still hedge cutting

Forget those helpful newspaper and magazine columns on 'the ten minute gardener', let alone the ninety second one.  Cutting the eleagnus hedge is starting to resemble the labours of Sisyphus.  I am now within six feet (or maybe eight) of the end at ground level, but still have the high level cut to do with the Henchman along the middle section.  I might get a crack at that on Sunday when there won't be any post or deliveries to disturb me while I've got the scaffolding set up in the drive, if the forecast is correct and it's a dry day.  Though I wouldn't bank on the forecast.  The settled warm, dry spell is coming to an end, and the forecasters don't really know.

The good news is that I have spotted the lost lid of the dustbin deep within the hedge, which disappeared in the extreme gale months ago.  I thought then that it must be in the garden somewhere, given the direction the wind was blowing from that night, and kept expecting to find it in one of the borders or tucked behind a shed, but as the weeks passed and it didn't show up, I decided it must have bowled away across the fields and resigned myself to its loss.  The local foxes didn't seem to bother taking bags out of the dustbin, so the main people to suffer from the lack of a dustbin lid were the dustmen when water collected in the bin after rain.  I reckon that wriggling flat on my stomach (and being very careful not to poke myself in the eye) I should be able to retrieve it.

The leaf burner smouldered away all morning without creating too much smoke, customised by the addition of a chimney in the form of piece of stove pipe left over from revamping the blue summerhouse.  The Systems Administrator assures me that when you send hot air through a confined tube a form of the Venturi effect comes into play and speeds the air flow up, and that this is why the small traction engines I've seen at steam rallies often have long vertical exhaust pipes.  It is true I have seen such pipes on many small engines, but I still don't understand the Venturi effect.  My school physics teacher cited it as the reason why aerofoils work and aeroplanes fly, and I didn't believe it then either, even though I had to accept the evidence of my eyes that planes do fly.

The chickens did not come out for a run this afternoon.  They were disappointed, I could tell by the noise they were making, but yesterday when I released them they would not stay in the front garden, foraging in the turning circle or scratching around in the bed by the entrance, but set off with great determination down to the bottom lawn.  I had to follow them, abandoning the hedge and taking my trowel to do some unscheduled weeding, and I didn't want to have to do it again. The hedge is beginning to weigh heavily on my mind.  When Gertrude Stein asked Alice B. Toklas what she saw when she closed her eyes, Alice B. Toklas firmly answered 'Weeds'.  I am in danger of seeing Eleagnus x ebbingei.  It is time to get to the end of that hedge so that I can forget about it, apart from waiting to see whether it dies or not.