Rural Pursuits

After a late night spent with the ever badly behaved Slinx, her work colleagues and strawberry vodka in a busy and quite fun bar called Nordic and some Italian food I remembered that I had to do something relatively important on Friday.

I had a meeting to go to in the middle of nowhere.

Fenland Council in North East Cambridge is not a place that many of you will have heard of. Quite rightly so in some ways. Imagine a large field surrounded by other large fields also surrounded by very large fields interspersed with run off streams that the locals would obviously have you call fens, though that is a wild overuse of artistic license, and finally chuck in more fields and the occasional badly planned village with lots of broken windows and you have the idea.

From a traffic jam behind a tractor I saw the biggest hay bales I have ever seen. They were as large as a Bethnal Green tower blocks and I wonder if they are built by giants, who even then would have to call on major industrial mechanised equipment? I took a photo. If you would like to see it just ask. You won't believe it if you do.

It was as I imagine Kansas to be, only with the occasional fish and chip shop.

Its easier to get to France than get to there. If you look on a map it pouts beguilingly at you like a saucy dancer and calls you on with come hither eyes "I'm just here sexy, look, I'm within your reach just come and get me". Just like most aforesaid dancers however it plays you, to tease you. When you get there you discover the dancer has long since danced off laughing to the wind and you are left surrounded by tragic, "I've no home to go to" regulars.

You might be able to tell but I thought it was a journey too far. However the meeting was OK, though my form, hampered by the previous nights vodka could have been sharper.

It was a long journey back.

Earth Moving

Saturday was spent starting some of the heavy work that the garden requires. I sometimes think I may have bitten off to much in having this space, and about this time of year is when the work starts. I got in a few hours of hard yards and then settled down for some TV Rugby before heading over to Slinx's for the finale.

England vs France (Six Nations decider in Paris)

England lost. France played very well.

England lost. Oh I said that?

The company I had the privilege to be with made it all less painful and I had a lovely dinner and evening.

Today.. Or it was.

I really threw myself at that outside space and began to make some dents. I laid 20 meters of edging. I dug the grass out from around the trees and made them neat. I cut the lawns. I rollered them. Blimey I worked hard. I even dug out what looked at a perfunctory glance to be, half a hectare of baby nettles.

Let me tell you a thing or two about baby nettles. Firstly, they lie. They are not babies at all. They look small but secondly their roots are like grown men’s legs, only they travel for miles each and every way, and on to the very center of the earth.

On a more enjoyable note I also sowed carrot seeds to join the parsnip seeds I let my visiting American Jason fella sow the week before.

Another few days like that and I may begin to have a semblance of control.

The cat did not witness these heroics. He stayed indoors. Instead the Deer looked on occasionally and the birds smiled.

thegardener1969@msn.com