It's Monday

Oh boy was it quiet at Psalter Lane yesterday. Four queries. Yup, that’s FOUR queries for me from 1-8. You really wonder why they bother. I realise that I need to be there to deal with emergencies, complications and other matters that it’s not fair to expect the counter staff to deal with, but really. Closed is what it should be, on Sundays. On the other hand, I take home around £120 for a Sunday. If they want to pay me huge amounts of money to sit about for 7 hours, I suppose that’s fine by me.

The Builder, in the meantime, had dug and laid the winding path by the side border. And very, very pretty it looks too.

Today dawned a very strange red colour, which transmuted into a very odd golden colour. We assumed this meant there would be rain, as there was until around half nine or so when we took ourselves off to B&Q for some trellis and some ericaceous soil for the Japanese Maple. (I was on the evening duty, lest you think I had actually taken some time off!) I really don’t know why I keep going to B&Q; it is enormously frustrating. They did have trellising, but no ericaceous soil at all. That in itself is not frustrating (although they also didn’t have solar powered garden lights and I *really* want some of those, but I think that’s a garden centre job). But I am absolutely convinced that if you are a laddie, or perhaps even a lassie, under about 30 and you want to work for B&Q you must take an intelligence test – and fail it dramatically. The boys who work there are oh-so, oh-so DIM! Took nearly six weeks just to pay for the trellises. Though I suppose that might be a very, very slight exaggeration. Sigh!

So. Off we trundled in our search for ericaceous soil. I really want to plant the Japanese Maple in the garden. It hasn’t ever been happy in its pot and this is a last ditch effort to save it. I am clearly not going to replace all the soil in the whole garden bed with this soil, but I thought I’d put some in the planting hole, just for it to be getting on with. They don’t sell it at Wickes (or even have a garden centre; and can anyone explain to me why I always but always want to call it Mitre 10?), nor at Focus. Right. Getting fed up of trundling around the DIY stores on my morning off. Going home for a cup of tea. And on the way I remembered the garden centre at the top of Furnace Hillock Lane (isn’t that a fab name?) which doesn’t appear to sell plants but does sell crafts and potting mixes and snakes and things. Off we went, passing a local protest outside the coal yard against some sort of in-vessel composting facility. They’ve been protesting about this for months. I first noticed when a proliferation of signs appeared in people’s gardens proclaiming “No! Not this time in Grassmoor” Or Churchside, or wherever. Not that this was particularly meaningful, since at no point did it indicate what it was they didn’t want. Took me ages to find out – and even then I wasn’t sure what an in-vessel composting facility was. And now I do know, I’m not sure quite why they’re objecting to it. Can’t be much worse than the coal depot, surely?

Anyway. Off we went to the Van Gemeren garden centre, where we found a small packet of ericaceous soil. Hooray. So we paused and looked at the snakes (some rather fetching pink corn snakes, some sleepy pythons and two stripy things dashing about in their vivarium, amongst other things). There were some very furry tarantulas too. And yes, I do know that tarantulas are not snakes. In another area there were some very dozy looking chinchillas and some tiny hamsters and a very intelligent looking rat. There are some plants at this here garden centre – but they’re outside behind a locked glass door. We pootled about in the craft section and then went home for that cup of tea.

Then I planted up the new garden bed (and discovered that there wasn’t actually a useable drainage hole in the Japanese Maple’s pot – no wonder it wasn’t happy, all water-logged around its feet), meandered about in the garden, had a shower and got changed, had some lunch and came into work, leaving The Builder to build a step down from the eventual patio down into the kitchen garden. It’s quite a drop on the right hand side and unless my knee is working at better than complete capacity, I struggle a bit to get down. The single brick I’ve been using as a stepping stone probably isn’t ideal. Or even particularly safe, I guess!

Rebecca rang up last evening. (The Builder’s 8 year old granddaughter – do pay attention at the back!) She has some very exciting news :-)