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.

Communication breakdown

I have been grumpy. I did something distressing to my back on Thursday morning as I was brushing my teeth, and had to come home from work early as it was so incredibly painful. I took as many Nurofen and paracetamol as possible but it still hurt like bejeebus.

Limping around like Igor, whimpering and muttering "ow fuckit fuckit fuckit" under your breath is ok in the privacy of your own home, but not in the office.

Anyhoo. I spent some time the other day looking at what I was doing this time last year (according to the blog). And what was I doing? Apart from whinging about work, which seems to be pretty much a constant of my life?

I was paying for my bloody car to be repaired. I know it was a long time ago, but it still rankles.

More than two and a half grand to fix a known fault with the car, and because it was reported a couple of weeks after their arbitrary cutoff point, nothing from Toyota to help meet the costs. Bastards.

Yes, yes....ranklement still strong in this one.

I was also moaning about the weather. We have already had more nice weather this year than we did for pretty much the entire summer last year. That's how it feels anyway.

Other news: We have a vegetable patch! With potential vegetables and everything! Following a conversation in the pub the other week, one of our lovely neighbours dropped round some courgette plants for us.

Mr WithaY spent HOURS preparing a nice cosy little place for them in the garden. He dug over all the soil, picked out stones, sieved it, pulled out weed roots, put home-made compost in the holes....everything he could think of. The courgettes settled in quickly, and so far have not been devoured by rats, crows, mice, jackdaws, pigeons, pheasants, sparrowhawks, herons, badgers, moles, foxes, squirrels or slugs.

Early days though. Early days.

We have planted a load of seeds in pots on the kitchen windowsill. Parsley. I think. Tomatoes. Some squashes. Basil. Some others I can't remember. If they grow, they will soon join the courgettes in the Vegetable Bed of Unimaginable Luxury.

Mr WithaY, inspired by all this green-fingery, also bought two redcurrant bushes and some pepper plants. The pepper plants are on the kitchen windowsill, hopefully about to burst into flower. The redcurrent bushes are in the garden, keeping the courgettes company.

It's quite exciting* really.

So, apart from all the burgeoning self-sufficiency stuff, we spent the Bank Holiday weekend at home. Mostly quietly. Late Friday afternoon we expected to be driving up to Gloucester to see our mates and their mad spaniels. I rang them at lunchtime to confirm what time they expected to see us.

Good job I did.

They were not expecting to see us at all, and in fact wanted to call in at our place on their way down to the South West. Arse.

Well, it was lovely to see them, and the mad spaniels managed not to trash the rosemary bush for once. We ended up eating over at the pub and our mates stayed the night, so it was a fun social evening.

Last night we went to a rather fine dinner party with mates in the village, and as a result woke up late today. Which is no bad thing on a holiday Monday.

I'm fretting about work, having had a day and a half of unintended immobility, so am going to have to work my nuts** off to meet the deadlines I have this week. A bath and an early night should help.

If not, I will be whining and crying on the train all the way into London tomorrow. Which will be nice for the other commuters.




*We don't get out much.

**Metaphorical nuts.