Enter Bert who comes out with this statement,
I have to say, you
shock me.
Me, sewing my
knitted blanket,
What point are you
making?
It’s a lovely
day, and here's you sitting knitting and a ball of stuff to be doing
outside.
Well! It’s
alright for him. He’s got a new toy to play with – a battery
operated lawnmower. He got me a leaf blower at the same time but
that’s two seasons too late, or early depending on how you look at
it.
When I told
Swisser about the leaf blower, I told her I felt a bit
guilty about getting it, and she had a lot to say on that subject.
A
leaf blower! What’s wrong with a rake and a brush?
I admitted that
she had a point. But said,
Have
you seen the amount of trees we have? The size of this place? I need
a leaf blower as well as a rake. I’d be weeks, months gathering up
all the leaves that fall here. And anyway, they all go to the compost
heap in the end.
She
argued on,
They’re
so loud.
so
antisocial, so unnecessary. I hate them. Bloody men with all their
noisy machinery.
I
say,
We
have no neighbours so won’t be bothering anyone. And it’s the
beech leaves* that are preventing wild
flowers coming through at my
would-be meadow.
Maybe
if I could get the leaves gathered up in the autumn the orchids
and cuckoo
flowers would spread and there’d be more orange-tip butterflies.
But
I couldn’t convince her. So changed the conversation to another of
her annoyances,
the volume of tourists that clog up her personal beach at PBT.
It’s my opinion that she would be far happier if she lived up a
long lane with no-one near her.
To
return to Bert and his remarks about me doing needlework on a rare
sunny day. I was raging at him but knew he was right. I put down my
needles and went outside where I took pictures of the crocus then
watered and tidied up my potted herbs.
*Beech leaves can form a tight seal on lawns or low-growing
meadow areas which prevent low-growing or delicate wild flowers from
growing.
