Here We Go Planting Nuts In May

I am now on my fourth LibriVox audio book. I've just finished 'A Tale of Two Cities' and am halfway through 'Heart of Darkness'. I've also been working in the garden, which is a sad neglected place where scutch grass and buttercups have been making a takeover bid.

I like weeding and I like listening to books while I'm doing it. Unfortunately for Bert, who works on the strawberry bed while I tear at nettles and scutch, my audio book makes me antisocial. I faintly hear him speaking and I shout,

I can't talk to you now! They're storming the Bastille!

He tries again a little later and I roar,

Give me a minute! Miss Pross and Madame Defarge are fighting to the death!

Yesterday we spent the dusky hour planting hazel trees in the wood. Bonnie, Paddy and Holly de Cat accompanied us. The hedge birds were frantically busy, as they always are at that time of the evening, the baby long-eared owls in the Scotch pine were starting their nightly tumult for food, the back lane was heavy with the smell of May and Blossom and cow dung. I carried a spade and Bert carried a big bundle of indifferent looking hazel whips, that any sensible person would have thrown over the hedge.   

We began the planting. I said,

Those will never grow. There's no 'R' in the month.

Och! They might grow.

I never saw the like of you for being at some fool enterprise that'll never make you a penny.

Sure what odds about money? 

Suppose you're right. I mean, how big a headstone will you need?

True.

I love these long evenings when we can do all this crazy outside stuff.

Me too.

And I love you too.

I know.