Monday 22nd February 2016

Sunday

One thing that was running through my mind all day was the Young Ones joke "do you dig graves?"

Now, let me be as honest and upfront I can be about this, but we are not two of the most practical people when it comes to practical things, like DIY and the suchlike. So when we had decided to embark on some garden re-designing, there was going to be trouble. And blisters.

What with the very late bedtime on Saturday, very nearly 11!, we slept in until half seven on Sunday, even Mulder had given up on trying to rouse us and had gone back to sleep. But the boiler firing up, pumping lovely hot water round the house did. OK, up and attem.

We feed the cats, make coffee and feed ourselves. We are very domesticated after all. I begin to write the 1500th blog, and Jools does beading upstairs, whilst I play the Manic Street Preachers CD we bought during the week. At 11 she thought we do some digging.

The idea of wildlife pools goes back to the dim and misty start of last year, possibly even further than that. We had talked about it, agreed and disagreed on details and it kinda got put off. The I saw some shots from fields on Flickr of frogspawn, and we really had to get down and do something. Jools had bought two very large rubber buckets, bucket is the wrong word really, but they are large, shallow and if half buried in the ground could be an easy small pool.

We had agreed that we would put one in the garden, but it became clear what we had agreed differed greatly, so Jools came up with a compromise; we would do one each, to how we thought they should be. She went to bury hers in the bed behind the raspberries, and I went to put mine beside the apple trees and gooseberries. Only I have to do some work on mine, because yours truly decided that it should be cut at a shallow angle all round then buried on the huh so to allow frogs and other creepy crawlies in and out. The only problem with this was that it meant me wielding a knife. A very sharp knife.

I marked out the cut with insulation tape, then got the knife out and began to cut. All was going well, too well, and I began to think and work at the same time. Next thing I had nicked my thumb and there was blood everywhere. Jools looked at me and carried on digging. I finished the cutting, and it looked almost OK. Now, well after lunch it was time for me to get digging.

I dug a hole the same size as the bucket, then began to remove soil, only there was a bloody great hedge root right in the way. OK, turn the bucket around, remove some more soil, try the bucket, remove some more soil. And so on for half an hour until, it was in. And looked like a large bucket half buried in the lawn. Great, frogs will love it I thought.

We lined each bucket with stones then filled them up with water; the job done.

Phew. That called for a cuppa.

I tried to listen to the football, heck, even watch it on TV, but as most teams fielded half reserve squads, my attitude was if they could not take it seriously, neither would I. I cooked dinner instead; roast beef and all the trimmings, including Yorkshire puddings and stringless beans, which were very nice indeed. In fact, it were all great, just what we wanted, lots of lovely fresh veg and roast beef.

And that was your weekend. Or ours anyway. We listened to more radio, did stuff on computer, and the evening just trailed away until we gave up and went to bed at half nine. Phew, rock and roll.