Do you dig it?

Oh, I do, I do. Over the last week it seems like I’ve done nothing else and the spade has become an instrument of torture for me. Never one to do things by half, I’ve been digging on three fronts… the allotment front plot one third down the second side, the back plot where I’ve decided to put my fruit cage/polytunnel, and finally one of the borders in our back garden!

Fortunately I finished the garden border after a superhuman seven and a half hour effort yesterday. Now ready to put in the £80 of perennial plants we’ve bought.

The part of the fruit cage area on the plot that I’m digging at present is a nightmare… full of couch grass roots. Best I can do is to turn it over, take out what roots I can see and leave the rest for another dig when the frost breaks up the earth. Yes, believe it or not I’m praying for some more hard frosts!

Yesterday’s start on the digging was delayed by a quick trip to the Comet store in Huntingdon. After two weeks I’ve still not heard from Hephers (who are waiting for an answer from Sony) on whether I can record footage from my Samsung U10 HD camcorder onto the Sony DVD recorder. Even called in Friday and left a message for Simon to ring me… still waiting. So got to assume they’re not that bothered.

In the past I’ve never really warmed to Comet, ever since I popped to the nearby Focus store and was subjected to blaring pop music to announce the fact that Comets had a promotion on. But the assistant Will couldn’t have been more helpful yesterday, even showing me the difference in viewing between 50mhz and 100mhz televisions. Came away saying I’ll have a look at the on-line reviews and be back to him. Finally settled on a Panasonic 42" plasma TV with a Panasonic DVD HD recorder. Just got to return and test my camcorder will record, and haggle down the £100 difference in price on the recorder between their web page and the store price.

Significant annual milestone reached this week… broke out the shorts and revealed the kneecaps. Only exposed in the house during the evening so far… can’t be too racy!

Beth and family returned from a hectic five days in Disneyland Paris. Think Paige wore her Minnie Mouse outfit throughout the trip, including on the way there. Passersby had no doubt where she was heading! And Connor, having fixated about the Eiffel Tower for weeks, got so excited he threw up when he got to the top. Always being told I get the grandchildren too excited but I love playing with them. Was playing Paige air hockey last weekend. When she scored a goal I said ‘Oh b…’ but before I could complete the word ‘blast’ five year old Paige looked me in the eyes and said ‘Were you going to say bugger?’

Had a productive allotment association meeting on Monday in preparation for our Build for Wildlife day on Sunday 16-May. Lots of good ideas about bird boxes and things to encourage beneficial bugs.

And the book? Well, managed to get a page written on Friday (hence this posting is late). Will probably be expanded out to four pages once I get all literary but at least it’s a start.

There’s a new Blogger template designer out with some interesting blog designs. I’ll be doing a lot of fiddling over the next week and the blog might look a bit different as a result.