Gardening and things

The garden is quite demanding at this time of year, but it is generous too.  The good old rudbeckias are doing well (and in this case, I do mean ‘old’, since the flowers in the picture are from plants that have over-wintered at least once).  I noticed the first flower on the cosmos today, and the penstemons and antirrhinums are doing nicely so far.  Good timing, since the first flush of roses is largely over now.  So, today’s gardening has had mainly to do with dead-heading roses and penstemon, and I have done violence to a rather leggy cistus purpureus (taking cuttings, just in case!).  We are cropping potatoes and salad leaves now, and are eagerly watching the beans and tomatoes.

I was getting rather fed up with chainsaw and shredder noises yesterday, so went out to see where they were coming from.  In the process, I discovered that our goat willow was overhanging the footpath, so thought I’d better deal with it.  Lacking chainsaw and shredder, I had at it with loppers and secateurs (the electric version having run out of juice).  The garden waste bin is consequently more than full, and most of today’s prunings (I had recharged the electric sécateur) are in the compost bin.

I had a call from the iShop on Wednesday to say they had supplies of iPads again, so was back in business before the old one croaked.  I think n°3 was actually cheaper than n°2 when I bought it three years ago.  Short-lived triumph: when I got it home, I found that it wouldn’t fit the old case.  So, the price advantage was eaten up by the cost of a new case, a pint of diesel and another car parking charge by our notoriously rapacious toon cooncil.  Oh well.