Slash & burn

Since I last posted, the box tree moth caterpillars have devastated the hedge and bushes, so we’ve cut the lot down and burned it in an incinerator (known hereabouts as the insinuator, in homage to my first boss, who was given to such malapropisms).  Along the top path there’s still a row of box that seems unaffected, but we have few illusions, given the dozens of caterpillars we find every time we step outside - a few even get inside the house.  Martyn has chopped down a lot of the herbage at the foot of the fence on the street side.  Meanwhile, I was sawing down the trunks of what used to be the box ball at the foot of the drive, and was taking the strimmer to the weeds that had grown at the foot of the box hedge.  Oh well: it’s a chance to try something new, and I've opened the dialogue with our garden guru Ben: we could just manage the slash and burn, but the grubbing up and preparation for replanting is beyond us these days.  Always looking on the bright side of life, the absence of hedge shows off the viburnum, which is currently at its best.

We have a first rose in bloom at the side of the house, a first flower on the cistus purpureus and a lot of new flowers on the rockery, notably a Wisley Pink helianthemum.  In the veggie department, the spuds are growing vigorously, and we’ve planted a few beans out and sown some more.  A few leeks seem to have succumbed to the drought, but the onions look happy enough.  The tomatoes in the sitooterie are fruiting, and we’ve rooted a lot of side shoots - probably more than we can grow.  

Can you imagine a place like Disgustedville with a Council under other than true-blue Tory control?   This has been the case, if marginally, for a year now, and last week's elections administered a further kick in the teeth.  This time there wasn't a major local issue like the extravagant and quite properly dismissed plan to build a new theatre, so it looks as if the vote turned on national rather than local issues.  The gutter press, meanwhile, has turned on the Rt Hon and Learned Leader of HM Opposition for ordering a takeaway meal in the middle of a work session, and he has undertaken to resign if the local Busies find that he broke lockdown rules.  This is pretty clearly rhetorical, and aimed at accelerating the long-overdue departure of the current Rt Hon First Lord of the Treasury.  The latter's main talent of winning, however dishonestly, the popular vote has utterly disappeared, and the Brexit chickens are coming home to roost.  The damage this joker has done defies belief: not only to the country's economy but also to its political processes.