Put out more flags

You could grate cheese on my rough scaly gardener's hands; it must be Spring.  There are other clues, of course.  The birds are yipping and chaffing in the early mornings, the sun is shining more often than not in the afternoons, there are bees and bugs in the garden, and even some butterflies.

By which I mean that my hands are rough, not that you should grab the very nice chap who comes in now and again to help us manage our acreage, and forcibly try to grate Parmesan on his hands.  That would just be weird.

Anyhoo.  Mr WithaY and I had a spot of financial good fortune - we won the Lottery!  Yes, £51, aaaaaaaall ours.  We won't let it change our lives though.  There had already been a conversation about what to do with the garden, so we decided to spend that nice little windfall on some fruit bushes.

The Great Planting was as follows:

10 strawberry plants, 5 each in a large tub on the back patio.

2 redcurrant bushes, planted at the side of the house where the cold frame now sits, and the lavender bushes we put in last year are flourishing.

2 Ceanothus bushes, which we hope will attract butterflies and bees.  They've been planted in the front garden, where we'll be able to see them from the sitting room.  I also put some Oriental poppy seedlings under them, which had seeded themselves from the gorgeous pink one in the front garden.

2 parsley plants, one flat-leaf and one curly-leaf, both added to the herb garden in the back garden.

1 woad plant, in a tub, all on its own in a state of high honour.  I am slightly anxious that Mr WithaY will nurture it, tend it, coax it into flower, and then make a shitload of dye to paint himself blue and run around the woods naked like an Ancient Briton.

I moved the blueberry bushes from the fruit bed in the back garden, and put them in their very own bed   on the other side of the garden.  Hopefully they'll have better luck without being stifled by the giant raspberry bushes, which seem to be intent on taking over the entire garden.

Mr WithaY planted carrots, radishes, pumpkins, aubergines, several varieties of courgette and sage seeds, some in the vegetable bed, some in pots in the greenhouse.  We moved the greenhouse to a different spot in the garden where it can be accessed without having to cross any wet muddy patches, thus making watering things easier.  Hopefully it means things won't just DIE like they did last year.

Oh, and Mr WithaY mowed the lawn, without losing any fingers.  Hurrah.

In other news, I am busily preparing for the cakes and crafts sale this Saturday in the village hall. I have promised to make some cake, and am also having a stall of my homemade crafty stuff to sell.  It will be interesting to see if anyone buys anything.  I hope they do, or I am giving all my friends the same things for Christmas and birthdays for the next 10 years.

Today I am making bunting.  Yards and yards and bloody yards of it.  It's strangely therapeutic.  And it will come in handy for the Jubilee/Olympics/summer barbecue parties I hope we will be having over the summer.

Oh yes. At the risk of sounding like Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, what the fuck  has happened to the quality of writing at the Daily Telegraph?  Eh?

Check this out for quality highbrow journalism, found on their on-line site yesterday:

"The court was told that the man Laura Johnson, 20, was seeing had jumped into her car and forced her with his two pals into driving them as they stole a haul of electrical goods, fags and booze. "

Putting to one side the inevitable Name, Age thing that all newspapers seem to need to do, since when were "fags and booze" the terms of choice in this context?  And "pals" too.  Sort it out, you lazy, tabloid-esque skivers.  Oh, and I have not altered the punctuation either.  Yes, it really is that bad.  It's barely comprehensible.

Gah.  And pah.

I know it's easy to criticise and that anyone who spends any time reading stuff I write will undoubtedly find plenty of semantic and grammatic errors, but hey, I don't get paid for writing, and I assume that most Telegraph journalists do.

Bastards.