THE LINER IS IN PORT

It is mid morning and a phone call. A delivery man is stuck in the village - cannot get up our road past a parked VW camper van. Off I go in the car and open the back (an estate car). He is delivering the liners for the pond. They are heavy but we manage to heave them in the car and I bring them up to the house. We are ready to go - well not quite - a lot of work still to be done by the existing pond.

And so to Japanese anemones - they are flowering in abundance. R likes the white ones best even if they are not quite so floriferous as the pink. I think pink is a difficult colour when so deep - especially as there are yellow flowers nearby. And the pink one is a bit of an invasive thug.

Now on to fruit and veg. We have a few Bramley apples - left and conference pears - right but only a few. Still that is better than none.

The damsons are ripening fast as are the plums - also wasps have found them and chomped holes are appearing in some. I am longing to pull off a plum, eat its juicy flesh and say what a good boy am I!

 The rhubarb is magnificent and even the droughted fig is showing signs of recovery.

 The Alicante tomatoes - those that have not been slugged - are doing well as are the broad beans.

The pic of the courgette pliant shows no large courgettes - because I have picked and eaten them.

I have primed the squirrel trap with biscuit - much enjoyed by the wood mice who I saw carrying away their trove. The, like the small birds, are too light to set the trap off.

So out scything and raking and fatigued (or fatiguewed ) - the sun is out but it is autumnal - temp only 15C at best with Bertha dragging cold from the Arctic. The grass I am trying to cut is tangled and flattened with loads of thatch, peppered with hogweed and on a 35 degree slope. Every time I work up a sweat the flies think, Hooray! salt and water and come a-drinking. They pester me into the house.

So much to do and so little determination to do it.

Lots of plans but they are just small electric currents and stuff whizzing through the synapses of me brain ye see, nowt down on paper let alone executed in the garden. Even the mind is not willing (the flesh is weak anyway).

Yes, you got it - I am drinking a cuppa. (But the Talisker was nice last night.)