It’s not my favourite job, I can say that! But somebody has to try to keep the nettles at bay, and now that it’s relatively dry, and yet with damp ground in near-perfect conditions to release the root tangle, it’s…
Category: Anecdote
Summer Sunday sighs
Supposed to be a rainy day today, as it was yesterday, though with interludes of brilliant sunshine, perhaps? But disruptive weather is predicted to occur all over England, with numerous events being cancelled. Anyway, it feels like an ideal day…
Mr Robin is back
I’m no ornithologist, but I kind of suspect that the crowds of finches that gathered around the bird feeding pad, along with assorted jackdaws, collared doves, the blackbird family, and Earnest the pea cock shaking his tail feathers, might have…
Just cheerfully pottering about . . .
I think I’m getting more used to the retirement lifestyle. Instead of filling our days in a rather frenzied rush to accomplish all the tasks we’d set for ourselves, we’ve retrenched, with a longer schedule pushed further and further ahead,…
A small engineering solution
Now that our water challenges are sorted, we’d like to keep a handy record of what our daily monitoring shows us, so that we will know early on if something goes amiss. The best place to put the tick sheet,…
Spinning: one word, many meanings
According to Wikipedia, spiders have spun for at least 100 million years, a date defined thanks to a discovery of a web embedded in amber. So that makes these arachnids the oldest spinners on earth. Little wonder that Robert the…
A handful of spuds
Yesterday we dined like rural royalty on wonderful Scottish moules, an enchanting salad from the polytunnel, and the very first handful of potatoes from our little patch. Actually, there were only enough spuds for the one helping (I pulled the…
Sorting out the tools . . . a mini-break in the offing?
It’s even worse than one might suppose: not only do we need a set of tools for fixing things around the house, but we also need another similar set for fixing things on the road in the ancient motorhome! Yesterday…
The subterranean beneath us
This could be a metaphorical exercise, but in fact it is very literal: this piece is about actual caves, dark places, and frightening adventures. I was inspired yesterday to write this after an experience I have aspired to for some…
Getting things ready for the job . . . and doing it
It’s beginning to feel like a crescendo of anticipation here, with the stuttering arrival of the various components required for a couple of jobs around the place. But first came the planning, putting the new systems together in my mind,…