13 March 2025 (Thursday) - A Walk, Re-Potting, Laundry

I woke this morning with something of a backache. Having no alarm set meant I didn’t wake silly early, and a backache is usually a sign I’ve been in bed for too long.
I made toast, and scoffed it as “er indoors TM set off to work. As I scoffed I peered into the Internet. There was unrest on a Facebook page I moderate. This page has pretty much none of the pettiness and squabbling that many other Facebook pages I follow purely because the admin on that page have zero tolerance of pettiness and squabbling. Someone was asking why his mate couldn’t even find the page any more; his mate had been kicked out two weeks ago. His mate had been troublesome in the past, but I decided to let the admin who’d kicked him out make the announcement.
And I saw someone had made a comment on this diary. Specifically on an entry from ten years ago when I borrowed Steve’s pressure washer. Someone named Peter said “Thanks for sharing this amazing informative post with us” which was nice. He then went on to say “I found this helpful for, interior painting, exterior painting, pressure washing services in Yorktown VA. call…” It didn’t take long to see he’d been spamming other blogs too. I deleted his comment.
 
I took the dogs up to the woods where we had a rather uneventful walk. Once away from the car park we walked for over an hour and didn’t see anyone else. The mud and swamps have pretty much all dried up. We didn’t see any deer. It was a shame that the smallest two dogs had to roll in muck, but there it is.
After three and a half miles we were back at the car. I say “three and a half miles” as that was what my watch told me. We often walk the same walk we did today, and the mileage varies from three and a half miles to four miles. These watches aren’t *that* accurate.
 
We came home for a cuppa and biccies. There were none of my rich tea biccies left so I raided some of  “er indoors TM Nice biccies; after all she’s got four more packets in the cupboard. They are half the calories of rich tea. I’m having those from now on.
 
I then went into the garden. Two weeks ago I mentioned that one of the large garden pots had started crumbling. I got the thing four and a half years ago; is that a good lifetime? I see that four and a half years ago that pot had a palm tree in it. That didn’t survive the first winter.
My plan today involved doing quite a few things, the first of which was to empty the crumbling pot. I then wanted to re-pot the plant in it, clear up and make good… and loads of other stuff which never happened. The moment I started scooping out the decorative brindle chippings on the top of the pot, so the rim started falling away. I got the decorative chippings out, but when I started trying to trowel out the soil so half the pot fell away. And then the hailstorm started. Realising I couldn’t leave the job half-way through I persevered. I emptied the soil, cleared away the pot carnage, re-potted the plant, de-weeded four garden planters and put the excess soil from the poggered pot into them. I really wanted to put the weed-proof membrane into the new pot, top up with brindle chippings and then plant out the pansies and polyanthus I’d bought on Tuesday, but I’d carried on through quite enough intermittent hailstorms already. And my back was playing up.
 
I came in, put a load of washing in, and had a spot of lunch. When washing finished I hung it on the airer and ironed the shirts. Shirts iron better when wet. And then I fed my undercrackers to the washing machine.
As I ironed and washed I watched episodes of “Four in a Bed” in which people with slightly imperfect Bed & Breakfast establishments were lambasted by a rather vociferous old battleaxe who felt that because she was too mean to hire staff and wanted to do every job herself to a piss-poor standard, people should give her the leeway that she wouldn’t give others.
 
“er indoors TM returned from work and boiled up pizza and garlic bread. We scoffed it whilst watching more of “The Great Pottery Throw Down”. It looks simple enough; I reckon I could stuff it up given half a chance…
I wonder if I will get those garden jobs done tomorrow?

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