So, we’ve had some awesome days recently.
Today for example, I spent part of the day living in the 1940/50s. I dropped off Chester for his very belated service (which has resulted in a phone call saying ‘you need a few bits’, were ‘a few bits’ actually is ‘a few bits’. I’m terribly happy about that, and the parts he can’t get – I’ve located on the internet in just a few seconds and he says they’re not deeply urgent).
Having done this not very 1940s task, I wandered back home utilising Shanks’ Pony, stopping en-route at the gramophone shop (in this case a Charity shop who really don’t know how to treat gramophone records, more than half of them were broken) and walked out with some new gramophones including a Bill Haley record and the somewhat oddly titled ‘When you hear Fritz play twiddley bits’ (sadly not as entertainingly chipper as that version – it’s some bloke singing).
Having come home, I set to making lunch (sandwiches) whilst listening to my rather entertaining new gramophones and, of course, wearing my Moskva, in our kitchen with the Bush VHF61. Mind you, I did get our nice local cheese from the modern refrigerator, which is either not very period or a sign of incredible wealth ;)
At any rate, it was rather nice. Then we spent 40 minutes cleaning (well, I spent 40 because I only do my 20-minutes on days off, which means that I do 40 on most days off, theoretically*) before heading out to the garden. We’ve started working on our garden again with the hope of getting it ship shape (and indeed Bristol Fashion) before the summer. Kathryn cleared beds today whilst I made good on a promise to one of our neighbours to go and fell the tree that’s growing out by their foundations. I can’t cut it too near to the ground because it’s got far too big, but I hacked it off, down to about 30cm, and spent a large chunk of time denuding the ground of brambles. I also felled more of the sycamore which have sprung up all over next door (and our garden). We’re hoping to use some of the felled thinner bits like willow to make raised beds (Kathryn’s made one already, which looks pretty nifty). Not sure what to do with some of the bigger bits though, which are blatantly too big for our little shredder and not large enough to give to my mum to season and burn.
Feh, something will occur.
I dug out the roots of the bush that I cut down a few days ago – when Kathryn and I had a bit of time in the garden after our other delightful day in which we had Pancakes, went to Ashton Court for a wander and a picnic, headed to the Bristol museum to look at their No Borders exhibit, then up to Lahloo for tea and cake before heading back home for Rustic Greek Pie (oh so good) and gardening.
Anyhow, half of the bed is clear, I am wrecked as it turns out that gardening is hard work (I’d forgotten), half of the bed still has the massive variegated bush which needs to come down and then be dug out, and the whole thing needs *lots* of compost dug in, but once that’s all done, we should have a home for our peas.
Other jobs we need to do are building the greenshed, dealing with last years pile of clippings, digging out and prepping more beds, and building the deck from pallets. The few days of delightful sun, and the quiet crisp evening have reminded me just how much I love being outside, and understanding that we’re stuck here for at least another year, most likely, means that we ought to have a garden we enjoy.
I did just look at creating an adobe pizza oven. Apparently you need to dig a 5 foot deep, 3 foot wide hole and fill it with gravel as the base. This seems… more work than I was intending. We may just skip that for a while. I’m assuming this is to act as some kind of air-flow thing, although thinking back, I think it had a solid base of adobe. Meh, I dunno. Need to look more.
* We’re trying this – well, a subtly modified version of it, because we both work shifts and so saying ‘On tuesdays I’ll spent 20 minutes cleaning the bathroom’ doesn’t work… Shift work really does screw with lots of things.
