20 March 2011 (Sunday) - Not Much, Really...

With the pond clearing (albeit very slowly) and spring coming (albeit very slowly), it won’t be long before the Koi are hungry. So I set off to get some food for them. In the past I’ve always gone to Swallow Aquatics in Tenterden for fish, and to World of Water in Rolvenden for everything else. I’ve now added a third Koi shop to my list. I get Koi food from Green World Garden Centre. It’s a little further (twice the distance) than World of Water, but I can get 10kg of Koi food from Green World for fourteen quid. A comparable amount of fish food from the other two shops is over eighty quid. And that is allowing for the store’s already having knocked thirty quid off the original price of the expensive stuff.

I found the place easily enough and had a minor episode when attempting to pay for the fish food. But once the nice lady put my credit card into the machine the right way up, all was well. I got chatting with the nice man about replacing my pond filter box: he advised I got a pressure filter which is effectively self cleaning. I would bury it by the pond and wouldn’t have to lug the thing up the garden any more when I needed to clean it. The trouble is that he wanted over four hundred quid for one. I told him I’d think about it.

I started to make my way home the scenic route cross-country via the country lanes with the vague plan to call in at Grafty Green garden centre, and I amazed myself by actually finding the place. They were selling a macaw at less than half the price that Bybrook Barn were selling one at. On the other hand their garden statuary was triple the price of Whelan’s. It pays to shop around.

They also had some reptiles – a few weeks ago me and “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” did a grand tour of Kent looking at reptile shops. I never thought to have a look in Grafty for them. But they didn’t have much.

Whilst in the area I popped up to Lenham Court – the arky-ologee club were excavating the garden and I thought I’d show my face since I was passing. I was offered the opportunity to dig, but (quite frankly) doing “digging arky-ologee” has no interest for me at all. It gives me backache, and I honestly can’t tell the difference between valuable artefact and broken bits of manky boulders. I’d far rather sit back and let someone who knows what they are talking about tell me what they found on their digs.

I had a look in their holes, feigned suitable interest and left them to it.  With ‘er indoors ^TM constructively employed scrubbling about in the dirt for the afternoon, I came home and dozed in front of DVDs for the afternoon. A tough life, but someone’s got to do it…