I had to get up early this morning, and set the alarm on my bedside clock-radio, and then because it was important that I didn't oversleep and I don't set the alarm very often, I set the alarm on my phone as a back-up. It was just as well I'd set something, because I did not wake up at the required time as I'd thought I might, knowing I had to go out. Instead I was woken at quarter to six by the restrained beeping of the clock-radio plus the phone playing a truly horrible jingle that is Samsung's default alarm setting. At which point I discovered I did not know how to silence the phone alarm. After some futile swiping and tapping in my befuddled state I had to flee with it to the bathroom, where I managed to activate the Snooze function, giving me five minutes to cancel the alarm before it played the awful tune again.
Sounds of earlier than usual activity brought Our Ginger upstairs, who yowled hopefully outside the bedroom door. Apologising to the Systems Administrator for the phone, I asked if I should let the cat in or if the SA might go back to sleep, and the SA said the latter. I don't know how anybody could sleep again after an awakening like that, but Our Ginger and I went downstairs and left the SA to it. There were no kitties. As I suspected, the Artists Formerly Known As Kittens go outside around dawn.
By the time I returned the SA was feeding bits of hedge rather carefully into the shredder. I volunteered to pull pieces off the tottering pile and sort them between bits small and leafy enough to shred, bits so small and sappy they would jam the shredder, and woody stems to go on the bonfire heap, and by the time the SA's back had had enough for the day we had made a respectable dent in the pile. It was really quite encouraging, as I had visions of the hedge taking from now to the end of October to finish. The side facing the drive seemed to take weeks, but of course it is easier working on the back where you don't have to worry about keeping the drive clear of rubbish for access. I hadn't expected the Systems Administrator to risk any kind of garden work at all today, or even this week, but the SA's view was that it was better to keep moving, albeit in small doses.
By way of an extra reward for the gargantuan labour of reducing the hedge, I rang Peter Nyssen and ordered some more daffodils to be tacked on to my existing order. It will be nice next spring to look over the daffodil lawn and see daffodils across its full expanse and not just the strip that hadn't been devoured by the hedge. It turned out they needed to speak to me in any event because the stock of the hyacinth I'd ordered had arrived in such a sad state that they'd sent it back, and I had to choose a substitute. I went with what they suggested, which I did grow anyway in 2015. I'd rather have had my original choice but there you go, it wasn't available.
I must remember to work out how to switch off the phone alarm before the next time I need to use it in earnest.
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