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May. 23rd, 2009 12:07 amSeven hours straight gardening.
Here's a funny story. The Countess decided around the end of last year that one of the things she wanted to have in the garden was a concrete trough alongside the new shed. (The Countess's thing is ideas. She shoots out ideas at about thirty or forty a minute. Often they are mutually incompatible, or physically impossible. The trick is to wait till she's sorted them out in her head and picked onthe most difficult one the one she likes best.) To illustrate this idea, she had me out in the garden arranging paving slabs, of which we had a few spare, in the approximate shape and size of the trough she wanted, erecting precarious buttressing arrangements involving lumps of concrete, bricks and Ed Ceddera and balancing the slabs like a house of cards against each other so that they couldn't fall either in or out. When I had finished, we looked at the result and I allowed as how that was a reasonable size and shape for a trough.
A few days later, our friendly paving slab layer Neville came by to put in the zodiac path between the shed and the apple tree. We'd warned him about the lone fuchsia that had remained bravely alive among the weeds and such, and he'd promised not to molest it. We'd had him before, and he had done a good job, so we weren't standing over him watching nervously. Imagine our surprise when we came to see the finished path and discovered that he had put the spare soil he'd dug up to lay the path...into our makeshift trough. "Erm," we said, but since we didn't have anywhere else to put it we didn't say anything. Neville went on his way rejoicing, and we looked at our path, and the Countess said "where's the fuchsia?"
No sign of it. We phoned Neville again and said "what about our fuchsia then?" and he apologised profusely and said he'd replace it. Which he did, three days later, with three very nice fuchsia plants...which he planted in the makeshift trough.
"It looks as if we have a trough," I said, and the Countess reluctantly agreed.
So, yesterday, we wrapped some wire around it to make it a little more secure till we can afford to get it bricked in properly, and today we planted more plants in it, around the fuchsias which we thought had died in the frosts but which have come back in force. (Actually, quite a lot of lovely things are growing in our garden, so much so that Jan had to really search to find something dying that she could grieve about.) The trough now boasts a gooseberry, a blackberry, a rhubarb and one of the clemates that survived being stuck in its pot over winter because EverCRAPest stopped us gardening. Not to mention several plug plants from Ambroas Wilson and a bunch of old seeds which will either come up or, more probably, not.
And then we cleared a bunch of rubbish bags, reclaimed some of the soil they were standing on, raked up several tons of leaves from Valerie-next-door's exuberantly deciduous oak tree, and began the reclamation of the pond. And now I am mainly ache with a homoeopathic admixture of Nyrond. Thank goodness for the fish and chip shop. (I am currently trying to convince the Countess that chip shop chips are not only nicer than decent oven chips from the supermarket (does anyone else find that oven chips have a norrible undertaste, or is it just my frodded up taste buds?), but because the chip shop does humongous portions and the chips reanimate rather well, are more economical too. Plus they save me cooking and there is a measurable chance I can get away with having fish.)
See you tomorrow, all. Pleasant dreams.
Here's a funny story. The Countess decided around the end of last year that one of the things she wanted to have in the garden was a concrete trough alongside the new shed. (The Countess's thing is ideas. She shoots out ideas at about thirty or forty a minute. Often they are mutually incompatible, or physically impossible. The trick is to wait till she's sorted them out in her head and picked on
A few days later, our friendly paving slab layer Neville came by to put in the zodiac path between the shed and the apple tree. We'd warned him about the lone fuchsia that had remained bravely alive among the weeds and such, and he'd promised not to molest it. We'd had him before, and he had done a good job, so we weren't standing over him watching nervously. Imagine our surprise when we came to see the finished path and discovered that he had put the spare soil he'd dug up to lay the path...into our makeshift trough. "Erm," we said, but since we didn't have anywhere else to put it we didn't say anything. Neville went on his way rejoicing, and we looked at our path, and the Countess said "where's the fuchsia?"
No sign of it. We phoned Neville again and said "what about our fuchsia then?" and he apologised profusely and said he'd replace it. Which he did, three days later, with three very nice fuchsia plants...which he planted in the makeshift trough.
"It looks as if we have a trough," I said, and the Countess reluctantly agreed.
So, yesterday, we wrapped some wire around it to make it a little more secure till we can afford to get it bricked in properly, and today we planted more plants in it, around the fuchsias which we thought had died in the frosts but which have come back in force. (Actually, quite a lot of lovely things are growing in our garden, so much so that Jan had to really search to find something dying that she could grieve about.) The trough now boasts a gooseberry, a blackberry, a rhubarb and one of the clemates that survived being stuck in its pot over winter because EverCRAPest stopped us gardening. Not to mention several plug plants from Ambroas Wilson and a bunch of old seeds which will either come up or, more probably, not.
And then we cleared a bunch of rubbish bags, reclaimed some of the soil they were standing on, raked up several tons of leaves from Valerie-next-door's exuberantly deciduous oak tree, and began the reclamation of the pond. And now I am mainly ache with a homoeopathic admixture of Nyrond. Thank goodness for the fish and chip shop. (I am currently trying to convince the Countess that chip shop chips are not only nicer than decent oven chips from the supermarket (does anyone else find that oven chips have a norrible undertaste, or is it just my frodded up taste buds?), but because the chip shop does humongous portions and the chips reanimate rather well, are more economical too. Plus they save me cooking and there is a measurable chance I can get away with having fish.)
See you tomorrow, all. Pleasant dreams.