Tuesday 27 March 2012

Gardener's world

For all those who have emailed asking for more piglet pictures here you go.



The downstairs shower/toilet/wetroom has been out of action for a couple of days, not through any incompetence of mine in the plumbing department but due to a songbird. Cosmo one of the vermin cats brought in a thrush Sunday night. Goodness only knows where he caught the poor thing in the dark, probably it was roosting somewhere stupid and Cosmo found it. Usually when a bird is "rescued" from the cat it dies (bird not cat) so we didn't hold out much hope as we shut the door and wished it luck (bird not cat)

Come Monday morning the bird was perched defiantly on the bog roll, one leg twisted back at a painful angle, broken, its wing and tail missing feathers. Birdy was now a problem, shower was off limits while we considered where/when/if/how to release it. It further compounded the problem by singing its heart out and then most surprisingly laying a perfectly beautiful blue egg. Then it died. This morning. The debate over what shall we do with the egg and the pros and cons of incubating it, who would fetch the necessary number of worms and mince them, syringe them into the chick, teach it to fly, keep the cats off it was wasted when I dropped the egg on the worktop smashing it. Half a thought of scraping it up and frying it was dumped when the second half of the thought led to me being arrested for some breach of some conservation order or something similar and so the dog had it.



Longer evenings and an office only ten minutes drive from home meant home in time to do some hard core gardening. The tyres generously donated are being put to use, finally, and a jolly hour or so was spent in the sunshine sorting them into threes for planters. Sorting out three tyres the same size was not as easy as I first thought, each had a weird algebraic code on the side which those in the know would be able to decipher into radius, width and speed rating. I'm not sure what speed rating is needed for lambs lettuce but the variety of widths and radius was boggling. The roughly sorted threes were then carried over two fences and a pig pen, Guinevere had to inspect each one for food and each one had to jettison a gallon of water over me as I maneuvered them into position. Some semblance of order was achieved and now there are 12 planters waiting to be filled with compost. And we have about 100 tons of that but at the other end of the smallholding. A man test with the wheelbarrow beckons.




Meanwhile Hetty has been gritting her teeth and making the right noises but showing nothing for her efforts.




Day 27 30 30 lvl 12 outdoor training 13.3 km (Fugazi, Marillion)

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