Saturday, July 25, 2009

Clearing the M1 -The Mystery of the Missing Trowel

The Mystery of the Missing Trowel

Now this story will take some believing, but I have photographic evidence. I peered round the corner of the extension as Martin the builder was attacking the wall he and his dad Joe had finished yesterday. Kango makes a lot of noise. Brrrrrr, brrrrrr, brrrrr. 'Why are you doing that?' I ask, innocently. 'Joe's lost his trowel'. I thought this was a joke. 'I wouldn't mind, but it's a good little trowel' says Joe, in his lovely soft lilting Irish accent. Now this piece of wall had to be shuttered and large amounts of concrete or some such poured in. Joe had just poured in 3 buckets full when he mentioned to Martin that he couldn't find his trowel. They could only assume it was under the aforementioned 3 buckets full. Martin had a poke around, 'It's not there' says he.

So here we are this morning, listening to the dulcet tones of the Kango. I had visions of archaeologists in 200 years time finding the trowel and wondering. 'Didn't they use primitive tools in those days'. 'Maybe it was symbolic, when they'd finished the building work, they placed this trowel here as an offering to the god of building works'.

Joe then began attacking the wall with a hammer and chisel and sure enough, there it was! It's like a surgeon leaving swabs or scalpels inside a body! So here is Joe, chipping away. 'Well, it's a good little trowel'.

You can just see the handle sticking out! Unbelievable.

I kept chuckling to myself about it all day. This was yesterday morning, not today, Saturday. I couldn't blog last night as it seems at the moment if Jim and I compute at the same time, everything slows down and almost comes to a grinding halt. The wonders of modern technology.

A new Butterfly

Yesterday morning Jim and I spotted a very small and rather cute little butterfly on one of the cosmos flowers. 'Go and get your camera', says Jim, 'while I watch it'. Hmm, off I trot and the resultant photos enabled us to identify said butterfly as a Small Copper. I've never seen one and not heard of it before, so there was a buzz of excitement here at The Deenery. (maybe that should be a flutter of excitement)

It looked a little dull with its wings closed.

But how pretty with them open, displaying the 'copper band' around the top wings. Just one more:


They are quite abundant in some areas and love sorrel and dock. We have lots of this in our meadow. Jim and I both love lepidopt.... erm, lepadot.... butterflies and moths.

I also took this photo of a ladybird:

Hopefully it's eating its way through lots of aphids.


The Deenery Garden

Jim has grown some gladioli on the allotment and the first ones have just flowered. When I looked in the snug, he had picked a few and put them in the spaghetti jar (unable to find a vase in all our building chaos). Here is a close up of one of the blooms:


As you can see, it had been raining again, as it did most of the morning, off and on. These were specialist bulbs and the spikes of flowers are incredibly long. They each have at least 20 flowers on them. Jim said when his father used to grow them for shows, they thought they had done well if a spike had 12 or more flowers on it.

The large bed on the arboretum also has dahlia and this one bloomed yesterday. It's a really pretty pink on dark purple, almost black leaves. The bed is now so full it was hard to take a photo of it. Can you remember when we first made the bed?

This was taken on June 22nd. The left hand side is the new section we added to the already established right hand section. I suppose it was about a month old then.


How crazy is it now? Do click on it to enlarge it if you'd like to see more detail. Yes, I know the grass needs cutting again and the edges trimming. There is still a lot to do here as you can see. Much of it we can't attack yet because of the building work (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).

I took this joiner from the other side of the bed:



Now the 'M1' in the title is the road just to the right of this bed, with the living willow fence beside it. When we first moved here, the way up to the meadow was sopping wet and full of green algae. It was impassable, so we spent many happy hours building a raised road there. It's been brilliant but does get very weedy. We should weed killer it but it's been so wet that job's been impossible. Yesterday I attacked it!

There is a road under there somewhere!


That's better! It does need another layer of gravel on the top but that's a minor detail. I still have the top section left to do. The sun's shining at the moment so I'll be out there soon.

A little colourful section from the arboretum bed to finish.

