Move over for the mower

An old soldier on sentry duty, long since past his prime, no longer on active service, but still standing tall and to attention, Norman’s old freezer has been guarding the garage since we arrived.  It did contain a couple of ancient Christmas puddings (now no more than dust and nuts) and an awful lot of old plugs and wires, but it has not been working for many a long year.

There is no electricity in the garage now.  It was probably linked to the mains from the big house and when he sold up it was easier to cut the electricity than rewire to our house.  That was in 1983 so our best guess is that the freezer – a Bejam one, just like the very first one my parents had – has been idle for nearly three decades.

Our brand-new-used mower arrived today.  I thought when I called to check on the progress of the repairs that I was being spun a bit of a yarn “we’re expecting the parts today, love… or tomorrow”.  But an hour or so later he called me back.  The mower was ready.  Could they deliver it (though it’s too wet for them to demonstrate it today).

And thus today the freezer was unceremoniously dumped.  After all those years waiting loyally to see active service once again, it was loaded into the back of the Subaru and bundled off to the tip, its place to be taken by a younger warrior not reliant on electricity for its fuel and rather better at cutting grass.

April showers

The weather’s turned.  It always happens at this time of year.  One sunny day and everyone takes their clothes off: builders shed layers and Oriana asks me why they don’t have their clothes on, legs in shades of translucent purple pop out from all-to-short skirts like uncooked drumsticks, and the more overweight the women, the more likely they seem to be to go sleeveless, strapless, backless.  And it’s still only March.

Then the next day it rains, like today, and everyone covers up again and bemoans the passing of the summer.  And it’s still only March.

As it’s so lovely now though doors are being left open more often, children fly into the garden for a quick swing before school or fling down their school bags to run into the garden rather than come home.  The house has a bit of a fresh-air chill about it.

And then the rain comes and it beats down on the roof and it feels like we’re camping.  The rain is so close.  It really does feel as though we’re under canvas or just hiding in some wooden shack that’s barely protecting us from monsoon rains.  I love the feeling that you are snugly protected from the elements, but it does make me wonder about the insulation on the roof that we hear the rain quite so clearly.

Is she Izzy

Meet the newest member of our household.

Izzy, if that is to be her name, is Oriana’s birthday present from Granny and Grandpa.  She was born on 6 March so is still too young to leave her mum, but Oriana got to choose her on her birthday.

We hope that her early throttling will not leave her traumatised for life and that her presence will go some way towards discouraging the creatures that scrabble round our loft each night.

Slowly but surely

A week ago lots of nursery mums and kids came to play and one mum told me I should definitely cut back the monstrous bush that was rather a gloomy presence in the middle of the garden.  So I began…

The bush is privet-like and dense at the surface so all I could do was to clip away from the outside pruning ever more until eventually I could reach further and further towards the inside and finally climb into the midst of it all to start hacking from the many roots that the bush had put down.

This (pic 3) was how it looked in the winter.

And this is how it looked part way through the hacking.

And this is what we’ve been doing with what I remove.

  

Slowly but surely, distinct trees are beginning to appear.  The Indian bean tree, one with a very black smooth trunk that is just budding, a lilac, an evergreen and some purply-stemmed flower that Oriana thinks - wrongly - must be rhubarb.

And to cheer me up in the middle of all the destruction, this is the spring just edging its way into our garden.

Historic homes

Estate agents promote “original Victorian features” above the modern amenities that actually make the house they’re flogging desirable.  Home owners brag “the oldest part of the house is Elizabethan, of course.”  My in-laws even pay additional property tax for the privilege of owning a house listed as historic, as if the rickety plumbing, ancient fittings and draughty windows weren’t enough to contend with.

I wonder if spiders are the same.  Do the spiders lurking in the shadows of our ceiling, spinning webs across the stonework of our walls tell proudly how the web’s been in the family for 72 generations and lay their eggs in the crib spun by a great, great grandmother of yore? 

If they do, then I am sorry.

I have just been donated a couple of extension poles (been in the family for two generations, don’t you know) that with a feather duster slotted on the end can reach even our highest ceilings.  The resulting duster is unwieldy and the synthetic feathers catch on the stonework.  I cannot wind up the spiders’ silk with a deft flick of the wrist like the candyfloss man spinning sugar.  I’m rather more like the incompetent angler momentarily snagged on weeds before my rod frees itself showering all around as it flicks through the air.  The webs when they finally release their 30-year grip are heavy and black.  But it works.

To say that we are now free of webs would either be lying or the clearest indication yet that the spiders’ silk is not getting finer any more than the print on the Calpol is getting smaller, but that I’m long overdue a trip to the optician.  But the ceilings do look better.  It no longer feels quite so like Miss Havisham’s.

