Five twenty, a, m. Sat out on the deck in front of the lake, fountain gurgling away. A few cars racing by on the road out front. Lights must have just changed. It’s quite a convenient feature of where we live. Although it’s notionally a busy road it is only busy in bursts when the lights at the Wragby Road and Ruskin Avenue junction change. Ditto the ones at the Greetwell Road junction, outside the Peacock, in the other direction. What it means is that whenever we want to get the car out of the drive there is always a gap in the traffic to take advantage of.
All is still in the back garden. The tiniest whisper of a breeze moving the tips of some branches. A good time of day to be up.
Last night we went for dinner at Martin and Helen’s around the corner. The table was laid out on the lawn and everything on the table had been grown by Martin on his allotment. Wonderful grub.The exception was the fabulous pulled pork for which Martin is rightly famous. It is not practical to keep a pig on the allotment and now is not the right time of year to turn it into a pulled pork joint. I daresay he bought the meat from a butcher. I’ve mentioned it before but my grandmother used to keep a pig at the bottom of the garden and our house in Greetwell Gate had a sty in the back garden. Not much room in it for the pig but hey…
It feels as if I’ve had to top up the water levels in the lake every other day this summer. I guess in the truly natural world lakes do sometimes dry up and are refilled when the winter rains arrive. Not good for the fauna that live in the lake. In our case there is no river running into the lake and it is partly covered by the tree canopy so leaving the water level to be controlled by nature might not work.
Sitting on the deck by the lake in front of the shed for the last few days I have been subjected to a constant bombardment by empty nut casings from the holm oak as the squirrels above have been harvesting. I assume it’s squirrels although the nuts do no doubt drop off naturally themselves. In fact not all the ammo being dropped is empty. Some of them are whole, live, nuts.
Yesterday we deposited our campervan Betty at Coops’ garage for the last time. Betty was an uber cool van to possess and in the 12 years or so we had her we had some great times going away with our pals. There comes a time, however, when you need a few more creature comforts and the decision has been made to move her on. When we next go away on a weekend camping trip we will hire a motorhome. Won’t be until next year now.
This morning THG and I are off for a swim. We did this at 9am last week and it looks as if this might become a regular thing which is very nice. I go in the slow lane and she opts for the medium one. My technique must be really rubbish as people doing breaststroke overtake me even if I am doing the front crawl. Woteva. After the swim I drop THG off at the gym for her weights class. It might be pilates. Dunno.
When I get back I might begin the process of refilling the greenhouse water buts. This will take some time as due to the hosepipe ban I’ll have to do it using watering cans. I guess I could fill the big yellow wheelie thing with water and roll that to the greenhouse. I’ll still need to scoop the water out of it but it will save quite a few trips back and forth to the tap.
Fox passed through at 02:06 and 04:24.
C ya.