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You are viewing the most recent 15 entries June 22nd, 200912:54 am: Taste, and garden, and House
My friends who got civil-partnered in Plockton came round this afternoon to return some picture cards I bought and to thank me for their afternoon at Taste, so that's a win (they had a lovely time in Italy, too). Also I had a landscape gardener (the one who did my clover lawn) round to see if she could take down my washing-line pole safely (no, she said, when she took in how tall it is and how heavy, but she knew a guy who could) and about putting in paving for a patio at the back of the garden. Also I went to the gym. I watched Bremner, Bird, and Fortune remind us all of how everyone smart had been predicting the financial disaster we were heading into for years and years (they used flashback material from Bird and Fortune's earlier dialogues: I remember the one about the Name at Lloyds and the one about the bank manager who liked his customers to go into debt). Also: House 5.06, "Joy". No spoilers, only; eep, kissage; also, eep, sad baby-plot.        Current Mood:  tired , garden record, house md, i watch tv
May 3rd, 200902:46 pm: My hatchling is going to die soon.
It's kind of sad in an online way.  I got to the gym this morning and was unpacking when I realised I had forgotten my swimsuit, so I did not do "gym and swim": I only did gym. I also forgot my hairbrush, which was slightly ghastly and made me think all over again that I want a haircut like I used to have where brushes were things you really didn't need. There are tiny little green sprouts growing in the interstices of my lawn. I contemplated cutting it. It's quite windy. Mostly I just want to lie out on it in the sun, but it's just windy enough not to be really comfortable doing that. Bob is asleep on the windowsill. She looks quite impossibly comfortable, even though she really doesn't fit it. Current Mood: tired , dragon eggs need clicky, garden record
April 20th, 200908:34 pm: It's Spring!
If you kneel down and squint very very close at the bare earth, you can just see the tiniest little clover sprouts, coming up bright green. Also, I saw the littlest worm in the world, crawling quite briskly through the grass. About the length of the top joint of my thumb, slenderer than a blade of grass, youthfully reddish-brown, lively as a ... well, as a newborn worm off to seek its fortune.     Current Mood: happy , garden record
March 28th, 200901:08 pm: April means so many things
One of them is that we have an enormous amount of work to do by next Friday, and reports on it to be turned in by 17th April. But, as I was remembering sporadically every time I came home from work in daylight, it also means that, even in Scotland, it's going to be spring. And, sometimes (not last year) this leads to a season of growing things. So. I had ordered clover seeds. (From two different eBay suppliers: I'm going to plant one side of the garden with one, one side with the other, and make note here which was which, in case one was better than the other. We may hope, yes?) And that meant clipping and raking the garden, too. So I did that this morning for a couple of hours. In fact it's still not done, because I need to go over it all and dig up the dandelion roots. It's almost a pity because dandelions are pretty... if one of those evil biological geneticists who mess around with plants could develop a dandelion which you could grow in a garden and get just a few, that would be extremely useful and nice. Nice anyway. Current Mood: chipper , clover lawn, garden record
June 11th, 200811:09 am: What I did already this morning...
