As I worked I had a couple of messages in the small hours from friends who’d been looking at the Internet. Some relatively local woman who used to be into geocaching, had given up and re-started, had made a rather pointed attack at me on Facebook’s national geocaching page. On re-reading it was cleverly written, but those who know me recognised the dig. At three o’clock this morning during a break I sent in a reply defending myself against one accusation and flatly denying the other.
I took an age to get home; the traffic on the motorway was going at thirty miles per hour all the way. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the nation’s inability to cope with the demand for COVID-19 testing and how the (probable) next American President has told the government to sort themselves out if they want a trade deal. Both were problems entirely of the government’s own making.
Feeling not entirely dead I took the dogs down to Orlestone Woods for a little walk. Seeing my wolf pack tangling with some other dogs I blew the whistle to call them away. However the other dogs also did whistle training. My three came running and sat at my feet. Another dog (the size of a cart horse) also came running and jumped up at me. Standing on his hind legs with his paws on my shoulders he wanted a treat too.
His mummy came running after him; she was so embarrassed. I laughed.
Once home I went to bed for a couple of hours. Over a very late brekkie I had a look at the Internet and saw that the woman who’d been digging at me overnight had had another (if more restrained) go. I could have replied in detail, but decided against it. Most of the people who hunt Tupperware with whom I associate enjoy it and make a fun hobby of it, and I have become part of a growing network of friends. Though this group I’ve had some wonderful walks and some rather good holidays and been invited to parties and weddings.
However there are those who don’t actually seem to want to socialise or just go out looking for Tupperware very much. Some prefer to just argue about it over the Internet; picking fights with people they hope will never meet.
I’ve had a (petty and trivial) run-in with this woman before. She once made a total mess of walking a series of geocaches that "er indoors TM" hid. Despite forty people having got round the route successfully, from what she’d logged on-line it was clear that she’d taken the wrong path, but she was oblivious to the fact that others had got round without issues.
Personally I’d keep quiet about that sort of mistake, but clearly it has festered; I can’t think of any other reason why she’d come out with such an attack at me.
With toast scoffed I wasted fifteen minutes trying to remotely deploy a Munzee (the Internet wasn’t having any of it), and went out into the garden. The plan was to plant my monkey-puzzle tree in the ground, and that’s what I did.
It took some doing.
Having identified where the tree was going I then scraped all the shingle out of the way, and pulled back the anti-weed membrane whilst trying not to utterly destroy it (so that I could re-use it once the tree was planted). Measuring the depth of the pot the tree was in I realised I needed a hole which was effectively half a metre cubed – or one eighth of a cubic metre. Not half of a cubic metre – work it out if you don’t believe me.
So I started digging. The shovel bounced off of the ground.
The ground was so hard that I could barely scrape it with the shovel. After a few minutes I went into the shed and came out with a hammer and a chisel. I really did have to break the soil with the chisel, and I used the shovel to scrape up what I’d chiselled. As the hole got deeper I swapped the shovel for a trowel. As it does, the compacted soil expanded as it got chiselled out, and by the time I was ready to plant the tree I’d got two dustbins and two large pots full of soil.
It was at his point that my plans went west.
I hoiked the tree out of the pot it was in only to find that the root only extended twenty centimetres down. Not fifty. So I put two thirds of the soil I’d so laboriously dug back into the hole, put the tree in the hole, and tidied it all up. I’ve given the tree water and plant food, and all I can do now is hope that it survives the ordeal.
I was spending a little time solving geo-puzzles when the DHL man came. Despite having spent an age fixing the doorbell yesterday he hammered on the door again. Pausing only briefly to tell him to press the dinger I carried on puzzling until it was time to tune in to the weekly geo-meet. It was good to catch up with friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment