OF LOGS, FIGS AND TADPOLES

In between the rain showers (and longer spells) tidying is in order.

The log pile up the garden gets smaller and the leg shed gets more full. The willow logs, no roots, sprout away - there is one in the centre of the picture.

Now, come the winter, we will have to light the woodburner and then retire to the kitchen as the living room gets too hot.

Willow is not an ideal wood for the burner - the ash burns slower and better - but it is better than nowt! (Local dialect for nothing, not a new type of tree.)

Just near the woodshed is a cylindrical pot with a fig growing in it - to restrict the roots and get more fruit. This has not worked this year and we have only two figs and a runt - the picture shows one and a runt.

I do care two figs, wait - I do care, two figs are/is? disappointing.

Though not alarming - this morning R looked out the window and TWO rabbits - very worrying. Where there are two there are twenty. It seems that despite the very cold winter most people locally are crawling around their gardens in desperation as their prize plants are nibbled. (I have just changed a mistyped 'o' to an 'i' in the last word but nobbled is as good.) Some gardeners are crawling with shotguns at the ready. PB, a friend, bagged three the other day.

Am I in favour of shooting the bunnies? This is difficult when a baby bunny looks up at you with big innocent eyes - "What me sir? As if I would." But then they do.

Somewhere in the garden lurketh the makings of a warren - but bunny warren/barren garden.

This brings me, somehow, to tadpoles, note the legs. We saw frogs in the pond last week - very yellow and green - and there are a plethora of tiny toads wandering around.

To serious matters and the severe drought in the east and south of the country.

Well, they need worry no longer.

Wimbledon fortnight is here so they will now get plenty of precipitation.

I seem to remember using an old tennis racket as a crude sieve but for what? I cannot recall.

I do recollect making cottage cheese at University from unused milk, letting it go off and then draining it through and old pair of tights, one leg inside the other.

The smell pervaded the whole wing of the Hall of Residence.

Where I got the tights from I cannot recall.

(It was before I met R.)