GLOOM AND PINK WATER

Let us start with the gloom - keep popping into garden and then it rains - we both struggled on manfully (and womanfully)(well, personfully), she at the brambles - which drive us mad - and me a bit of planting and stream digging.

I put in a pulmonaria and a purple sage, both bought on the market in Ulverston this morning.

R had an avid discussion with the stallholder over orange Cosmos - did they exist, were they the same as white Cosmos but orange - she had seen them on the internet.

I also put in six red Geum Mrs Bradshaw in a clump with another we already possessed - should make a blazing show in the summer.

Then out with the spade and fork and wheelbarrow digging out the overgrown banks of the stream - heavy stuff.

I cleared the dead grass from the bottom of the willow which make up the tunnel and managed not to chop away the Lonicera haliana and Clematis montana planted to eventually clamber all over the framework.

Thursday the pond sprung a leak and the frogspawn was high and dry - quick rake of mud and plug of hole and it filled up again - spawn happy.

In our kitchen R put a cutting off our

basil into an old ink bottle. After a while I noticed that the water it was rooting in had turned pink!

The new plant seems healthy and contented - though probably ready to be potted on - and there was no residual ink in the bottle. It was not a pinkwell! (Sorry!)

Explanations in an email to darbishire@doctors.org.uk.

Sorry - no prize.