16 March 2025 (Sunday) - Gardening

I slept like a log last night right up until the nightmare in which I was at the bar in a crowded pub where the queue at the bar was getting longer and longer because the King (who was standing next to me) couldn’t decide what he wanted to drink and no one could be served before him.
What was that all about?
 
I got up, made toast and peered into the Internet. I sent out birthday wishes to the two Facebook friends having a birthday today. There wasn’t much else happening in the Internet, so I munzed, got wordle on the last attempt, and sparked up my chess app. Overnight it had updated, and was working again, so I did something racy with a prawn to see what “Daddies’ Little Angel TM would make of it. Some might say I advanced the Queen’s pawn, but we don’t encourage the normal people, do we?
 
I put a load of washing in, and having completely forgotten the mental notes I’d made yesterday I had a little look in the garden to see what I needed from the garden centre. I needed white stones, brindle chippings, lawn food, a bag of compost, two biggish shrubs and a small plant. I harvested the dog dung (again) and then set off to get garden stuff.
Bearing in mind that Ham Street garden centre opens half an hour earlier than Bybrook Barn I went there only to find they didn’t have any brindle chippings or white stones. Ho hum… I got the compost and the lawn food and the plants and went to Bybrook Barn. I arrived there at the same time as a rather irritating chap whose wife was constantly apologizing for him as he was continually getting in everyone’s way. He really was utterly oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t the only person on the planet.
I went there to get two bags of stones; I came out with five. One bag of white wouldn’t have been enough, and it was buy two get one free. And the red ones were at a bargain price if you bought two.
 
I came home and heaved everything into the back garden. I got the laundry hung out, some white stones round the cordyline and one buddleia potted before “er indoors TM and the dogs came home from their walk. We had a cuppa and a lunch of hot cross bun, then I went back into the garden.
I got the other buddleia into its pot, then re-potted the triffid that “er indoors TM wanted me to save. And I put the new polyanthus into the pot that the triffid came out of.
By the time I’d swept up, tidied up and made good six hours had passed. I took a few photos of what I’d done in the garden since Thursday. Over the last three days there’s probably over ten hours’ effort and close on ninety quid’s worth of squander spent on the garden. You really wouldn’t think it, would you?
I ran round with the watering can, got the laundry in off the line and put another load in to scrub, and reviewed the situation. The lawn needs a mow. The ponds need turning on. The wooden planter I made last year needs sanding and painting. The yard needs a tidy. A lot of the garden ornaments look tired and need scrubbing or replacing…
I left that all for later and made myself a cuppa. I felt I deserved it. There’s only so much garden I can do and still be able to move the next day.
 
“er indoors TM sorted a gammon joint which we scoffed whilst watching episodes of “The Great Pottery Throw Down”. I was left wondering - how do you get into pottery? Everyone’s got a kitchen so baking is easy enough to have a crack at. But just the basic set-up in pottery would cost an arm and a leg.
 
And in closing, today is March 16th. Back in the day it was the start of the close season. Every year there would be no fishing from March 16th till June 16th so that the fish might breed in peace. Nowadays it doesn’t seem to happen. The law states that it still applies to rivers and canals, but it doesn’t seem to be enforced.
I’ve not been fishing for years. Five and a half to be precise. The last time I went was when I caught my biggest fish ever.

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