Destroy it Yourself

Thank God for social media! Whoever thought I’d say that, but I have.

I find myself unable for the life of me, to remember what I did on Saturday, other than watching The Dark Knight Rises on DVD in the evening. Thanks to social media, I am reminded that we did some gardening, after a nice long lie in.

It all comes flooding back; I harvested rather more blackcurrants than I was expecting, while tying the plant back (it looks a bit odd at the moment, the leaves still haven’t turned round to face the sun, but they will), I also trimmed several plants quite vigorously, particularly the ivy on the fence, which got a rather spectacular short back and sides. I swear it sat there and said ‘right. I got me some serious growing to do, now.

ellefurtle pruned of a few branches from the cherry trees, where they were overhanging the garden and blocking out the sunlight from the further end, by the decking. In addition to gaining us an additional crop of cherries, we are hoping the extra light along with copious watering, will spur some of the climbing plants along the right hand fence to grow with rather more alacrity than hereto. There are signs of activity from Evil Property Developer and it looks as though over the next few months, a bungalow will finally appear the other side of the fence. Wee would really rather like the foliage that is under our (relative) control, to have made some move to providing additional cover to make up for the trees that we know will be coming down.

WE SHALL SEE.

Yesterday, we had thought to have a quiet day. I was going to play some Warcraft, not really having done much for several weeks.

In the end, we painted the front and back doors. A quick job at the end of which we thought we could a) have a pint and some chips in the pub and b), play on the computers.

Well, I expect you can tell how that turned out.

We did the front door – washed, sanded and painted, followed by a four hour wait until it could take a second coat. The plan was to close it before the second coat went on, to nip to the pub, come back, do the second coat and then sort it all out (put back the house number, knocker etc) in the cool of the evening. But after a couple of hours, during which we ran out of Pimm’s, we decided to paint the back door, which rather ruled out any trip to the pub – neither door being lockable in the interim.

Well, that was okay. I painted while ellefurtle nipped to the shop to buy CIDER, with which we relaxed on our own manor as it were.

Unfortunately, all DIY jobs turn sour at some point, even if the eventual solution is one that has you slapping your own forehead.

It took us rather longer than it should – and a couple of unnecessary phone calls to work out why we couldn’t shut the front door. I shall not embarrass us further by going into detail. Suffice it to say, “Dummkopf”.