The Siege of Drumrankin

 

On Saturday Ben and Sara came around and we made a start on the overgrown flower bed next to the lawn. Ben was the spade man and I just pointed at things and wheeled barrows to the compost heap. A mass of blue iris was removed, a huge cephalaria gigantea disposed of and yellow crocosmia, irises and Sidalcea lifted and shared with Sara. Bert absented himself from these endeavours as he was helping Clint with his beasts.

Cleo likes a bit of digging too.

We had a leak in the upstairs bathroom which I discovered at 6am on Sunday morning. I’m usually up at that time as Cleo needs to be toileted as early as possible. Bert was informed of the leak and got up to look at it. Then returned to bed saying he would sort it later. I placed a basin under the drip and returned to bed for a few hours. Finished my Jane Gardam – the third part of the Filth trilogy already ordered from World Books.

Four hours later Bert got up and I fed him porridge and peaches and he got to work. I’m not sure what he did but the leak was fixed – temporarily.

Clint was on the yard first thing this morning. There was a bit of a siege on. Apparently, some boy’s cattle along with some other boy’s Simmental bull had broken out of another boy’s field and some decent sort of a boy had come along and got them all off the Dreen Road and into Clint’s silage field. So a posse of boys were gathered up and the cattle were to be moved into our big shed for collection.

I went up to tell Bert.

You know the other day, when you were telling me a tale about J’s sister-in-law, who was letting Clint cut silage in her fields for free and this boy came up and said he’d no business as the grass belonged to him and it was very confusing and it was either ‘this boy’ or ‘that boy’ and I couldn’t make head or tail of it – well do I have a tale for you, boys, cows and bulls galore and the good news is that there are that many boys coming to round them up that you can stay in bed.

It must have taken the boys a good half hour to get the beasts out of Clint’s silage but eventually, all landed in the yard and the cattle were safely deposited in the shed. The boys were a mixed bunch. One of them was a grizzled old fellow who looked like he belonged in a Western movie. One had a shifty look about him. One wore his trousers belted close to his armpits and one young one’s jeans were hanging halfway down his arse with a good expanse of his hairy crack on view. One was a girl and one was Clint.

It goes without saying that Clint wasn’t that impressed with twenty cows and calves and a bull trampling through his silage but the boy who owned the bull said he could have the loan of it for a month and Clint reported tonight that it has its courting ears on and he’s hoping to have an excellent wee crop of calves in 2024.

Yellow crocosmia, sidalcea, iris, cephalaria. Don't worry, I've still go lots of them left. These had just gotten out of hand in a small flowerbed

And Bert was up reasonably early this morning, off to the plumbing supplies store and has fixed the leak.

And I have bought yet another dress for Naoise's wedding.