Gardening and stuff

The tarmac process was not too awful: the hoiking up of the old tarmac took half a day, including lots of hanging around waiting for the lorry to return for a second load of spoil.  Still, the hardcore and cement substrate was in by mid-afternoon, so we could get the cars off the street overnight.  Tarmac arrived next morning - eventually - and the two layers were down and rolled by lunchtime.  We were advised not to drive on it for a couple of days, so it wasn't until Thursday afternoon that we discovered that they have left far too much of a step up from the drive to the garage floors.  We can get the cars under cover, but the front-wheel drive car would soon chew up the tarmac, even if the 4x4 would transfer torque to the back end before too much harm was done.  Well, Mr Tarmac was here within an hour of my calling to report the above, and will get the chaps back to ramp it up a bit.  Whereupon, if work satisfactory, bill will be paid.  But it looks very smart, and the drain top no longer presents a trip hazard, so we're almost there.  The edgings are in new brick, and look rather smart, and the chaps helpfully filled in with topsoil between the bricks and the grass, now seeded. 

Anyway, the big box bush shifted a bit while the edgings were being hoiked out, but not, I hope, enough to do lasting harm.  The layered cutting I took before the work began looks OK, but, given the time box takes to do anything, I won't be too sanguine in relation to either.  We've had three deliveries lately from the seed merchant.  The charlottes are chitting in an egg tray out in the garage.  My new toy, a heated propagator, is working away out in the sitooterie, and the gazania seeds had germinated within 48 hours of sowing.  I think I see the odd sign of life from the rudbeckias, but the lobelias may take a bit longer.  The fuchsia plug plants are now in pots, and installed on the window ledge in the sitooterie.  If they live up to their billing, we should have a good display at the front door later in the year.

Of Tuesday's AGM of the Hobby, the most I'll say is that I shall not be campaigning to remain after the compulsory retirement age of 70, even if I make it to that point, one way or the other.

Pour passer aux choses sérieuses, most roses are now pruned, and I've hauled out the white potentilla together, I hope, with its infestation of pencil grass.  While I had the graip out, I hauled out a cistus that had turned its toes up in protest at a moderately severe haircut.  Plenty of cuttings of both are already well rooted in the cold frame, so we just need to decide whether to replace like with like.

After yesterday's immoderate gardening, a short pause had us back on form for lunch at the village's only pub with Sue and Bob, who had motored up from the Isle of Oxney.  Good meal, service vastly improved, and I've only myself to blame for the consequences of red onions done medium-rare in tempura.

Last week's trimming and pruning exercises reminded me how inactive I've been of late.  Without wishing to sound like a Dundee Courier leader one-sentence paragraph, This Idleness Must Cease.