DUNCAN IN WONDERLAND?

Put my arm into a Rabbit Hole right by the house and in it went up to the elbow. 

So I blocked it up.

So the rabbit redug it.

So I blocked it up with a big stone.

So the rabbit dug around it.

Now I am not averse to a little rabbit (in a casserole) but this is getting annoying.

So I blocked it again and laid some wire netting over the top - I mean it is digging up my lilies!

Now we will see.

There are rabbits (and squirrels) everywhere this spring.

And, to be more annoying, many of the lovely daffs on the banking are blind - have no flowers. 

I suspect this is due to the long hot dry summer last year - I hope. If the weather is thew same this year (some hope) then they will need watering.

We have been having the usual antisocial bonfires with lots of thick smoke. You go out, think Ah! the wind is blowing up the field, light the fire and then the wind turns and blows the smoke straight at the neighbours. I also burned the long grass wherein I hoped my signet ring might lurk but nothing there - shucks!

In the debrambled far wood I have been extracting rusty metal and glass and a broken sink and there is even an engine - well a cylinder block - so heavy I think we will either have to bury it or make it a feature - plant the cylinders up with flowers - ?

Have just been down to the recycling centre with scrap metal and other rubbish. (And had my hair cut - it does make the ears seem very big.)

R has finished all the arable removal so now I have to take out a barbed wire fence by the wall and repair the dry stone wall - cue for a pome -

WALLER

There is a rhythm in a wall -

runs with the land.

It grasps the raise and fall

of rock and fell.

His hands are leathern,

ingrained with earth.

His nails are chipped,

his fingers kinned.

Every stone has its place

complements every other stone.

Once lifted each is laid so weight

and rain are shed, none discarded

He stoops, eyes gauge

the stack of slate.

His trunk bends and climbs,

arms heft a slab.

The heart is rubble chocked,

sides tied by throughs,

longer flags make steps,

create a stile.

He steps back and stretches, 

says nowt, grins, 

slaps on his cap,

nods, job cracked.

To move on -

this is a composite panorama of the garden from the far end. On the left the cleared area and bonfire remains, the veg/fruit beds in the middle with the house and the pond, Wendy House and white birches on the right.

And, to finish, after all the rabbits and squirrels, ducks on the pond eating frogspawn and so on the lamb gangs are out under the field gate romping on the old manure heap.

And John Renbourn is dead - master of the folk guitar. I remember searching Liverpool for him before a concert at the Students' Union as he had gone smoke-about.