It's a bit much when I'm too tired to update the blog...
Ken
did take Kai to the open day; they enjoyed it but I think Kai preferred the walk through
Nightingale Valley that followed it. I managed to get quite a bit done while they were out, so we were all happy by the end of the day.
Today we sank the new pond.
Took us from 11am to 7pm, but that was everything, from me clearing the ground of lemon balm, soapwort and bindweed (have I mentioned how much I
hate bindweed? [growl] A pox upon it!) to Ken infilling round the edges (no, I didn't do any digging - my hands can't take the strain). We're really quite pleased with ourselves: it took a fair bit of fineagling but it's
almost completely level. The first photo is very boring and shows the bit of ground where we planned it to sit (the denuded bush in the background, if you can see it, is what's left of my bay tree after I scalped it).
The rest of the photos are fairly self-explanatory, I think. It all looks very rough right now: it'll be much prettier when it's planted up, though that may take a wee while - as you can see from the colour of the grass it's
dry here at the moment and it's not sensible to move plants under these conditions. We really need the rain that's forecast for the next few days.
I'm planning to plant my acer, juniper, pieris and the peony that's currently in the front garden behind the pond (between it and the fence), interspersed with large flattish rocks - of which we have an abundance - which will also overhang that edge slightly breaking up the outline and providing some cover for the three or five baby dragons (goldfish) I think the pool will be able to support (we sometimes have herons from the heronry at Eastwood Farm check out the garden and I don't want them eating our fish).
We want to fill the gaps with low-growing evergreen perennials: I really need to get to a garden centre and see what end-of-season-sale things they have. Maybe in a couple of weeks when the pool water's settled. I know I
do want some water hawthorn, and some marsh plants - that square hole at the end of the pond is the bucket that once held the pump for our gurgle-pond: it makes a perfect miniature bog!
The local wildlife will love it. We already have bats, a variety of birds and the occasional dragonfly visiting: we'll have to keep an eye out and see what else arrives.
Manhunter, the first Hannibal Lector film, was on TV Friday night (starring a very young William Peterson - Gil Grissom from
CSI). It was OK, I suppose, but what really hit me was the
fabulous soundtrack (only available on LP dammit...) Gorgeous
gorgeous music. I found a free mp3 of
Cry Tomorrow by one of the bands - Reds - on
this site and downloaded it; it's fantastic. Now keeping an eye out for their albums.
Lifted directly from
Tom Cruise is Nuts, a site I found quite by accident and which had me chortling...
As a law-abiding Earth immigrant or 'alien' (we prefer the term 'differently terrestrial') and a former editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry, I take deep offense at TC's forcing public consumption of his unbalanced religious diet. Not only is psychiatry (despite its current, somewhat primitive form) one of the few Earth sciences in which discoveries and theories are of interest to the Galaxial Council of Arts, Sciences and Synchronized Swimming, but so-called 'Scientologists' and other 'space cults' are little more than clubs for stalkers of universal celebrity races (Martians, Centaurians). We consider members of these so-called religions to be obsessed, chemically imbalanced and clearly in need of professional help. And in the meantime, a little advice - space travel is prohibitively expensive, so don't drink the kool-aid, as we have no intention of taking you anywhere, even if you have cut off your genitals to save on cargo space.
Galaxial Council of Arts, Sciences and Synchronized Swimming? [snerk] Love it...
Tired, and I've burned slightly across my left shoulder, upper arm, face and neck (lost track of haddock and I always forget the sunscreen). It's not bad though, and will go a lovely golden-brown colour in a day or so. It's the aching muscles in the backs of my legs that are going to give me grief tomorrow!
#
Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 10:03 pm
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