job done

I finished cutting the back of the hedge.  Cue fanfares of trumpets, streamers, fireworks, and a vintage biplane chugging across the sky pulling a banner proclaiming She Has Finished Cutting The Back Of The Hedge.  It might need a little tweaking and tidying here and there once we've cleared the great piles of prunings out of the way and I can get a proper look at it, but it is essentially Done.  It took me the best part of three weeks to do the other side of it last autumn, and I was braced for the back to take at least half as long as that.  I haven't cut into it so hard, since losing a couple of feet of the daffodil lawn isn't the same as losing two feet of the drive and being unable to ever receive another delivery of heating oil, so it was less of a fiddle.  It looks bad, but not nearly as bad as the front did by the time I'd finished.  Fingers crossed it survives.

I found three old bird nests while I was working, and was frequently supervised by a rather peeved looking robin.  First of all we chopped down his singing post on top of the Cryptomeria japonica, and now I've massacred his hedge.  When the revolution comes robins will receive the respect they deserve.

After lunch I returned to clearing brambles out of the end of the wood.  My lilies from Hyde arrived this morning, so I need to get on and plant them tomorrow.  I thought I might get to the end of the brambles as well, but that was pushing my gardener's eternal optimism too far.  By five it was getting to that stage of the darkness before dusk where I'm liable to end up poking myself in the eye on a cut stem I didn't see in time, so I gave up for the day before that could happen with quite a few clumps of brambles still to go.  Our Ginger, who had been sitting waiting for things to come out, came in with me.  I don't think he really does the wood when he's by himself.  If so it's all to the good.  He is very fox coloured, and I wouldn't like a passing rabbiter to take a shot at him.

Now I am back on chef duties.  I volunteered, since the Systems Administrator cooked all last week and has now got a cold.  Tonight is supposed to be a butter bean bake from Rose Elliot's Bean Book, but I have been caught out by how long celery takes to cook, not for the first time.  Her instructions assume you soaked dry beans, and need to boil them for ages, but Waitrose only had tinned.  I checked the cooking time on the side of the tin and saw that they only needed heating for five minutes, without focusing on the fact that even if the beans didn't need cooking for ages, the celery did.  I have been caught out by celery before, it's an awkward customer.  Fortunately I thought to check whether the bean filling was cooked just before doling it into the greased casserole dish and sprinkling the cheese and breadcrumb topping over it, so it is still bubbling away in its saucepan.  I shall be irritated if the beans disintegrate before the wretched celery is done.

While we were on holiday we ate ready meals some evenings.  When you are used to cooking from scratch it is actually a massive treat just to stick a prefab mushroom and ham pasta bake in the oven without guilt.  We did rather feel we'd done pasta by the end of the week, mind you, and I have put the plan to make my own egg lasagne sheets on hold for now.  We don't possess a pasta rolling machine, but after all that hedge trimming and pick axing I feel I'll be up to rolling it out by hand, no problem.