The man who worked in the garden – 10 April 2022

Well, more likely, the man who makes a mess when he tries to help the lady who actually does work in the garden.

We were gardeners today. I was planting potatoes in potato bags. Three potatoes in each of the two bags. Maris Peers. We’d planted them last year and they had produced a good yield. They have been chitting on the window sill upstairs, light but cool. The spell checker thinks they’ve been ‘chatting’ which they might well have been, but they were actually firming up their sprouting shoots in a process known as ‘chitting’. Any chatting was purely accidental. While I was doing that, Scamp was pottering around the garden, filling watering cans, emptying bins and refilling them and pruning, always pruning. We did a quick survey of the garden and I found to my surprise that the Shooting Star which I feared was dead was showing signs of decent growth. Hooray! Also a plant we got brought back from Cambo gardens in St Andrews and had recently planted in the bed outside the back window was also showing signs of shoots as was another plant whose name neither of us can remember but is planted near the Cambo. Almost everything in the garden was rosy!

After lunch I put a decent pair of boots on, not gardening boots, and went for a walk in St Mo’s. With me today I took my old Tamron long zoom and the big, heavy Sigma macro lens. In addition I took a bag of slugs. There were loads of them clambering all over the compost heap and I just wanted rid of them and the eggs they’d be laying, so I put on a pair of disposable vinyl gloves and filled a plastic bag with them, then took them for a walk in St Mo’s. I dumped them in the woods. I hate killing creatures just because I don’t like them, so re-housing them is ok. If I call it re-wilding the countryside I’ll probably get a medal for it. I got today’s PoD in St Mo’s.  It was a coot sitting on its nest, floating among the stooks of last year’s horse tails.

I messed up a setting on the Sony and ended up with three photos for each one I meant to take. Don’t ask for details, just accept that it wasn’t what I intended to do and the excess have now been dumped in the bin.
Saw a duck that I thought was a Potchard, but turned out to be a Widgeon. I remember photographing it last year and being confused about its name then too.

Dinner tonight was the leftover curries from last night and it was fine. Watched a quite interesting F1 GP where Verstappen ran into car trouble and Le Clerc won the race. Unfortunately Hamilton could only manage fourth ;-).

Spoke to Jamie later and heard about all the troubles and tribulations Simonne was having in Trinidad with catching Covid and the aftermath. Also heard the exorbitant price her flight home would have cost if she hadn’t had travel insurance.

Maybe dropping off a present for Olly at his gran and papa’s tomorrow.

 

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