Making things
This long Easter weekend has been a flurry of garden-based activity, hence the lateness and lack of thought in my bloggings. Today has been no different, so here you will find no pearls of wisdom. Hopefully nothing of an unsettling nature, either, but I can never be sure of other people's sensibilities.
It's a cliché, I know, but Easter is a time for getting down to the garden centre. That was Friday's post, and since then I have been gainfully employed in digging, planting, painting, and Captain Bodge construction. Using only an old pallet (the remains of a cold frame I built several years ago but never really used), the insides of used toilet rolls and some sticky back plastic,* I have made a large ornamental planter for the Horse Doctor to put her beloved flowering plants into,** and an artfully asymmetrical gate from the garden into the field beyond.
This latter masterpiece has become necessary as the DevilDog can only go for very short ambling strolls now, and it is far easier to take him once around the field. Previously there was a Heath-Robinson concoction of chicken-wire, heavy boulders and bits of broken fence post blocking the gap in the fence I put up six years ago. Making the gate has been on my to-do list for a long time. Now all I have to do is make sure it's securely closed at all times, or the SausageDog will go off looking for fox shit to roll in, and the sheep will eat all our daffodils.
I've also managed to dig out the land drain that's been backing up and flooding the path for the last year. Now I know that it is properly buggered,*** I can have words with the landlord to get it fixed. If past experience is anything to go by, it will be another six years before anything is done about it. At least the overflow's only grey water from the washing machine - at the moment it does a good job of watering the vegetable beds.
So all in all a productive weekend. Except that I have neither looked nor written anything more creative than a blog post in the past four days. Time to get back to the story telling.
* Well, maybe not those last two.
** I don't like growing things you can't eat, and flowers make me sneeze.
*** That's a technical term.
It's a cliché, I know, but Easter is a time for getting down to the garden centre. That was Friday's post, and since then I have been gainfully employed in digging, planting, painting, and Captain Bodge construction. Using only an old pallet (the remains of a cold frame I built several years ago but never really used), the insides of used toilet rolls and some sticky back plastic,* I have made a large ornamental planter for the Horse Doctor to put her beloved flowering plants into,** and an artfully asymmetrical gate from the garden into the field beyond.
This latter masterpiece has become necessary as the DevilDog can only go for very short ambling strolls now, and it is far easier to take him once around the field. Previously there was a Heath-Robinson concoction of chicken-wire, heavy boulders and bits of broken fence post blocking the gap in the fence I put up six years ago. Making the gate has been on my to-do list for a long time. Now all I have to do is make sure it's securely closed at all times, or the SausageDog will go off looking for fox shit to roll in, and the sheep will eat all our daffodils.
I've also managed to dig out the land drain that's been backing up and flooding the path for the last year. Now I know that it is properly buggered,*** I can have words with the landlord to get it fixed. If past experience is anything to go by, it will be another six years before anything is done about it. At least the overflow's only grey water from the washing machine - at the moment it does a good job of watering the vegetable beds.
So all in all a productive weekend. Except that I have neither looked nor written anything more creative than a blog post in the past four days. Time to get back to the story telling.
* Well, maybe not those last two.
** I don't like growing things you can't eat, and flowers make me sneeze.
*** That's a technical term.
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