Burn baby burn...

...garden inferno at Quainton today. Perfect for a pyromaniac like me. I've been saving up tons of stuff, built a large bonfire and then set a match to it, woomph!

It looked not unlike this:

...I lied, it looked more like the one below...

...oh dear, lied again...

Yeah, that was it, bit like this one.

Must remember to take my camera to work more often, the one on the new phone is poxy, anyway the fire was splendid, lasted all day and caused no complaints for once, which is nice - not fond of people complaining.

Not long ago I was working on the old compost area at Quainton - which is now the new compost area (see below) - and this old-ish couple leant on the wall and commenced watching what I was doing. It got a bit unnerving after about five minutes, I had smiled but they kind of ignored that, so I said, "Can I help you?" "What you doing?" asked the man. "Clearing the compost area," I replied. "Why?" asked the man - the woman just frowned. "Why not?" I replied. "Just asking," she said. They then moved on. Bizarre some country folk.

I hope to be remember to take the camera tomorrow, Thursday and Friday (yep, working Easter Friday and Monday too, bit hypocritical for an atheist not to really) just so I can update the gardens at Buckland, Hemel, Tring and Pat's in Berkhamsted...

Happy burning baby...

Blogging eh?

I get this feeling that I'm just not cut out for this blogging mallarkey. I have no continuity about me, basically it's a tad pathetic. However, in my defence, I am a bit of an anarchist, so structured "stuff" like, do this now and then do that, is a bit of an anathema. Seriously, I won't be told.

Witness this, just the other day, a rather ancient lady said, "Here you! What are you doing?" To which I replied, nothing. What happened was, I appeared from an area of garden belonging to my oldest (sorry longest) client that was very apparent to the "general public". Said woman had a walking stick and proffered it in my direction saying,

"I shall hit you with this if you don't explain yourself."

Now, I would quite simply have explained to the said lady that I was in fact the gardener of the house and grounds in front of her very face, BUT, I couldn't be bothered.

"Who do you think you are?"

Again, what a crap question to ask of an anarchist - whether said anarchist  was in that space relevantly or not, is beside the point. At this juncture I should say that I was in fact quite legitimately dumping some debris from said garden in a perfectly legal site.

Once again the old lady touted the aforementioned walking stick in my face.

"Please," I said, "stop that." I could have scripted the reply.

"Oh, I shall hit you if you do not explain yourself."

"I don't think so," I replied. "I am the gardener here and if you even attempted to hit me, I don't think it would have succeeded."

"I am a very successful shot you know," she replied.

I wanted to say, "Fuck off you ancient waste of space; you left over piece of upper middle class Tory trash." But I smiled and said, "Seems we have had a bit of a misunderstanding, peace be with you."

She seemed to be appeased, but walked off swishing the stick in a very Errol Flynn stylee. Real life is so much more weirder than the made-up stuff.

Here some pix, my brethren:

You see this is where i go wrong all the time, I forget to take before
pictures, so trust me, this was very untidy before I weaved my magic.

Wish I knew the name of more shrubs - this is at Rebecca's in
Quainton - and I cut it back quite dramatically last year, don't it look good?
(Picture taken about four weeks ago.)

Newest garden - about four weeks ago - and a freshly cut lawn, mmmm...

The above three pictures are of the Laurel hedge at Quainton. I have
taken off about four foot to allow a bit more sunshine into the garden and,
more importantly, at the front of the house.

Oh, isn't it just soooooo lovely?

Thing is, it bloody damn well is!

I Thannnnnyou... Garden on xxx

I can't stand the rain...

Hello! Here we go again. After the no show yesterday I was determined to get out to work today. Every second Thursday I have four gardens to do in Hemel Hempstead - or Amyl Hempstead as my mate Phil says. I had to take out an old conifer in the first house and then went on to just do some basic weeding at another.


While weeding, two women walked by, mid-30s, non-descript I guess would be a way of describing them. "Fancy a threesome?" said one, she cackled like an erstwhile female Sid James (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj7D65SFOhM). She stood over me, I looked up and there was a toothless grin beaming out of a face that had seen a lot of living. I smiled, "No thanks," I said and got back to the dandelions.


