Sunday! Smelly Sunday!

Hello Everyone,

I hope you all had a great weekend. Ours didn't quite go according to plan.

We had been busy on Saturday morning, I had been pottering around in the garden and Simon had been pointing up the boiler room base (I know, he's dragging it out a bit).

In the last edition you'll have noticed my massive onions, all in a row. Well, I thought they were actually a bit pathetic, and after a chat with my Dad, a veteran veggie grower, I thought I'd go and buy some onion sets. For the uninitiated, onion sets look like tiny baby onions, you pop them in the ground and a few weeks later, voilà (I know my French is really coming on!) you have fabulous onions growing fatter and fatter under the ground.

A couple of back aching hours later and I had planted about 50 onions. Then I had to peg down some netting, because apparently the local birds are partial to oignons.🌱

I know it looks feeble but I'm a novice.

Then, spurred on by my gardening prowess I decided to build some tepees for the peas to grow up.

I went rummaging in the compost pile (also known as asshole corner) at the bottom of the garden and found some sturdy apple tree branches to make them with.

The first one looked pretty good, even though I do say so myself.

The second one, however, was a poor relation, I had run out of big enough branches, so I cobbled it together with copious amounts of twine and some luck....

Anyway, I'm rambling on...around 3pm we started to hear some rumbles of thunder. Not to worry, I thought, the onions could do with some watering in....the sky started to blacken, and purple thunderheads rolled in.

And then, the heavens opened...

Excuse the swearing...it was bloody tipping it down!

My onions were doing a leisurely back stroke down the garden..

We battened down the hatches, put the wood burner on and settled down for the evening. Plus, the storm cleared and the sunset was beautiful.

Ah...Sunday morning, no getting up and slogging away, our day off! Fantastique!

I wandered downstairs, flicked the coffee pot on as I went through the kitchen and headed to the toilet. As I opened the bathroom door, my nostrils were assaulted with what can only be described as a concoction of egg farts and stewed cabbage 😬it was horrific!

My yelling brought Simon, dressing gowned and slippered to the rescue.

"What the f**k is the matter?" It didn't take him long to smell it....he tried blaming me but, this time at least, it had nothing to do with me 😀

We deduced, by a matter of elimination, that the stone wall outside the bathroom was becoming drenched when it rained. Obviously guttering is needed but in the interim, what we needed to do was sort out the 'flowerbed' that was banked up against the wall. I have put flowerbed in quotation marks because it had no flowers, just weeds and more rocks than Fred and Wilma's garden.

Bang went our Sunday morning relax and recuperation!

It only took about 6 barrows of topsoil and 4 of rocks to shift it...but the sun was shining and Simon was looking very sexy...

We lugged rocks around until we had built a line of defensive rocks, we're hoping that until we can get some guttering on the roof that it'll hold the rain off of the bathroom wall...and so diminish the stink!

The day was still sunny and gorgeous, so we did get some time off. We managed to get out on the bikes and see some of the beautiful countryside, and finally we relaxed in the garden with a beer.

Cheers 🍺