mud

The Systems Adminsistrator has gone to London to meet up with former colleagues for drinks and a potential curry, leaving me to supervise chicken exercise time.  The rooster is a modest soul who is in bed by six, even on nice evenings, but one of the young hens is always determined to extract every scrap of enjoyment from her period of liberty, and is still rootling around among the dahlias.  The wi-fi works sitting in the Italian garden in front of the house, so long as I don't position my body between the house and the lap-top.

I spent the rest of the day, until it was time to release the chickens, weeding the gunnera bed.  This is going to be a slow one.  I have a piece of board to rest my kneeling mat on, to spread my weight, and haven't actually knelt in the mud so far, but it is impossible to dislodge most of it from the roots I pull up, and the bags of stuff to go the the dump have got a lot of soil in them.  Once the site is cleared I think I'd better hold off planting for a while, to give the remaining roots a chance to resprout so that I can hit them with glyphosate, and then I need some rampant competitive groundcover for boggy places.  I've got one Darmera, bought from work, which is looking very sorry for itself in its black plastic pot and needs to go out soonish, but I don't want too many thistles and things shooting up all around it.  I'm amazed at how many worms I've dug up in the wettest patches.  I didn't think worms were adapted to aquatic conditions.

A large dumpy bag of gravel is due to arrive tomorrow.  The gravel is thin in so many places I could easily use more than one bag, but I am trying to learn from the builders' sand experience and not order more at once than I can spread fairly quickly.  I forget who is was that said that true stupidity lay in making the same mistake repeatedly.

In the Italian garden the Crinum x powellii is blooming.  It lives in a fairly large pot, and spends the winter in the greenhouse, where it's kept on the dry side while dormant.  The leaves come back in the spring from a huge elongated bulb, that only wants to be half-buried, and the flowers are trumpet shaped like a lily, held in a tuft on top of a stout stalk.  Last year I think it threw up a second stalk, and the bulb is starting to form offsets.  The flowers are pale pink.  I do have a white one as well, but that has only made a small and weedy plant, and has not actually flowered yet (so it might not even be white).

Addendum  The other ginger, the one with a white tip to its tail, has just strolled past, looking very casual.  Our ginger has gone to look at its departing back with an air that said that of course he could take the other ginger on if he wanted to, but fortunately without starting anything.  I've told him, no more septic bites.  The feline medical budget is all spent for this year.