Carmen amazes me sometimes. I’m not sure how she can do some of the things she does with such a tiny brain. And with legs that go the wrong way. One of her amazing things is the way she can guess where I’ll be on the path when we go for our walk. She will take off into a copse of trees, be completely hidden from view and then pop out of the trees just as I reach the same point. She does this with unerring accuracy. I don’t call her, or whistle or make any overt noise but she manages every time.
Day-z, on the other hand, just follows. When she gets left behind and only Carmen emerges, I have to whistle so she knows where we are. She always finds us eventually but I think she has more interesting things on her mind like flowers, insects, random animal droppings, etc. She gets a bit pre-occupied. Carmen, on the other hand, thinks she’s human.
Here they both are, not being particularly human at their favourite puddle.
Carmen & Day-z at the puddle in the park
To say the day was grim would be an understatement. Every now and then, the rain drizzles down and everything is misty and grey. One of those type of days Mirinda wishes she’d stayed in Oz. It’s also quite chilly and the park is awash with mud.
To add to the overall grimness, today we ran into a guy I call Mr Grumpy Grunch. He’s an odd sort of chap. About 60ish with a life worn face, he lopes around the park looking miserable as sin. (I’m not so sure that is a very accurate expression. After all, sin, by its very nature, is going to be far from miserable until after you confess it and even then the memory can be pretty good.)
I’ve seen Mr Grumpy Grunch at a couple of Aldershot games. We’ve seen him on the Slab with the other old timers. Here he doesn’t look so miserable. Instead, he whoops it up if anything happens and looks generally pretty demented. When I say when anything happens, I mean it. Someone can drop a hotdog and he’ll start doing the Macarena, chortling away to himself. If someone laughs at something funny he will go into paroxysms of hilarity, threatening to burst a blood vessel.
But in the park, he just looks permanently grumpy. He never says hello or nods and show any recognition at all, even though he’s seen me and the girls many, many times. Speaking of the girls, they know what he’s like and avoid him. Once they went up to him, tails wagging, expecting the usual comment about how cute they are but were disappointed when he just kept walking. So now they just walk around him.
As I always say, the day can be miserable enough without adding to it.
Anyway, after our walk I decided to attack the back garden. Mind you, after my last disastrous foray, I was under the strictest instructions. Armed with spade, fork, gloves and kneeling stool, I hit the hot bed. Well, the little corner that had been spared my previous decimation.
First I transplanted Carmen’s lavatera. I was amazed at the length of the roots. For something snapped off by a poodle and left for dead, it has developed a long way down underground. I had earlier prepared a patch of soil which had previously been hidden by a fresh crop of nettles, replacing the long dead stalks of last years bountiful harvest. Into this I put Carmen’s lavatera. Once packed down with fresh compost from our own compost bin, Carmen came over to inspect it. She seemed ok with it. I hope Mirinda is as happy.
I then discovered an interesting thing about strawberry plants. I planted a few when we first dug up the hot bed and I’ve been getting rid of them ever since. They are the most incredible little spreading plants. There’s no stopping them once started. I’m picking them out all the time.
Unknown to me, the strawberry plants have taken to growing in very sneaky places, making it very difficult to extract them. They are somehow aware of our love of forget-me-nots and tend to bunch around and through them. This makes their removal a very delicate operation. For this, the gloves had to come off and I had to get very close to the ground.
Because I’m on their level, Carmen & Day-z love it when I do this. They lick my face, my ears, my neck, you name it. Apart from making any delicate operation more difficult, it tickles. I am forever fending them off. Even with this constant distraction, I managed to get rid of most of them. We’re expecting rain tonight so I just know they’ll all grow back.
Before quitting, I cut back a shrub that was getting a bit scraggy and which Mirinda distinctly pointed at declaring it needed to be cut back to a foot. It is now about 18 inches. This may sound like I’m being contrary but it’s actually because I have an absolute lack of measurement guessing. Because of this, I always cut high.
My gardening was stopped by the failing light and the approaching black clouds. I hit the shower and felt like I’d achieved something. Fingers crossed I’m not in trouble again.
