The bad news is, the rabbits are on the loose in the meadow. There are an increasing number of droppings in the turf. The good news is, they have not re-excavated the large scrape they had started, which I filled in the other day, using up some old compost and half of a bucket of earth left over from making planting holes in the gravel. The scrape was an example of how a stitch in time would have saved nine. It started off as a small hole in the ground, perhaps made originally by a mouse, which we noticed while mowing the long grass at the summer's end a couple of years ago when wasps began to come out of it. Wasps build nests out of paper, which is why you may see them rasping away on your wooden shed or table, but they do not excavate holes, so far as I know.
Something, presumably badgers, then dug out whatever was living in the hole after the wasps had finished with it. I went up there one day, and there was an open hole, rather smaller than a bucket. I kept meaning to fill the hole in, but never got round to it over the winter, as we weren't cutting the grass. Then, suddenly, something used the hole as a starting point to dig diagonally down and sideways. I had fits of horror that it might be badgers, before calming down and looking more analytically at the spoil. While the digger had made a great mess kicking orange sand and stones out over the grass, the volume of material was not great enough for the hole to go any distance. I scraped as much of the earth back in as I could, salvaged the stones for use elsewhere, and levelled it off with spare soil and compost, crossing my fingers that whatever it was would take the hint. It did, and thank goodness for that.
I began to clear the enormous mound of rampant white stemmed bramble stems that I'd built, carting them up to the bonfire area, and chopping them down into shorter lengths when I got there, so that the Systems Administrator would be able to put them on the bonfire without accidentally waving a fifteen foot burning brand about. The SA's initial reaction to the heap had been one of almost pure panic, demanding to know what on earth it was, where it had come from, and how we were supposed to get it to the bonfire, since most of the individual stems were twice the length of the trailer. I promised in my best soothing and reassuring voice that I would deal with it.
Luckily, or perhaps presciently, I had stacked the stems in bundles lined up with each other, so it was relatively straightforward to scoop them up into large armfuls and carry them to the bonfire, where I chopped them into between two and four pieces and threw them into a nice, manageable pile ready for incineration. I sawed up some of the stack of light branches outside the workshop with my bow saw as well, while I was at it, until I had a wheelbarrow full of firewood. The bow saw is so good. It should be written in giant capital letters in all general and introductory texts on gardening, Do Not Tolerate Blunt Cutting Instruments. Bow saws, pruning saws, buy a good one and be prepared to replace the blade regularly, each time you realise it is not chewing its way through wood so quickly as it used to. The time I have wasted in my life trying to cut branches out of shrubs with a saw which was essentially blunt.
The Systems Administrator meanwhile, in a nice piece of role reversal, volunteered to do a really thorough vacuum. The vacuum cleaner had to be emptied seven times, so great was the volume of cat fur, and the SA is beginning to think that we need a new one, with a larger capacity, better suction, and filters that don't clog up so readily, not to mention not having a stupid internal fluff box stuck together with gaffer tape. Alleluia. I have already ordered a new kettle from John Lewis.
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