My plan to use this blog as an aide-mémoire hasn’t progressed as well as I’d hoped. It’s been twelve days since my last post, and although nothing particularly exciting has happened - no riots, no house fires - it’s still been a longer gap than I intended.
So what did happen?
Still snail-watching.
Went to Portrush on a day out with Bert, Hannah and the big girls. They did not use all their Currie's tokens. Either I bought too many or they are tired of scary rides. Come to think of it, there's a definite air of ennui about them lately.
Watching a lot of teevee. Dept Q was a big favourite.
Became aware of a band called Bob Vylan.
Wondered why an old man dying of old age is such a big deal for the BBC.
Today was good, except for one thing.
I met an old work friend for coffee. That was good.
In the afternoon, Bert and I worked together in the garden. That was nice. We achieved a lot, dug up half of the papaver orientale and created a new area for planting. Displaced a lot of snails. Bert is very keen to replant but I want to wait a while. Snails are territorial, and when they return to their feeding grounds, which they will, they'll demolish anything new and tender. The big rough poppies could stand that, but my seed-grown agastaches might not. We'll wait a while until the snails move on. Fingers crossed that they do.
The not-so-good thing that happened?
I was just leaving the small polytunnel after watering the tomatoes when my foot caught in a clump of ox-eye daisies and down I went. My first thought being,
Here we bloody well go again!
Hand out to save myself. Didn't work. It wasn't too bad. The ground around that polytunnel is soft and spongy, even more so since I left a hose running there for about 16 hours on Sunday evening. As I lay there, a bit winded, a brown butterfly flew past. I identified it as a Meadow Brown. And I knew that I was OK.
My left hand is a bit achey but it didn't prevent me from picking several pounds of strawberries and raspberries.
Tomorrow - more gardening, drive Hannah to the airport and on Friday I might go to Belfast.
