Danny the Refugee Gardener is getting into his stride. We know he feels at home because when he turned up on Friday, we found after he had gone that he had put a neatly-lettered plaque on the shed door. It says, ‘Danny W****n, Gardener, Meg D*******n, Holder of the Blue Riband Biscuit’. He has also […]
I spent much of today clipping box hedges, a slow and fiddly job and worth doing right because it looks so wonderful if you do. However, at mai taime of laife, it doesn’t half do in your lower back. I am moving cautiously about this evening, somewhat as if I was practising Tai Chi, and […]
The Met Office was good enough to tell us we had about thirty hours off from the deluge. It’ll start again tomorrow afternoon, apparently. So this was an Extreme, or at least, Emergency Gardening day, trying to claw out some of the awful mess which has accumulated in this summer of endless rain. As […]
It has been raining so much it seems unnatural. There has been flooding in Macduff, just a few miles along from us on the coast, because there is so much water soaking through the saturated hills that the drains can’t cope. Fortunately we have both been busy enough that we would in any case […]
When I got back from a moderately tedious meeting at the University, on what had turned out to be a golden afternoon after a grey and surly few days, Dr Biswell suggested we take the dog to the disused swimming-pool at Tarlair. A suggestion to be accepted with alacrity: off we went. The approach to […]
The area by the back door which has been known for a while as the Toys’ Hospital has had a makeover. The utlity room now has a nicely plastered exterior rather than rotting pebbledash — even without its final coat of colour it looks pleasant. There is new gravel. And recently, as detailed in a […]