Something rotten...

Yesterday we noted a blast of mercaptans from around the fridge, but isolated it to the drawer unit next door.  Somehow, the tail end of a packet of prawns had found its way - goodness knows how! - into the bottom drawer, and nature had taken its course.  The good news is that it wasn’t a case of dead vermin.  A friend tells us that sewing some prawns into someone else’s curtains is a suitable revenge in appropriate circumstances.  Sure beats leaving a paper hanky in their washing machine!

We have therefore done some rather necessary spring cleaning (have we sprung clean?), and our noses are no longer assailed when we go looking for a teaspoon.  We’ve taken the opportunity to do some clearing out of cutlery and kitchen tools, and there’s a big bag of stuff to go to the charity shop.  While we were at it, I got on my hands and knees and scrubbed the kitchen floor tiles, which needed it.  Given the creaky hands and knees, this was something I’d been putting off for too long, and I am hurting.  But I’m not in an induced coma and on a ventilator, so I really mustn’t grumble.

The garden is giving us much pleasure - and a degree of pain, of course.  Our first rose is in flower and there are lots coming on.  I have heaved a load of horse on the climbers at the side of the house, and the tomatoes are now planted out, for better or for worse.  We’ve sown various beans indoors and out, plus basil and lettuces.  Of the dozen dwarf French beans we sowed a few weeks ago we got precisely one seedling.  We’ve upped the numbers this time!  The runner beans did not appreciate the cold and strong wind of recent days, so I’ve sown another batch.  I took a couple of little trays of fuchsia cuttings a few weeks ago, and half a dozen have rooted nicely.  As usual at this time of year, we’re struggling to know what to do with all the seedlings and cuttings, since we’re fast running out of vacancies.  I suppose we just need to apply ourselves to the weeding to create a bit of space.  The big cistus purpureus which gave us such a wonderful show last year had become very leggy, and was conflicting with the clothes line.  We hacked it back, but the die-back we’d already registered was rather advanced.  So that has come out, and I’ve used its place to plant a pot of tête-à-tête that did nothing but foliage this year, together with a little crimson dianthus seedling, which ought to provide some ground cover in years to come.

The garden waste collection resumes tomorrow, which is just as well.  The compost bin is also pretty full, so we’ve taken to heaving weedings, grass cuttings and prunings behind the leylandii.  We shall hide when the bin men come: the bin is rather heavy!