Hello!

I'm not gonna lie, oh no. I'm not even gonna give any lame excuse. I just couldn't be bothered to write anything in the past 3 weeks or so, but, fear not (as if) here I am and here's that bunch of grapes I've been monitoring at Julie's lovely place (400 year old cottage in 5 acres, with the lovely pond - more of that later).

4th August

10th August

Stupidly forgot to take one today, but I have to say the wasps are beginning to have an effect. However, I am determined to get at least enough for one bottle of wine, Julie and Andrew don't bother with them you see, not even to eat!


Well, it's been busy out there in the land of the garden. I have had so much work I think I'll actually be able to pay my tax bill this year - my first one since going self-employed, it's on last year's earnings so thankfully it's not that big and I have just about 2/3's of it tucked away in the mattress, ha ha! It's another thing to be slightly concerned about innit?

4th August it rained. And I got wet, but I like rain drops - not on kittens with mittens though, 'cos that's basically not fair - especially when rain drops fall on water, like this:

I'm not going to write the obvious caption from a certain "cowboy" movie of the early 70s, THAT would be too too obvious!

Some actual gardening for a change, a novelty on a blog about gardening - does one say "on" or "in" a blog? Anyway, I have today been attempting to control that weed of all weeds, Mare’s-tail. A bastard that grows like a big bastard in cultivated land.  I prefer the latin of course, being that way inclined(?), Hippuris vulgaris - fantastic latin innit? Well, my little sun flowers, it turns out that the bastard isn't mare's-tail at all but, indeed, 'tis Marsh Horsetail, Equisetum palustre - from equus, meaning horse of course and seta which translates as bristle or hair. Well, imagine my chagrine at that news. I can tell you, I pulled that weed up with ever increasing violence once I had found out it's true identity. Masquerading as another weed like that.


Basically, all you can do with it is move house...

...and here it is, in volumes filling me big bag up to the very top...

Oh! More gardening, following is one of 8 pumpkins grown from last year's Halloween pumpkin as purchased from Tesco (yuck!).

Not the biggest, indeed it's the smallest we have,
but I thought it looked dead cute - if a vegetable
can be cute of course.

Point is comrades, if you can get seeds from anything you buy at the supermarket and you have access to even the smallest bit of ground you can grow anything in the right conditions. A great way of sticking one on the corporates, 'cos you basically get it for free. I have 6 tomato plants from a Tesco bought pack of tomatoes too. They taste better than anything you buy - even if that statement isn't true, I believe it it's a psychological thing, they seem to taste better, fresh from the greenhouse, all lovely and warm...


Aha! here's a picture of all the tennis balls I found over this summer at Pat's place:

9 of them and not one chewed by Fergus -
he's the dog

The grass at Pat's is looking a bit ragged at the moment. She has a separate company to come in and look after the lawn and it looks like the "treatment" has re-acted badly this year:

Those patches are all dead grass and there's not a lot of re-growth in them too. Sad, but with a bit of luck and a bit of feed and fertiliser in the spring it should be ok in time for next summer.


I have an announcement to make of a devastating nature. I shall just say it, so take care, my boots are dead. 


Boots:  A sturdy item of footwear covering the foot, the ankle, and sometimes the leg below the knee. 


Yes, 20 months into this new life of mine and already I have gone through two pairs of steel toecaps. These were a pair of JCBs, bought for £12.50 on E-bay (RRP - allegedly - £58.99), so I believe I got a damn fine deal there. The new ones are Dickies, apparently legendary footwear. Well, MR Marketing bloke, I shall be the judge of that. Here's the old pair:

They're letting in water, so they have to go, but
bless them, they served me well

Here's the new ones:

I would market them as "Dickies - more than just footwear, Legendary footwear"

Actually, a boot's a boot innit?

And finally. Today it rained. It rained a lot. So much I actually had to give up and come home. Here's the evidence:

Happy drowning!

Peace innit?

HOLLY HOCKS TO YOU

Apologies, but this is going to be nasty. So, to put your mind in loveliness here's two pictures of a holly hock at Julie's place (that's Wednesday/Thursday mornings):

It all started On 15th February 1957, 11.37 in the evening. Yes, my birth. My beautiful wife, the gorgeous Alison, says I have a persecution complex on account of the fact that I am of Jewish decent. True, very true in fact. On one of my many Anti-Apartheid actions, a trolley push at Bloomsbury Waitrose, a loud mouth cockney git of a woman pointed at my dear friend Dominic and said, "You're middle class" and then pointed at me and opined the legend, "AND, you're Jewish!" This was crazy. What the freakin' hell has the ethnic/class origin of an individual got to do with protesting against the abomination that was Apartheid? 