This morning, besides all the usual things I meant to do (get up, have breakfast, make/pack lunch), I meant to water my garden. I also had to call the vet, because when I took Bob in for her booster shot and check-up yesterday, she'd lost a pound (in weight: I don't let her carry cash) and both the vet and I regarded this as cause for alarm and blood tests. The reason I meant to water my garden is that I did the last planting of clover I'll do this year, last night. (My garden is looking good, by the way, for an unfinished project: the decorative grass is high and seeding, the army of daisies is out and lovely, I have achieved control over the dandelions, the clover from last year is flourishing and beginning to flower, and in the bare patches of earth where I planted clover in May, I am finally beginning to see tiny green sprouts. Also, I think I am going to have a flourishing crop of sunflowers. Someone said what I was after in my garden was not "lawn" but "meadow", and that's exactly right: I want a pocket meadow.) So just before nine, I went out, and three of my neighbours were standing in the street: which is odd and unusual. They were all talking to each other. Still more odd. There was an injured fox sheltering under the bush at the corner of my garden by the house: it had been in the next-door garden, and gone through to my garden when a neighbour approached it. She said that the side of its face was battered and swollen and bloody. (And my idiot kitten Wolf had gone right up to it, practically nose-to-nose: good thing it wasn't feeling good, or Wolf would have learned the hard way that foxes are not cat toys.) The SSPCA had been called and had said they would come. Well, that cut out watering my garden, since I was not about to wave a hose around near where the fox was sheltering. So I went back into the house and phoned the vet, and after some faffing about, I got to speak to him. Bob has thyroid trouble. Just like Cally did. Only, unlike Cally, she is still in reasonably good shape - so an operation may be possible. (I am wholeheartedly grateful to my skinflint decision to put off her booster shot till June, since if I'd taken her in December - which I'd decided not to on the basis that I wanted to have Wolf and Bob's booster shots due six months apart - the weight loss probably wouldn't have shown up, and she'd probably have gone undiagnosed till either the weight loss got significant enough not to miss it even through her fluffiness, or till the December checkup.) Anyway. I will be going to see the vet next week to discuss the options - operation, medication, both. I came out of the house again, to head off to work without watering the garden, and the fox was in the middle of my garden. It was a big one, and - I don't recall ever seeing a live fox in broad daylight before - looked startlingly orange-red against my green meadow. I couldn't see any injury. It stood there for less than a minute, and then was out of the garden and down the road. It encountered Bob on the way, the neighbours in the road tell me, but both cat and fox looked startled and avoided each other. So, well: I watered the garden. The SSPCA, who'd been called to deal with what the neighbour feared was a mortally injured fox, arrived while I was watering, and I told them what I'd seen: heading down the street, moving briskly. They were quite good-humoured about it, and apologetic for not getting there sooner ("the traffic", they said.) I went over the road after that to tell the neighbour whose daughter is in love with Bob about the vet's diagnosis; to emphasise that Bob will be fine - will most likely live for several years, I told her, to pass on to her daughter - but that she'll probably have to have regular medication, and she will have to be on a proper diet. I know her daughter feeds Bob treats - bits of meat, cheese for all I know: and I know her daughter adores Bob. For both reasons, I want her mother to explain properly that Bob needs to eat proper cat food only, no more filling up on scraps: and I wanted the wee girl to know that, while Bob isn't well, she's likely to be fine for several more years. And then I went to work. Both Bob and Wolf are in the house, having their daily dominance fight. Yay. Current Mood: contemplative , cat politics, garden record, worrying about my cats
April 3rd, 200810:25 pm: Long day
Wolf does this thing that I love. He sits on my chest with his backside on my right arm and his forepaws on my left, and just completely relaxed, purring like a small motor. That is, I learned to love it when he learned to position himself where I can see the screen and type. It is a good position for a writer's cat. He's doing that right now. ( Long day )Current Mood: sleepy , just my life really, wolf, work
September 27th, 200701:23 pm: My compost bin looks like a Dalek
I just thought you should all know that. Current Mood: amused 07:36 am: Garden yay!
Yesterday my compost bin arrived (the smallest size available, £6 from recyclenow. Yay. (My tiny compost pile fits in it without difficulty, and there is lots and lots of echoing space above.) Yay. This morning, I ordered a quarter-kilo of tiger worms from wormsdirect. Yay. Tiger worms are surprisingly efficient, for such little things (though considered as worms, they're pretty enormous) in turning huge piles of vegetable scraps and garden waste into piles of lovely brown compost. Furthermore, though they go dormant in cold weather, the inside of a compost pile is actually quite warm. So I am hoping that, through autumn, winter, and early spring, my worms will munch away and turn the clippings from my garden and bits of vegetables from my cooking into yummy brown compost for planting things in come late spring. Current Mood: happy , garden record
November 9th, 200403:27 pm: Sheds, sunshine, and Shoshanna
My shed roof is felted again! Thanks to ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) the_shoshanna, who helped me carry the roll of roofing felt back from B&Q, and then stood around supporting the ladder and handing me clout nails. It really was a two-person job. But my shed roof shouldn't leak any more. It was a lovely sunny day today. Unfortunately we spent most of it walking to and from B & Q, and Shoshanna has now declared she intends to lounge around like a lady of leisure the rest of the day, which is well-deserved. Tags: diy, friendship, garden record, walks
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