladder, and the handrail is merely a loosely-swagged rope, but the view over the sea from the bench must be spectacular. The photo is completely unedited, so please excuse faults in exposure and in the way it's framed.