Bizarre, but I digress, as usual. This week, the gardening rounds have tested my patience, faith in humanity on several different levels and, finally, made me want to get pissed out of my brains tonight - this I am currently attempting to achieve...

That tee shirt, a present from the wonderful Comrade Marsden, has carried me through the week, along with my Hare Krishna tee shirt given to me by the monks at Bhaketivedanta Manor near Watford - the place George Harrison bought for the Krishna movement.


Anyway, I guess I should start the story. Apart from the fact it's rained on me in several levels of awfulness all week, several human gits have attempted to wind me up all week.  


First, drivers. What is it with people getting behind the wheel of a car and turning into fuckwits? I will never understand the human psyche in unison with the automobile. Perfectly nice people - I'm guessing here - turn into monsters capable of all manner of abominations. Cut me up. Turn without indicating. Drive like you're driving through treacle. Slam your brakes on when all that's happening is a car has appeared on the other side of the road. Come up to my bumper and drive six inches away from me for five miles, while I am doing the fucking speed limit. Stick your middle finger up at me like it's my fault they set the speed limit. 


OK! This is the first specific story. I need fuel. I go to the nearest petrol station, fill up with £20 worth - yeah that's gonna get me a long way, whatever - and go and pay. A petrol tanker pulls up and cuts off one of the exits, meaning that I will have to back up to go out another of the exits. I go back to my car, get in, switch on and go to back out. I might add here there is a woman in front of me, obviously needing to get out too. 


As I look in my rear view mirror a car draws up to me, stopping all of six inches away from me. I think, "He's bound to see the enormous tanker blocking our way out." Two minutes later, we're still sitting there. I sigh, open the car door, get out and walk to my fellow driver's car door. This is the conversation:


Me (smiling): Sorry mate, could you back up please?


Cab Driver (for that is what he is): Why should I?


Me (not smiling): Ummmm, because we can't get out, there is a petrol tanker blocking our way.


CD: Why's that my problem?


Me (incredulous): Because if we don't get out, you don't get to fill your car up.


CD (did I say he was Asian - and I hate even having to mention it): Chaaaaar!


Me: I'm sorry mate-


CD: I'm not your mate.


Woman (from the car in front of me): Can't you just reverse so we can get out please?


Me: Thanks.


(So the cab driver backs up, but not really enough.)


Me: I'm really sorry, but I can't-


CD: Chaaaaaaaar!


(He backs up a bit more)


At this point I just wanted to ram him out of the way, but of course didn't. I pulled up to his bumper (baby!) and let the woman get out before me. He sounded his hooter like there was something wrong. I got out of my car again.


Me (getting annoyed): What now?


CD: Char!


Me: Seriously mate, you need help with that anger thing you have.


CD: Racist!


I got back in my car and drove off. Seriously, I would never have a problem with anyone because of their colour, race, creed, religion, whatever; ask my friends, not a racist bone in my body. My problem is if you're a twat.


Later that same day, I drove into a close and slightly over shot my turn to park. I clipped the grass verge by about 3 inches. As I got out of the car and old fella opened his window and the following conversation happened:


Old fella: HOW DARE YOU!


Me: Sorry?


OF: You drove over the grass verge!


Me: Sorry.


OF: YOU, moron! You should know better than to do that!


ME: OK. I said I'm sorry.


At this point I looked very closely at the tiny piece of grass I assume I had killed and stretched my arms out in a kind of, "no problem" gesture.


OF: Don't you argue with me!


Me: I'm not, I apologised.


OF: How dare you!


Me (totally flummoxed): I AM SORRY!


OF: Don't shout at me.


I shrugged my shoulders and thankfully my colleague had turned up and we just got on trimming the hedge we were there to trim. Apparently the old fella is 90 and profoundly deaf, but cor blimey, that's no excuse...


