Butt

For a few weeks, we’ve had two water butts, waiting to be connected up to the office. They have been waiting for a Placement Decision (PD) from Mirinda. Well, this weekend, the PD was made.

I had to find enough bricks to sit the water butt stand on, so to alleviate this, the hot border had to be enlarged. Actually, one section of the hot border has been marked for enlargement anyway, so it was just a matter of doing it.

Having walked Mirinda to the station first thing, I returned home to shovel, gloves and sweat. And there was a lot of sweat. The temperature may have been very low but that made no difference to my core body temperature as I buried the shovel into the earth, time after time.

Eventually, the bed was expanded and the bricks collected for transfer.

Needs some forking and top soil

It was then time to expand the new-ish bed outside the office. The water butt needs to be at the corner, beside the downpipe, so the bed needed to be a bit wider.

Again, it was a bit of a struggle with the willow roots left over from the ex-tree that was once where the office is now and the sweat once more flowed. A surreptitious glance of my watch told me it was lunchtime so I downed tools and watched the latest episode of Hunted, the new drama from the makers of Spooks.

After being pummelled by the (hopefully) unreal world of private security firms, I was off to the Maltings for a meeting of the U3A group leaders.

I was happy to sit in the front row, chatting to Jo about straight Australian roads and the stars one could see outside Britain but I was told to join the top table. In fact Rosemary told me off, insisting I do as I was told.

The meeting went quite well (and quick) and I let them know what they could give me to improve the website. Naturally I made them laugh with my completely unprepared speech and was a minor hit. Though when chairman Michael asked if anyone had any questions and there were no responses, his remark that they were too frightened caused a ripple of agreement rather than amusement.

Back at home, I hit the bed again, completing the extra bit and temporarily putting the bricks down for the butt to sit on. They need to be level but that had to wait so the dogs could have a little walk up to the castle and back.

How I left it

It’s always a satisfying day that I spend in the garden and today was no exception.