Jo's Strimmer!

Because if I'm gonna be cracking puns anyway then they might as well be about the frontman of my favourite band.

So happy about this right now!  A) new toy, B) flat lawn, C) cut grass smell, D) NEW TOY!  

I found a ton of dessicated dog poo that had fallen below the horizon.  Now that the lawn is flat I should have no problems spotting it early.  

  Other things: the potatoes were overlapping the thyme and alliums, so I've put in some bamboo.  

I now have red strawberries!

The runner beans have gotten as tall as the bamboo.  

And tarred most of the roof of the shed.  The bit I've missed I'll get with a long-handled roller on the next dry day we get.  The stuff stinks and it goes on like Marmite, but that's bitumen for ya.  

And lastly I've given the lawn a good feed to help it recover from its first mowing.  

It looks so much neater for a good mowing, but more than that, doing something that's a visible change for the better has lifted me right out of the blues.  

Once more:  NEW TOY!!!

Good times.  

When Shuck gets ironic

Yesterday I got an official, confirmed offer of a place to study Biology.  I've been depressed these past couple weeks, but for some reason the prospect of furthering my education is something Shuck can't touch.  It's nice to have that, it's comforting.  Still, my furry friend has been biting down hard, with the unfortunate consequence that I've spent too much of my time moping and not enough time attending to my responsibilities.  Well, my family pointed this out today (the responsibilities thing; I already knew about Shuck) and now, well, things are getting cleaned right enough, but I feel worse for letting things slide.

In essence I am now depressed over things I did when I was depressed.  Life does work in funny ways.  Were it not so fubar it'd be fucking hilarious.

Fuckin'... fuckin' shite!

  I have sensitive skin.  It isn't normally an issue these days because I wear all cotton and know which chemicals to avoid.  The trouble with sensitive skin though is that once it's been triggered massively by something you're then left pretty much allergic to the world until it recovers.  Sometimes though you have no choice but to suck it up for the greater good.  Loft insulation is my kryptonite but I ended up spending a couple of hours in the loft yesterday.

This is me today:

  It's on my arms, legs, and back.  My chest and neck are itching and they're gonna go in the next few days.  It's creeping in around my eyes and I'll be lucky if my face doesn't end up covered.  I've also got an airway full of shite.

  As you can imagine, everything's irritating my skin right now and I'm feeling thoroughly depressed about it.  I've decontaminated myself, covered myself in aqueous cream, changed all my sheets, excluded all pets from my room and holed up in bed with a pint of Ben and Jerry's, watching reruns of Mythbusters while I pick a movie to put on.

I had been planning to get some serious weeding done today.  FML.

Repotting, reseeding and Georgeproofing

Mike got sick again.  Mature leaves turned red, new leaves turned black.  Bit of a disaster really, and fearing fungus I decided that a windowsill was no place for a tree.  I moved him to an outdoor pot and as I took him out of the existing pot I was met with an almighty reek.  The compost in his pot was rotting around the roots!  Aaaargh!  So I scraped as much away as I dared and binned it.  I took off some diseased roots, patted the rootball dry with a towel and applied mycorrhizal fungus.  He's been potted in fresh compost in a bigger pot with a bed of stones and a topdressing of further stones.  I've pruned all affected leaves and moved Mike out front, where he looks thoroughly forlorn.

I've mentioned previously that George is in the habit of climbing into the Strawbrary while he barks into the dark.  Well, I think I've got him foiled:

If he gets through a trellis with a bush behind it then he's some kind of Houdini dog!

Lastly then, the lawn has been reseeded.  This is it now, and fingers crossed it'll be thicker than thick in a month's time.  

Feels like for the past few days I've done little but grafting, eating and sleeping.  With emphasis on the eating and sleeping.  I've even set Skyrim aside!  Tonight then I'm going to get squared away and make some time for me.  I'll knock together a Baileys hot chocolate, colonise the couch and put a game on.  I haven't played Dragon Age in a while...

If you read nothing else today...

READ THIS!

It's about the terms of service you agree to when using services on the internet.  All the crap they hope you won't bother to read.  This site distils it down into the points you really need to know.

Meanwhile, it's Christmas Eve.  By tradition we have a big fry-up for breakfast, and the pets get any leftover sausage.  We don't make a habit of feeding them unhealthy food, but they get a little treat at Xmas.  Suffice it to say that Bill and George are strutting about just now like the cat that learned to operate dairy machinery.

I leave you with this gem from the internet:

I'm gonna go drink Shuck under the table.  Nollaig mhaith chugat, as my granny would say, and the best of the season to ya!