Almost finally, and I must add that this is only one of many weird and persecutory notions that have bugged me all week, I turned at a job to trim a hedge, knocked on the door and no one replied. I tried to get into the back garden, home of said hedge, no luck. I knocked and rang on the door this time, for about two minutes in all. Still no reply. I also had to trim another hedge in the front garden, not the priority, but I got on with it.


About an  hour and a half later a woman walked up the driveway with the children who lived in this lovely detached house in Chesham Bois, Bucks and knocked on the door. The door opened and the woman who rents the place accepted delivery of her three kids. I was up a ladder, hedge trimmer ablaze and, quite frankly, gob smacked! How I didn't sever something important I do not know.


What the fuffing hell was THAT about?


AND finally, driving into Tring this evening - Tring being the lovely market town in which I currently reside with my lovely family - I heard a gunshot, looked out the window and saw a wood pigeon falling from the sky. I pulled over and went to investigate, checking whether it was legal to kill the blessed animal with Alison as I walked over. Apparently it's all right to shoot wood pigeons - wellllll, let's face it they are bastards, flying about like they do, all on the wing like that; bastards. I really could have done with seeing the fucker who was perpetrating this particular crime but couldn't find him, even though he let off another two shots in the mean time. On reflection he did have the gun I s'pose, but hell I was in such a mood the shots would have bounced off me, perhaps.


Point is; what is the point? The world would be a lot nicer place if it was just me, my family and the few beautiful people I call my friends; wouldn't it?


HOLLY HOCKS TO YOU ALL!


Peace...

Grapes of toffs

Just a quickie comrades. Here follows a couple of pictures showing some grapes at one of my gardens. Apparently the owners don't bother with them, so I'm thinking WINE!


Anyway, her is 2 weeks ago:

And here is today:

And here's my tea break yesterday, one of Alison's blueberry muffins (home grown blueberries and a nice cuppa tea - to quote Dot Cotton:

And finally, today I was followed around the garden by this little fella:

I think it's a wren, but I wouldn't swear to it. Bless...


Happy supping!

Exhaustion

Fatigue (also called exhaustion, lethargy, languidness, languor, lassitude, and listlessness)


This is a whole new life style thingy for me. Physical exhaustion. It's the culmination of several weeks of rather intense work. I feel like I have trimmed, cut, sawn, hacked, every hedge in Hertfordshire - well West Herts anyway. I am not complaining here though, it has been so much more than sitting in front of the PC at SchmArgos attempting to keep my big mouth shut at the corporate shit fountain that sits on every corner, BUT bloody hell I'm exhausted...


Exhaustion does funny things to the mind as much as the body. Like, at the moment I think I'm sitting here listening to a show on Radio 5live that's full of pointless twats waffling on about the internet... Oh, hang on, I am, wait a second, I'm now listening to Radio 4 and Simon Hughes is on there waffling on about News Corp and what the Commons Select committee are going to do to Murdoch and Friends on Tuesday - what a TWAT!


Here's a very pretty poppy:

And a cloud:

You see, this is why my new life is soooooo nice. Who wouldn't want to work in those conditions? That poppy is quite exquisite isn't it? I've tried looking it up so I know the name, but all it says on the tinterweb is "fancy poppy", so that's what it shall be. And the cloud is just a cloud, suspended in an azure sky while I was eating me lunch the other day. Perfect!


While on my gardening travels I see some delightful things and this is one of them and one day we will live on something like this!

£45,000 and you get to go up and down the Grand Union,
stopping off at all those lovely pubs...

Barges eh? Only thing is, what do we do with the rabbits, chickens and cats? I know, they can be the crew. All I want is to be a pirate. There you go, it's out there, no dandy highwayman, a pirate. A bit like this one:

Imagine turning up at one of those lovely canal side homes with the big lawn and saying, "Give me £2,000 or the willow gets it!" Yes pirating has it's true appeal. The only problem is a barge isn't exactly a quick get away vehicle. I'll have to think that one through a bit more...

Now, here's a thing. How the freaking hell are you supposed to trim a laurel hedge when a car is parked like this? Carefully methinks. Thing is, the people in the block of flats here have been complaining that the hedge hasn't been cut. I'll leave that thought with you.

The 2.30 at our place last Sunday. Snail number three cantered home and we are thinking of entering the little speed devil in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes next year. Anyone know a jockey?

The two following picture are from my first hedge/tree scalping a couple of weeks ago. 

