ARTHUR OR MARTHA?

My garden’s going through a bit of an identity crisis, slowly morphing from a vegetable allotment into a fruit farm.  Not only is the herb bed being sacrificed to accommodate a few freebie raspberry canes kindly donated by the other half’s father but one of the tall veg beds has also undergone gender re-assignment to become home to 4 blackberry plants.  Imagine picking these delicious black beauties from the comfort of your own back garden rather than scrabbling about in hedgerows where every sod and his dog has probably pee’d on anything not higher than your average toddler. 

To prevent the other half employing a couple of dodgy looking mafia types to guard his precious F1models, I’ve raided all my Christmas £1 garden centre vouchers to splash out on 2 different varieties – Oregon Thorn-less and Loch Maree.  The look on the Haskins cashier’s face when I presented him with a wad of about £50 vouchers would have curdled custard.  What a hoot!   

Judging by the way blackberries grow out in the wild, I’d expect them to bed in quickly and do what they do best, ramble all over the chicken wire and bamboo tepee that I’ve provided for support.  To protect from frost, cats and aid moisture retention, I’ve topped the soil with some small bark chippings.  Now as always, it’s time to sit back with a cup of tea and wait till summer. 

Here’s a picture of my lovelies enjoying the winter sunshine in their new home.

AND SO IT BEGINS AGAIN

Well Christmas is officially over.  The tree’s down, the tinsel’s packed away, the cats have gone home and the cream eggs are on the supermarket shelves.  It’s time to peel myself off the couch and psyche myself up for the year ahead.  My resolution this year is not to make any since if there’s no plan to follow, I won’t have to beat myself up when it’s not followed.  2012 will be the year of the free spirit – (and I don’t mean free Southern Comfort being doled out to the homeless from booze kitchens round the country as that would be totally irresponsible though fun for the hobos), what I really mean is that it’s time to throw caution to the wind and take whatever comes my way. 

 And what better way to get the year off to a good start than by starting with a new job.  Kissing goodbye to my career as a ‘dealer’ and waving hello to a life servicing debt in something called Corporate Trust in another large American bank starting tomorrow.  Whilst this might not sound like a barrel of laughs, it will bring in lots of ‘lolly’ and Lord knows loads a lolly is definitely required to float my finances.  My current account is looking as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard and there’s not much left to Ebay at home, though I have got my eye on a few of the other half’s precious Formula 1 models.  Well, he wouldn’t miss one or two of them, would he?  Although that might explain the evil eye he keeps giving me every time I disappear into the dining room to ‘tidy up’ and re-appear with pound signs tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.  How else am I going to fund my gardening?

2012 will be a year of?   A year of?   Well, I haven’t quite decided yet but I’m sure it will be a year for something other than the Olympics and like Jeremy Clarkson, if I could make the world a better place by shooting a few reprobates then this is what my New Year’s firing squad list would consist of:

• People who don’t clear away their rubbish in MacDonalds after they’ve eaten (disgusting!)
• People who pick their noses in traffic (yuuukkkk!)
• People who use the last sheet of bog paper but never replace the roll (lazy bastards)
• People who invent those annoying politically correct terms (get a life!)
• People who park overhanging my driveway (they’d be instantly vaporised!)

In the sacred words of Noddy Holder - “Here’s to the future now, it’s only just begun”.   

Happy New Year!!

Shelby's got a new friend