Don't know what she muttered as she moved on, but the word "serious" was spluttered. Shame really, don't know why I mention it, but I have become rather overtly aware of sexual harassment recently. There was a Radio 4 programme on last week called "My name isn't baby" or something like that, it talked about women being harassed on the street. Now I'm not saying I was harassed per se, but it's not a particularly nice experience; won't say it made me feel dirty, just sad that people feel the compunction to say such things. Like say, sad.

Tuesday was spent at Rebecca's place as normal. The rain wasn't too bad actually, which was nice. I moved a few more flowers and smallish shrubs around and weeded all the main beds near the house. The bed outside the kitchen window that I started to re-plant is looking quite lovely

Most of the above was elsewhere in the garden, so I'm very pleased they have all taken so well. It's a nice project and it's going to be a delight watching it develop over the year

Have I said I like a bit of brick?

That's B-R-I-C-K. If you look closely on the row of bricks ten rows up, there are a series of numbers and letters imprinted on them - see below:

These are the idents from the brick yards that made them. I believe you can even date them from the these numbers too. Little fact I picked up from a BBC2 programme called "Brick by brick - rebuilding our past", a little gem of a show, fronted by the brilliant Dan Cruickshank

And here's the drive way at Rebecca's, another little area that I have been trying to tidy up since I started there, some eight months ago.

Gosh I love my work!


And then today, Thursday. "I can't stand the rain..." indeed. Hail again, but this time I had a hat on so the hail didn't sting quite so much - I believe we baldies should have government supplied hard hats for such situations.

...who would want to harm that head?
Yeah OK...

On to Tom and Vicky's place in Aldbury and I substituted trimming the hedge for cleaning up the brick laid path and patio area at the top of the garden - did I say I like a bit of brick? A wise choice as the rain kept a-comin' and a-goin'. 

Note to self: take BEFORE pictures too!!!

And so, it's Friday tomorrow, back to Glassmill House and the delightful fella who got very outraged at the fact that I was using a leaf blower to blow leaves. Looking forward to meeting up with him again...


Happy blowing... (know-wad-eye-meen?)

The reason for loving my job

Oh boy! I know I have probably harped on about this far too much, but having spent too much time working for corporate shits in my life, the past 18 months have been an absolute revelation for me. The plan was always to end my working life as a gardener. I wanted to do this since the mid-80s, but my first wife was too comfortable with my well paid media jobs and said, "You aren't good enough to  write - my other love - so why would you be any good at gardening?" Words to that effect - where the hell she got the correlation between writing and gardening I don't know, anyhoo, she's a failed Labour politician so blah!


I digress as usual. I had always intended to take early retirement, about 55, and become a gardener. Argos - bleurghhhhh - made it happen 3 years earlier by making me redundant and I really think I should thank the idiots, but what the hey, thankful to Argos? I don't think so...


Here is the true reason for loving my job...

Oh my, look at that grass! I nurtured this rose back to life last year and this year it's unbelievable

This cherry tree is getting cut back this autumn, it's got a bit too big and needs a good trim

I call this area at Pat's Dingly Dell and would love to put a pond in here - maybe one day. Anyway, I was cutting the grass and thought, "No! I can't get rid of all these daisies!" So I left some, ain't they pretty?

 Also at Pat's I found this tree

That looks a bit like this fella

Sid the Sloth from Ice Age

And then today at Julie's I just had to take these two pictures

Doesn't get any better really. Hard work but I don't even notice I'm doing it most days.


Ho hum...

The Things You See While Out Gardening Pt2

Saturday mornings are spent in Hemel Hempstead maintaining 3 gardens, I did this deliberately so I don't have to go there too often. And here is the reason...

You can bet your sweet bippy it ain't hers...

His and hers? Liz and Phil's?

A polystyrene flower, that looks uncannily like a burger/chip box

Quality shops

The little yellow sign says, "Danger of death" - indeed

A few years ago this was a Threshers offie run by a lovely lesbian couple. It's been like this for about 8 years now, adds true ambience I think you'll agree, nice bit of green to what a mate of mine has renamed, Amyl Hempstead - double indeed!