How much more beautiful the mustard yellow ceiling is now that we can see it in all it’s unwebbed glory.

Happy birthday to me

For my birthday I asked not for clothes, which I always need, or books, which I always love, but for a ride-on mower.  Not the most romantic of gifts, but you cannot get romance by request and you cannot get romance from a man working on a bid that’s keeping him preoccupied night and day for weeks on end.

And you cannot get a ride-on mower on a tight budget.  But birthdays fall outside budgets, sort of. 

I’m not sure if we can fully justify a ride-on mower.  It’s true we have a lot of land, but some of it’s paved, some of it’s wooded and some of it’s orchard so perhaps doesn’t need such regular trimming as a real lawn.  But ignoring all that, there’s still a huge garden (big enough to hold the marquee for the village ball in years gone by) and our little electric mower with the lead slightly shorter than the one on the vacuum cleaner was barely going to reach from the plug to the grass, let alone to the end of the lawn and round all the trees.

I have lived many summers with Ian, and for several of them we’ve had a lawn, and for one we’ve even had quite a substantial lawn, but the terrible truth about Ian is that he doesn’t like mowing.  He doesn’t see that the grass needs cutting till it’s at least a week overdue.  This means that by the time he considers mowing, someone else invariably has already given up hope that he’ll ever do the job and has done it for him.  And he has no compunction about letting others do the work – not even the site of his ancient father-in-law sweating up and down the lawn will drag him from his coffee if, in his opinion, the grass is not yet long enough, not yet knee high.

So, if I am to mow the lawn, then I would like to have a mower fit for the job.  I want a tractor mower.  And more importantly, I know that Ian secretly likes things with wheels – bikes, cars, motorbikes, go-karts.  And if I have a ride-on mower, then Ian will want to ride it.  And if I am right, my real present will be that I never have to use my present at all.  Now that would be a great birthday.

Ian has been browsing Ebay for mowers for a month now.  I don’t have his patience.  I don’t want to wait all summer for a tractor mower at the right price.  I don’t want to get a bargain in Inverness and then pay an arm and a leg to ship it here.  And I don’t want a mower as temperamental as the car or which like the vacuum needs you to spend ¼ hour unjamming the tubes at the end of every use. 

To this end, I did something I rarely do: I dragged Ian shopping.  We went mower shopping.  There was one reconditioned mower.  It wasn’t the type Ian wanted.  We discussed it over pizza.  We bought the mower.  It’ll be delivered on Wednesday, and demonstrated.  If it doesn’t suit the lawn, he’ll probably take it back. 

He even threw an axe in for good measure.

Hooray.  Happy birthday.

Armed and dangerous

I think I understand how undercover agents go bad.  Not how they become turncoats, but how they become obsessed by the target and take the law into their own hands.  In all the best crime novels and films where a drug cartel is unravelled or a terrorist cell unearthed, it is tidy work.  Every last member of the gang is identified, caught, destroyed.  Even the sleepy supporters and reluctant but silent spouses are identified and brought to book for their crimes of indifference.

But in the real world crime is a messy business.  However many clues are gathered on the surface as to the hidden connections of the gang, there will be links and connections that we cannot see, cannot find.  They can be tightly bound together, but in unexpected ways, invisible and impregnable.  Yesterday I decided my standard-issue equipment was not up to the fight.  As a friend of Mum’s used to say, if you have a problem, throw money at it.  I have thrown money at the problem and am now armed and ready for the fight.

I bought obscenely expensive gardening gloves.  (Ian, I trust you are not reading this.)  I bought them for the girls too - not the expensive ones, but gardening gloves all the same: bright green for Ruth and for Oriana, of course, bright pink.

They are wonderful.  They go half way up my arm, are so soft I could play the piano in them (if I’d ever been able to play in the first place, though for the money you’d expect them to play for you) and they are tough.  I can grab brambles, yank ivy tendrils and most importantly of all, tackle my garden enemies and at the end of the day my hands are as soft as they always were, as soft as an old scouring pad.

So now I can dig down for my nettles, hunt down the enemy.  I can fumble about till I get to the root of the problem, wriggle with my trusty new fork and up come the most enormous tubers, the heart of the enemy.  Spotting the first tender shoot, I can follow it back through the wilds of forlorn flower beds and unmown lawn till I reach the hub, the Godfather, then back out to all the other branches of the family, picking up cousins in the snowdrops and uncles in the celandine, in-laws in the lawn and disgruntled teenagers lurking in the dead leaves.  I can get the whole lot. 

I’m loving it.  I want to be a rogue agent, fighting the nettles before they surface, catch them while they’re still sleepers, drag them from their beds.  I don’t want to play by the rules.