King Smethwick & The Funky Trunk Transplant

I am sad. I have only the wish to keep working on a) Our garden, b) Parsley and Cakealot's garden, or c) The Allotment. Any time apart amounts to a tugging at the navel, basically I just want to be gardening all the time!

Spring is well underway and already hints at the Summer to come. It will be glorious. It is glorious now. It can only get better.

The other day I was helping at the Masters residence. Parsley came over to discuss plans for our back garden, and believe me they will come to sweet fruition this year! More in a separate blog, if it so pleases. Having done that, we headed over, tooled up and started moving a beech / hazel tree. It lay in front of the raised beds at the back of the garden and needed shifting as it was getting in the way. It would be moved to join some bamboo, which eventually will sit behind the solardome. Cakealot and I were pumping pure python power (what alliteration!) into the removal of the said birch. We dug a sizeable perimeter around the tree so we could get to the root ball, occasionally plucking out bindweed.

I kept digging away bits until Cakealot rode in and jousted the tree cleanly from the ground. It took us both to lift it though, through heaviness but also care. It was then wheelbarrowed over to the fence. We then had to grub and mattock a monster root which was planted deep in the ground. P&C prior to the transplant had called in a stump grinder to clear the way. However these roots were deeper still, and needed some serious hacking. Both Cakealot and I were trembling like poplars by the time we managed to dig enough space to snugly plant the tree.

We ate some of Sir Cakealot's eight hour chili for lunch. Dispelling the common misconception that I never eat veg (and after my own admission of the same) I was eatin' them kidney beans like my life depended on it! So, so needed.

Thereafter there was high jinks from King Smethwick who did his annual trick of lying in all the beautiful Daffs, looking regal and naughty all at once. He actually reminds me of a cavalier, with his cheeky little black beard. Other synonymous folk include Frank Zappa! Come on, the likeness is uncanny!

We started to move the soil back into the hole we'd created, so that it could be re-turfed. It was an amazing afternoon, one with a slight hiatus (I had to go and see my GP for stomach related ills), but then back to work after two doughnuts and tea. In the dying hours of the afternoon, I planted varieties of lavender at the rear of the garden. It was a lot of work, like the old times (that is last year). And as ever, I want more. I am sad.

(Not so sad. Parsley came out with another classic mishearing. Dialogue goes like this :

Oregano : 'Haha! Look at that! Two blackbirds fighting mid-air!'

Parsley : 'Plop birds?'

Oregano : 'What?!'

Parsley : 'You said plop birds.'

Oregano : 'No I didn't I said blackbirds. Hang on a minute PLOP BIRDS! [sarcastic and insanely false laugh] Watch out for those plop birds.'

Crazy paving!