Brilliant weather today. After breakfast, OH donned the chainsaw chaps and announced he'd be chopping more conifer. After less than half an hour, an ugly rasping sound. The chainsaw had hit a nail that the conifer had grown around and completely swallowed up. Not what you'd expect. OH spends the next half hour filing and sharpening the chain's metal teeth and then declares that it's too hot to be wearing the chainsaw trousers and that he'd get the genny and our new Karcher water pump ready to go to the plot.
Slight snag before we set off: the handcart carrying the 40-kilo genny has two flats. Thankfully I remember where the airpump is. Off we tootle.
There doesn't seem to be anyone on the plot so OH and I position the genny by the river, rig up the Karcher pump and I am sent back down the path to our plot with the layflat hose. OH starts up the genny and plugs in the Karcher. The pump instantly sputters into action. The blue layflat expands down the path at an alarming rate.
"Get the kinks out of the hose!" OH shouts so I try to stay ahead of the water column that's racing down the path. 70 metres down the path, there's a burp and water is coming out. Result!
We fill everything we've got -- 4 water butts, 1 old acrylic bath, buckets, the tin watering can. We have 2 more water butts but they're leaky. OH mentions a guy on the plot who could deliver IBCs (Intermediate Bulk Containers) for £25. IBCs take 1000litres and would solve a lot of our water storage problems. We had one of those in our previous garden -- it filled up really quickly in the rain and came in very handy during dry spells.
The water keeps on coming up from the river. Everything is being soaked --the tatties, the onions, the berries, the cabbages, the aubergines, beans, carrots, grapes, everything.
Breaktime. The watering is done. The genny gets a time-out. We do too: drinks and chocolate on upturned beer crates.
Next: OH rolls the genny up to the path and shows me how it's started up. Not that hard. The next task is the strimming of a patch of overgrown jungle near the shed that's been like this for 2 years. The strimmer is an old Black and Decker with a missing blade, which means that the plastic wire keeps snagging and tearing. I strim a tiny patch and have to interrupt every 15 seconds because the wire has torn. I loudly complain about crappy Black and Decker being of course ENGLISH-made but not for very long because as soon as we roll the Lidl genny up the centre path and try to restart it, something in the pull cord recoil mechanism breaks and we have to stop strimming altogether because now the generator is broken. Looks like a warranty replacement. Meh and double meh.
I am so gennied up myself though that I take the hand scissors and my heavy duty gloves and tackle the back right corner myself. Dozens of nettles and thistles, hundreds of ground elder stalks fall, are ripped out, are shredded -- sod the generator: I am the generator. OH obediently forks everything onto a great pile and calls time after a while -- he's tired and wants to go home, get showered, start cooking, all in time for the Germany - Ghana game. I'd forgotten about the game completely. When you're up against a nest of nettles, it's personal.
At home, OH makes us a fabulous Saturday night dinner: New Zealand lamb, our very first potatoes from the plot -- about a pound of Shetland Blacks (the blue ones that taste nutty) -- and some grilled corn on the cob from the freezer (Harvest 2013, if you please!), all washed down with OH's muscular Chateau Random (blackberry and elderberry red wine, also 2013).
Now Hunger Games on telly -- alright! The teens can do what they like -- I shall be slavering over Donald Sutherland as the evil US President.
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