Grey again today. Very windy too. I had an early start again so got to see the birds making their way down the coast to wherever it is they go. This morning, instead of keeping a constant height they were going up and down as if they were on a rollercoaster as they flew through the turbulent air.
As I sat outside at the break of day clutching my mug of tea I thought it would be a good drying day but the clouds rolled in giving the occasional shower. Getting things dry at the moment is a bit of a problem. Putting stuff on the line on the days when it isn't raining gets them nearly dry which is fine for the sheets as I like to iron them anyway. The rest goes on airing racks in the utility room but the well insulated house is keeping a cosy 20C/68F without the heating being on. That isn't quite enough to get things really dry so I have to run the iron over them to drive out the majority of the damp and then hang them up on the rack. On the other hand at least we aren't having to use the boiler to keep the house warm. Worst comes to the worst I can run the damp stuff down to the launderette and use the dryers there.
Having done all my regular jobs before breakfast I was able to head straight out to the garden after we'd eaten. I tried to get as much as I can into bags to take to the dump after riding on Friday. When I cleared one of the veg plots where I had planted butternut squash, spaghetti squash and a courgette the total crop was one tiny 2"? and more than 40 potatoes. These had appeared from the potatoes I had overlooked when I dug up the minimal crop last year. Potatoes have also sprung up between the tomato plants in the other bed but there are still tomatoes on the sprawling plants so it will be a little while before I dig that bed over.
Down by the steps in the front garden I gave the hypericum a serious trim. I've left some of the stems tall enough to cover next door's side wall, cut down the other stems so they will shoot up about 1m next year and taken out about a third of the bush from the front to avoid getting hit in the face by wet stems when we go up the steps.
On the other side I took out another hypericum and an elder stump and used one of the last blocks to tidy up the low wall. I'll finish it off by cementing on the coping stones over the top. All I've got left are a 6" piece of coping stone, two full blocks and five half blocks. I wonder what I can do with those?
To stop myself carrying on gardening and overdoing things I threw all my work trousers in the washing machine. They're blowing in the wind at the moment and I'll try not to forget to bring them in before I go off to choir.
(Post title - JRR Tolkien.)
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