Tag Archives: scarecrows

Bucket lists, birds and boars

You don’t often get to do something for the first time when you’re our age; apart from medical procedures there’s not much novelty left once you start closing in on sixty. Even when it is a novelty, it’s rarely something you want enjoy.

Julia has instructed me to take heed of the requirements of good taste here and not discuss my medical history.

However, today we were able to help someone with her bucket list, as she wanted to hand feed lambs before having an her operation. There’s no accounting for taste, but many people seem to find lambs cute, so Julia laid on the full farm experience, right down to the… er…last detail. I will be tactful on that, but not only does the lady feel like a farmer now, she also smells like one.

I suggested that if she could see her way clear to add “shovelling” to her bucket list we could also accommodate her with that too.

Kirsty did her pig presentation today, which was quite interesting. The idea that pigs are clean animals and can bark were two new concepts that caused quite a bit of discussion, as did the news that wild pigs form a large portion of the diet of tigers in the wild.

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I can understand that pigs barking seems strange, and that an animal that rolls in mud to prevent sunburn doesn’t seem that clean at first glance. What I’m struggling with is the idea that we need to worry about what tigers eat. If we ever end up with tigers in Screveton I can’t help feeling that we will have more to worry about than the safety of our pigs.

Apart from that we’ve gardened between showers, refurbished and redesigned a few scarecrows and taken more bird pictures. That woodpecker really does love peanuts!

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As you can see from the main picture, the term scarecrow isn’t strictly accurate.

Tomorrow we will be baking scones. I will be taking photographs and lurking in the hope of being fed.

After the Lord Mayor’s Show…

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It’s an old English expression for those of you who aren’t familiar with the title, and it comes from the days of horse-drawn transport. It means that after the pomp and ceremony of the Lord Mayor’s Show a detachment of men with shovels had to follow up and clear the road. Looking on the bright side – organic matter is now very fashionable.

I can only speculate of what our scarecrows are thinking as they are now doing duty on the allotment (mainly keeping jackdaws away from the pig food) after their time at one of our premier garden shows – Hampton Court.

If you look through this selection of photos you may actually see the giant Time Traveller at Hampton Court, before he returned to sit on our shipping container.

Such is life, whether for man or scarecrow.

On a more practical note – I’ve just been promised some pond plants for our new pond project and no more birds have flown into things.

Must go now – wife is in a rush to get home. Nothing to do with spending time with me – she’s actually going out to make handicrafts with one of the neighbours and Number One son id cooking for when we get home.

Monday blog on Tuesday morning

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By the time we’d finished at the Cash and Carry last night (buying drinks for tonight’s BBQ) and unloaded, it seemed like time for a meal. I decided that we weren’t seeing enough of each other a few weeks a ago so suggested that we went out for a meal now and again, so last night seemed like a good chance to put the plan into action. It’s a bit like a date night but we went straight from work so we didn’t wash and Julia still had paint all over her trousers.

We went to the Lord Ted at Newark. It was good. The staff were cheerful, the service was good, and the food was better than good, though not quite excellent. We had the lamb steaks, which were nice, though one of mine was a bit fatty and the veg (onion rings, grilled tomato and green peas) were not inspiring. We had to explain what an Irish coffee was (and it came with squirty cream on top) so when I see taht it rates 3.5 on Trip Advisor I’d have to agree. Squirty cream should not be seen on anything apart from jelly and novelty burlesque acts, though I’m too old to bother about either of these. (A little voice at the back of my head is saying “You’re never too old for jelly” but I’m going to ignore it.)

What really sticks in my mind is the young woman on the table behind us (because the staff follow the deplorable practice of pushing everyone together instead of letting us space ourselves out). She had a piercing voice, no internal censor and nothing of interest to say. You couldn’t ignore that voice so the choice was to ignore her or ask the waiter if they had a baseball bat on the premises. Some gems – “my salad’s warm. It shouldn’t be warm”, “that’s mayonnaise, I ordered salad cream” and “the only restaurant I don’r complain in is X”.

I’m bashing this out before starting to prepare the salads for tonight and lighting the outside oven.

If I’m lucky I’ll have more time to blog, if not expect today’s to be written tomorrow. Meanwhile, here’s a link to the Hampton Court Garden Festival Scarecrow Competition – it’s a bit better than ours. That’s where all our bubble-wrapped scarecrows went, though they don’t appear in the pictures. They are coming back soon so we’ll have posh scarecrows for the allotment.