Well, that's three stumps out. The Hebe 'Great Orme', a Corokia and a Pittosporum. They were all dead, and had been since last winter, which made the job much easier. I watch with some incredulity when in Gardeners' World they make it look so simple to dig out the rootballs of large shrubs which are still alive. Like on Blue Peter, with their 'Here's one I made before the programme', a trench has already been dug around the plant. Rachel and the head gardener of whatever garden they are visiting that week give it one heave, and it plops out of the hole. There is no clue to the blood, sweat, tears, skinned knuckles, bruised knees, wrenched backs and cursing that went into digging that trench, not to mention the impossible-to-get at taproot in the very centre of the rootball, which prevents you from tipping the thing more than 10cm either way, and doesn't give you a big enough gap to reach in and cut the final root.
I had the roots of a couple of self-sown roses out while I was at it. Hips make splendid food for wild birds, as you can tell by the abandon with which rose seedlings spring up all over the garden. I have left a few, where they aren't in the way, but these were growing up into other shrubs.
The other project of the day was to take a photograph of ourselves. This is a rare event, and was only done by special request. I am camera shy, so much so that if I had disappeared before this afternoon's photographic session, the only portrait photographs of me the Systems Administrator would have had to give to the police would have been ten years old. I think we have a couple somewhere of me wearing a bee suit, which would not be any use since I am indistinguishable from all the other beekeepers, and one or two of me leading a group of people around the garden, taken only about three years ago. They don't look as though they want to be led, and I look worried. I don't really like taking photographs either, and the SA isn't keen on being snapped, so our pictures of the SA are about equally few and as out of date.
The need for a photograph came about because we have been asked to a wedding, and the request to RSVP included the instructions that we must send pictures of ourselves, and name our favourite dance music. I suppose that to the Facebook generation, who have cameras on their phones and document their lives on-line, the idea that their middle aged relatives might not possess any pictures of themselves would not even occur. It would seem as unlikely as that we lived without electricity, and communicated with the outside world by letters written with a quill pen.
As officer in charge of replying to invitations, the need to get hold of a photo and reply to the wedding invitation had been praying on my mind, but not being photographically minded, the last time we had friends around we completely forgot to ask whether they minded taking a quick snap. Since then I have been reminding (or nagging, depending on your point of view) the SA about it, and we had got as far as the SA charging a camera up. Then the SA had a cold, and looked like death barely warmed up, so the project was deferred again. Anyway, today was the day. The SA read up on how the camera timer worked and found a tripod in the spare bedroom wardrobe and I began to get quite excited that this was all very high tech, then the SA could not find the bit that is supposed to fit on top of the tripod to hold the camera, so we had to balance it on a wall and hope it wouldn't blow off. Today was a grey day, and it took a lot of manipulation on photoshop to get us looking like two visible human beings, and not amorphous dark blobs.
They didn't tell us what they wanted the photos for, so we wimped out and are standing close together smiling and looking faintly bashful, like two people unaccustomed to being photographed. I thought it might have been fun to take inspiration from art, and lie head to head on the ground as if it were a record sleeve, or stand side by side bolt upright and looking very serious like Gilbert and George, or hold up bits of cardboard under our chins with our names on, but we have stayed with conventional sheepish grins. It's probably safer.
They haven't a hope with the favourite dance music. The SA has never, ever been seen on the dance floor in the thirty-one years we have known each other, and I should be amazed if the habits of a lifetime were broken now, even for our nephew's wedding.
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