Bit Fed Up

The Wood

Hannah has informed Nellybert that we no longer have to do food shopping. She will do it for us. It's a relief. We were in Lidls last week and it was an unnerving experience, too many people in the shop, and no social distancing possible. We were glad to get out of there.

London Sister phoned yesterday to talk plants among other things. She is working hard in her garden and is keen to start sowing but only has rocket and sunflower seeds and the local garden centres are all closed. I sent her some of my spare seed and stuck three first-class stamps on the envelope which is probably an overpayment but I didn't want to go to the post office. I'm not even sure she'll get them as I'm not sure about the postal service anymore. Maybe I'm just in a pessimistic mood these few days.

I really miss having a good supply of potting compost and those silly impulse plant buys I'm always making. And I miss not being able to buy bakers yeast. Who cares about toilet paper? I want yeast. I haven't been able to get any for over three weeks now.

Still. All small stuff. I could make my own potting compost if I wanted to and I've got the sourdough and soda bread options for baking.

Since this began I've been taking two walks a day. One government-sanctioned exercise period on our road where the traffic has eased quite a bit. There is a marked decrease in the number of fast-food wrappers that usually adorn our verges but around the same amount of empty energy drink cans and cigarette packets and now, far too many discarded disposable gloves. They are disgusting pigs, the people who throw their filthy crap out of car windows.

My other walk is at home so nobody's business but mine. We're lucky to have the wood and we all walk in it at some point during the day.

Bert just got me to watch a little short on iPlayer. It's called The Farm and the episode is entitled Dog. It really cheered me up, especially as we'd previously watched an episode of The Last Kingdom which was the opposite of cheerful with eye-gouging, torture and death in childbed. I might have to put Uhtred Ragnarson on hold for a while.

Every Picture: Wish Lists

I would really like to make this sweet rustic flower bed with the logs. I'm thinking trailing fuchsia and lobelia at the front and the Emily McKenzie Crocosmia as the main feature. And how about one with spring bulbs? Miniature narcissi and primroses. Would be divine. That would be on my wish list for sure.

And what about some guinea fowl when this damned avian flu restriction is over? Every time I see this photograph I'm reminded that guineas have been on my wish list for a very long time. They were Johnny's birds and lived here a long time ago. He let them run around and eventually Foxy took them all but I'd take far better care of them. Probably.

Both of these pictures would feature on Bert's wish list too for he yearns for great lumps of wood and logs. He'd have my rustic bed dismantled and on the fire, before you could say 'primula auricula' and as for the guinea fowl, they'd have nowhere to clamber and perch once Bert got the chainsaw out.

I keep reminding him he has a wood but he says it's too far away. It would take him ten minutes to get out there and he'd need a donkey to haul the wood back. I keep reminding him he has a quad bike and a tractor but, come to think of it, I've actually always wanted a donkey.

Bert's Tough Day

Bert had a tough day yesterday. First of all he had to move the herd, all seven of them, from one field to another. This involved shunting them out of one field, crossing a busy B road, and shunting them into another. He had at his disposal three sturdy cow hands, Les, Peter and myself. Les was in charge of halting the traffic at the Portglenone end, I took care of the Cully side and Peter and Bert gathered them up. That was the plan anyway. One of the 'bastes' was a visitor, a young bull belonging to Clint - that was in with our lot to act as a teaser. A young Lothario there to help Bert figure out when the girls were ready for the AI* man. And he was a teaser all right. With no intentions of doing the right thing he made a mad dash for the hedge and charged through a barbed wire fence into another man's field - and the two calves along with him. Meanwhile the cows were all in the new field enjoying the luscious grass. Peter and Bert did their best but they hadn't a hope. We brought one of the cows back and eventually the calves joined her and back to the luscious grass they went but no sign of Clint's bull. Bert tramped the fields but no sign of the teaser. He had to tell Clint who, it turned out, took a philosophical view of the matter.

They both went out to look for the bull, Clint driving the roads and Bert tramping the fields in torrential rain. At last the bull was found and penned and Clint drove off to get a trailer. Bert trudged home, soaked to the skin. He had just reached the end of the lane when one of the neighbours stopped him, a trim woman in her fifties, driving a smart little car. She called him over.

Bert, I was meaning to ask you. What are you doing about the trees?

The trees? What trees? 

The wood. The wood at the back of our house. What are you doing about it? 

Nothing. Why do you ask?

It's just that we were told it was only going to be there for fifteen or twenty years and now we can't see the road or the nice green fields. All we can see are those trees. We all hate them. 

Well I have no plans to do anything with them in the near future. They'll be there for a while yet.

Bert was disconcerted about this exchange. It never occurred to him that anyone would have a problem with the wood. He loves it, loves the wild life that lives there and is delighted that bluebells are beginning to flourish in it.

He told Clint who was practical as always.

Huh! If she doesn't like it she should move house. It's the countryside. Things change.

Later that afternoon the AI man turned up. Not Henry VIII this time, his brother Prince Arthur. He'd been caught in a short, sharp hailstorm where big chunks of ice had hit his car. We could actually see where the paint had flecked off. That made the downpour we'd had seem like a treat.

It faired up later and Bert took four dogs and the wee grey cat for a walk in the woods where they saw a fox. It wasn't a bad end to the day but it made me nervous for the hens, especially as he'd spotted fox cubs earlier whilst tramping other fields looking for Clint's young bull.

Bert's Wood

AI* Artificial insemination.

In Which Nelly and the Kitten Find Themselves Feeling Rather Chilled

Apart from the garden centre, my present office is the coldest place I’ve ever worked and at least in the garden centre I could do some physical work to keep warm. So, much as I’d like to convey a smart corporate image, in jackets and heels and little silk scarves, I’m happed up in layers of wool and body-warmers, mufflers and fingerless gloves and with a long drip hanging off the end of my freezing nose and looking a lot less like a groomed and glossy receptionist and a lot more like Albert Steptoe.

But at least I was cheered up when Hagelrat invited me to do a book meme (I swear I think I started that one but maybe it’s just a geriatric delusion) and by happy chance the book closest to me was Swallows and Amazons and didn’t page 56 gave up a delightful passage featuring Titty and Dick and a lot of tackings, moorings and tying-ups to bushes that were growing out of rocks. But unfortunately the book is still in at work so I cannot do it.

The only other book I had to hand was ‘The God Delusion’ which was loaned to me by Mr D, a delightful chap in his eighties, and he says he’s definitely an atheist now. I think that’s terribly tough-minded of him at his age. I was the second person he loaned his copy to. The first was a Church of Ireland vicar and the book was returned inserted with 6 pages of handwritten notes and quotes from the bible. Mr D remains unconvinced but I expect the clergyman felt he had to try.

And on the home front Bert has embarked on his traditional Christmas preparations. This always involves a large, messy and thoroughly non-urgent task that he has been putting off for at least three years. I think it was last year he decided to demolish the turf shed and this year he’s building (from scratch) a sliding door between the scullery and the hall. The house is knee deep in sawdust and I’m terrified the kitten is going to decapitate itself on Bert’s Makita.

Not very kitten-friendly

Bert says it won’t because it’s not clever enough to override the safety features. But is it little wonder I fear that Bert takes a very cavalier attitude to Fred’s wellbeing when Hannah found the poor wee thing in the pet food fridge this evening? Luckily it hadn’t been in there very long and was happily lapping away at an open tin of cat food. But what if Hannah hadn’t been going to feed the dogs at that very minute? Bert said it would have learned the wee brute not to go in there.