The road side and that lamp was completely hidden by the trees, which was silly. Can't tell you how precarious I was on the ladders!


Tom and Vicky's garden is looking splendid at the moment. Hope you agree. And they're getting married today, sweet! The bloody rain is chucking down though and they have a marquee on Aldbury Village playing fields. Damn the British weather to hell!!!

Happy gardening...

 NB: I have been chastised by Tring Council yet again for misdemeanours on the allotment. I call it harassment...

Ahhh, days of whine and roses...

...never that it be said that people can never have enough of a good thing - or maybe, people are never, ever, happy with their lot in life. Basically, there's always something isn't there? That little niggle that jabs away at one's conscious, sub- or otherwise.


I try very hard not to whinge, whine, moan, groan, bleet, etcetera, etcetera. There's no but here, I just over heard my next door neighbour say, "This weather of ours never knows what it wants to do with itself." Now, you see, OK it's been a bit rainy and a bit chilly for this time of year recently and the weather forecasts never seem to get it quite right, so, yes it's been a bit difficult to do things. 


Being a gardener I have got relatively wet on recent days - that's relative to the people at Glastonbury Friday night, which was soaking, probably because those self-believers U2 were the headline act and it always rains on the self-righteous. Actually on Wednesday I got totally soaked to the skin in a downpour of biblical proportions. (How do people know what a biblical proportion is? I mean I can imagine a biblical portion of say chips, that would be a portion to satisfy any late Friday night crew, oceans of the lovely chipped potato beloved of the working classes. But rain of a biblical proportion? Dunno.) 


Anyway, how would the weather know anything? The weather is: The state of the atmosphere at a given time and place, with respect to variables such as temperature, moisture, wind velocity, and barometric pressure. So my neighbour's comment is a nonsense really, maybe it was a metaphysical statement, a highly abstract or theoretical; abstruse; immaterial; incorporeal or even supernatural comment. I like to think it's the latter, but I seriously doubt it, my neighbour, a lovely woman in her 70s, just whines a lot...


My mother-in-law, she of the "Oh my I think I have cancer!" tee-shirt, hates the sun; hates the outdoors; hates grass; once told us to pave the whole of our back garden to save time and not have any "creepy crawly thingies". I have never known anyone so distracted by dread and death and a bad things are a-gonna happen type attitude to life. She whines about the weather constantly. It is never, NEVER, right for her. 


She once told me to turn the air conditioning off in my car - I don't have a car with such a thing, not now I'm away from the corporate world of SchmArgos, so I said, "I don't have air conditioning." "Why am I cold then?" "Because you have thinned your blood so much with all the medication you take, in fact you probably have no blood, it's probably just a glopular mess of chemicals, like de-icer or something." She didn't talk to me for the rest of the journey. But, I have to say, in my defence, it was actually in the middle of the "cold snap" at the beginning of the year and was freezing out and I had turned the HEATING on in the car. The cold air was the initial rush before the heater warmed up. I had tried explaining that to her but she is one of life's "Nothing is right" brigade, so you can't win. It's why I get facetious with her and make my shitty comments, if only to shut her up.


Oh yeah, here's some pretty flowers from last week:

All from the grounds of this lovely 16th century house:

That's a grapevine over the brick archway and
they don't pick 'em, so...

And finally, the other week when visiting Lundun tarn the first bus I saw was this abomination:

It is now time to ban these silly continental bendy thingies, they are an excuse of a bus and to equip the greatest bus route in London with them was an evil beyond even Boris Johnson's birth. NB: I am fully aware they have been around for a while but as I don't get into town that much I haven't had the opportunity to shout about it! and I am SHOUTING!!!


There we go, all gone, happy, just off to something called a barbecue where people apparently burn animals and pretend to eat them, but there is going to be beer too, so that's nice...

...why thanks Graham, that was very kind of you, happy chatting!

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...

Oh the perils of the outdoor life my friends...

This is the only problem with working as a full time gardener - although sometimes I do like the thought of, "Working in the rain with the one I love"...

The rain yesterday came down persistently for about 20 minutes - is that where the term, "it was persistenting cats and dogs", comes from? Anyhoo, Radio 4, a cuppa and Quorn Beef and coleslaw sarnies, can't go wrong!


Happy persisting!


Lovin' it!!!