Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Here we are back again. I got my extra day, and spent it cutting the grass. The battery-starter on the lawn mower didn’t work – that will have to be seen to – so I did it the old fashioned way, by pulling the string. It didn’t kill me so we have to assume it made me stronger. I’m still feeling the effects.

Here’s how much knitting I got done. Four days – that should be enough to finish a sock for someone with a foot as small as Cathy’s.


The gardening went well. The seeds are in. The countryside is at its most unbelievably delicious, each tree its own special shade of green as the baby leaves unfold, not yet the General Green Mush of summer. It is the moment when one can believe (as I do every year) that this time it’ll be different – all the seeds I have planted will come up, and do what it says on the packet, uninterrupted by slugs or rabbits or sheep or deer or late frosts. There will be weeds, of course, but each will be tweaked out the instant it appears and everything will look as tidy in September as it does today.



As if. In fact, frost has come already,

on Sunday night and probably last night too, with more forecast. One of the courgettes looked a bit shell-shocked on Monday morning, the rest seemed fine – but that could be because they don’t yet know what hit them. They get some protection from the sawn-off water bottles covering them. I got the potatoes earthed up in time; they should be all right.

My new fruit hedge (white-currents and gooseberries):

Our beloved Keswick Codling (or is it "Codlin"?) apple tree:


Last night, back in Edinburgh, I finished off Thomas-the-Elder’s socks and made decent progress with Cathy’s first one. It’s time I assembled my colours for the dinosaur sweater.

4 comments:

  1. Wonderful to have that job done, isn't it? I spent the weekend getting my garden in, all but the two blueberry bushes, because I have to get some peat for their hole. We have a plague of rabbits already this spring, new for me. A student suggested dog hair in the mulch, but that must reek. I may yet look in your archives for rabbit recipes.

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  2. Anonymous2:38 PM

    another recipe against rabbits: carnivor's urine, preferably a lion....."sprayed" around the patch should help keep them out. Marcella

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  3. No more frost here, thankfully. It's one of the many reasons I love coastal living. Bunnies also aren't a concern, thanks in part, I'm sure, to a fairly high fox population. The neighbors, though, do have a squirrel who likes to nip across and scavenge once in a while. We shall see if that becomes a problem.

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  4. Ah, Jean, I love your way with words. How true about spring and then the General Green Mush of summer. It is still spring in my part of the globe. We had a few days that got up to 70 degrees, but now we're consistently back in the 50's, which seems to have slowed things up a bit - the tulips are lasting longer and the new leaves on the trees are taking their time maturing.

    I'm thinking of you tonight as the TV politico pundits talk about the superdelegates and Obama willing the majority of pledged delegates. No surprises here that Obama won Oregon and lost in Kentucky. I hope this ends soon and she stops her campaign. Talk continues of what to do with Michigan and Florida.

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