I ached again this morning when I got up. This really
sucks. Yesterday all I did was walk the dogs, mow the lawn, an hour’s light
gardening and took Bailey to the dentist and I’m all in the next day.
I made toast and had a look at Facebook as I do.
Friends were complaining about the government’s cuts to the welfare system. I’m not saying that
the system was perfect; it probably needed an overhaul. But as a
life-long leftie it bothers me that the Labour party only seem to stand up for
their values when they are not in a position to do anything about that for
which they claim to stand.
And I saw an advert for cable ties. You can buy them
for pennies from a hardware shop to tie things with. Or you can buy them as a
fashion accessory for
hundreds of pounds. Your choice.
I munzed and wordled, then loaded the dogs into the
car and we went up to the woods for a walk. We’d had reports of one of my
geocaches being missing; it was. We replaced it as we went round the woods on
our walk. There were quite a few people about today. As we went so the dogs ran
up to another dog which immediately kicked off. I whistled and my three ran
straight back to me. As we walked off I could hear that dog’s owners having a
heated argument about why their dog can’t come when called like my dogs did.
When my hounds come when called it is rather impressive.
We came home. The two smallest dogs had a bath. They’d
both rolled in different disgusting things. And once bathed I sorted us both a
cuppa then got on with my plans for the day. I hung out the washing.. and had
to pause that to gather up an epic crop of dog turds. I then disassembled the
pond’s pressure filter for the annual replacement of the ultra-violet light
bulb. I eventually got it all apart (it took some doing), and got the
old bulb out (that took some doing too). It was at that point that I
found that the new replacement bulb was broken. Ho hum…
I phoned the aquatic shops to see if they had the right
model of replacement bulb. In a perfect world they would make these filters
with one-size-sits-all light bulbs, but they come in a range of shapes
and sizes and wattages. No one at Bybrook Barn would answer the phone, but the
nice people at Dobbies said they had a bulb that would fit.
I went to Dobbies. It’s never my first choice of
places to go. They ain’t cheap, and there’s not one customer in a hundred in
there looking where they are going, and the place has an amazingly laxative
effect on the dogs. But I wasn’t taking the dogs. It was the only place with
the bulb I wanted… and I could just shove the blundering customers out of the
way.
Whilst I was at it I got a job lot of violas; six for
a fiver in Bybrook Barn, in an amazing display of competitive pricing Dobbies
were knocking them out as seven quid for nine. I never got round to using them
today, but (in theory) I will use them tomorrow.
By then it was lunch time. I had a cold cross bun and
a cuppa then cracked on in the garden again. I got that new bulb into the
pressure filter, and whilst I was at it I replaced the input nozzle that had
sprung a leak late last year. I ran out the pressure filter hose, and once it
was connected I sparked it up; I didn’t want the muck that had over-wintered in
the filter to go back into the pond. Instead that went onto the monkey-puzzle
tree. It seems to like fish filter muck.
With the pond woken for the year I ran out the
pressure-washer and had a blat at some of the old garden ornaments. They didn’t
really clean up any good. Yesterday I said that they wouldn’t, didn’t I? The
jug from the water feature didn’t come up too bad though… I shall paint it up
and keep an eye out for something to replace it.
I sparked up the little pond; the cascade in that
doesn’t really do much other than act as a reservoir for muck, so I removed it.
I pruned the plants in both ponds, and made us both a cuppa and skibbits (as
“Darcie
WaaWaa TM” refers to biscuits) and then there was a
knock on the door.
The sander I’d ordered from Amazon had arrived. I had been
thinking of replacing the water feature and the planter I built last year, but
that would be expense and effort. I had this stroke of genius (I have those
from time to time) that I might sand them both down and give them a lick of
paint and see if they might perk up.
I sprayed varnish onto the gnomes I’ve been painting.
Hopefully this will have them last a tad longer than the last ones… Having said
that, the last ones were painted for the first time on 17 June 2007 so if they
do last longer they will probably see me out.
I got the sander out and read the instructions. The
instructions had clearly been written in some obscure language and converted (not
translated!) to English by Google translate. The instructions seemed to put
an inordinate amount of importance on a nozzle which was “design to collect
dust task”, but notwithstanding tasks (collect dust or otherwise) it
managed to sand down that which I wanted sanding.
I shall see if anything has perked up after tomorrow’s
painting. I was too tired to get the paint out today.
By that time I’d spent five hours working in the
garden, and (in all honesty) it looked much the same as when I’d
started. I voomed round with the watering can, then performed a test of canine
memory.
Last year whenever I mentioned “I’m going to feed
the fish” the dogs would fly to the pond in the hopes of getting some fish
food. With the pumps in the pond running the fish were moving about, so I made
my announcement. Despite it being five months or more since I last said it, the
dogs flew to the pond.
They remembered.
And they still like fish food.
The fish had some too.
“er indoors TM” boiled up a very
good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching more “Throw Down”.
We had a bottle of plonk too… and some port.
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