Buster

Buster clearly can't make head nor tail of life at the moment:


I was really tired when I came in last night but was revived by Jim's cooking! Home grown potatoes, peas and our first french beans. Plus some long sausages. Soon be runner bean time. I did a bit more to The Wicker Man before bed. Right, I'm off.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very pretty flowers and colorful butterfly. That's so funny about the trowel - it must have been very special. All my love to Buster - what a cute picture of him.

Heather said...

Love the trowel saga - good job he found it before having to knock down any more of the building! Lovely flower pics and that little copper butterfly looks gorgeous against the pink cosmos. Buster looks like I feel - it's been a busy week. That's some weeding task, rediscovering your road - well done you. Don't work too hard. Lovely homegrown vegs - you can't beat them. I'm waiting for the tomatoes to ripen and beans to get larger.

Rachel Green said...

Loved the trowel story!

soulbrush said...

roflol about trowel...
love the buterfly photos, and it waited for you to come back....
aaaw little buster, so sweet, your deenery is just bursting with summer joy.

Anonymous said...

Loved the trowel story. Too funny! My goodness, what a beautiful setting you live in! I would wake with a smile every morning to see all of that beauty. Thanks for sharing it! :-)

marianne said...

Ahh that buster!
Love that purple flower.
And the story with the trowel is hilarious!
Your garden looks very pretty! But every time I see it I think Oh my....what an inmense ammount of work........

Have a nice weekend!

Cris, Artist in Oregon said...

What a cool butterfly. and I love the lady bug. You sure have a pretty lay out there. Lots of work to keep up. No wonder you were tired. Thanks for sharing.

Cris, Artist in Oregon said...

Oh I forgot.. what a crack up about the Trowel. Hope he got the wall back to like new.

Lisa at Greenbow said...

I probably would have fainted if the guys had started hacking on my new wall. Have to have your good tools though.

I am glad to see that I am not the only one with areas that need to be weeded and otherwise attended. I can't get into the mood to do some things even though it isn't too terribly hot here now. I can't even blame the weather.

Love seeing Buster. He looks like an angel here.

Adrian Tritschler said...

What an amazing story. I hope they're not back next week looking for a missing wheelbarrow!

Stampmaiden said...

Loved the trowel story! The butterfly is beautiful and the pictures are stunning! Great shots. Love the vibrant colors of your flowers and the pictures of your land are so soothing. I feel my blood pressure going down whenever I visit you. Thanks so much. Much better than a pill.
Linda

Carol said...

I have to say that the Trowel story is very Irish....I can't imagine that happening anywhere else!!

The Deenery is looking fab!!

C x

KathyB. said...

Glad he found his trowel, I think that is a story that would have gone on and on and on...losing his very special trowel.But it is found!

You and I both have a Jim who like to cook, and I am very, very grateful for my Jim!

Your flowers are beautiful.

BT said...

Thank you Mildred. It was one of those stories you wouldn't believe I think!

Thank you Heather. I almost finished the road yesterday Heather, but it's rained most of today. Our tomatoes are the size of peas!!

Good, wasn't it Rachel.

Thank you soulbrush. I wish we'd have more sunshine to go with the joy!

Hello Lady Collum. It is lovely. I took lots of the lake today.

Marianne, indeed it is hard work, but sometimes I think it's worth it!!

Cris, the wall's fine again now!! Amazing story, isn't it?? Glad you likd the photos.

Hello Lisa. Oh we have tons of stuff that's quite out of control - I don't often photograph those bits. Too depressing. At this time of year we say 'it'll all die down in the winter'!! lol.

Oh ADrain, don't even think about it!

Hello Linda, I'm glad I'm good for your blood pressure! So why does Jim have high blood pressure then? aha, living with me I expect!!

You're dead right Carol!

Hiya KathyB. Oh 2 Jims! Aren't we lucky? Glad you like the photos.

Bea said...

I bet you were tired. What a lot of work you have gotten done this year. That cosmo with the butterfly the last picture down is breath taking. Just gorgeous. That could be a screen saver. That could be my screen saver. lol
Poor Buster.....how's his hole in his side doing? :)Bea