Of bindweed, bulbs and broken backs.

Well, here we are again. There's been a bit of a pause in the blogging due to work commitments but this week is my week off and it's been getting spent in the garden sorting out a problem bed.

We live in a wonderfully rural part of Hertfordshire, surrounded by farms, fields, and commuters! Our retreat from all the sorry sad sods around us has always been our garden and to that end we've spent much time and effort trying to get it sort of right, but, as any gardener will tell you there is always something trying to put paid to anything you plan in a garden. For us this year it's been the dreaded bindweed!

Over the past few years we've managed to practically get rid of the prehistoric nettle that grew from one end of the garden to the other, (and then back up the other bloody side!), we're almost on top of the bramble problem, having only to pull up 20 or 30 sprouts each year now compared to the hundreds we used to have to deal with. Even milk-thistle, dead-nettle, dandy-lion and buttercup seem to be reducing year on year.

However, bindweed is a bitch! Every piece you pull out will result in 2 or 3 more growing from the same spot, and the only answer once it's gotten to the point where it's starting to kill your plants is to get out the fork and digg the whole area out, and I do mean 'digg the area out'.

The root system of this insidious little plant murderer is amazing. It grows along merrily tunneling under your garden just a foot or so below the surface sending up a shoot whenever it feels like it, if it hits something underground it'll devide and grow away two directions, if you happen to break it it'll send up shoots from both bits and keep on with the root growth at the same time!

There's now been 10 man/woman-days spent on getting it out, and we're both knackered from it as the first move was, obviously, having to dig out all the plants we've put in the bed, making sure while we did it that no bindweed roots were hiding in the rootball of each of them. Everything has been stripped out except a couple of plants far too big to move and a tree or two now and most of the bed has been DOUBLE dug to get the roots out. I think the deepest we had roots at was around 18 inches down, but the whole bed was infested, we've ended up with a pile of bindweed root that's about a cubic metre now!

There's about another days work to clear the rest of the bed, then it's a matter of deciding what we put back into it. The bosslady wants it as small trees and shrubs with ground cover planting, me, I'll be happy with anything so long as it's not bindweed and I don't have to dig it again.

Well, that's me rant for now, catch up later.

Peace and love to all.

of kites, kids and tangled string

Oh, the fun we've had today!

Our local Market town of Royston held it's kite festival today and, just for the hell of it, we went along, (actually, I'd been secretly planning it for days, good old fashioned fun and I love it!).

The 'aging maternal embodiment' came along with me and the wife as, like me, she has a love of silly things like kiting. So clutching my bundle of assorted flying-flotsam and wearing a five-year-old's grin we set off on the trail to Royston Heath. There's a long tradition to our kite festival, so they say!, this is the first time I've ever managed to get off my butt and go, but it's gone on now for many years and the Heath is a great place to go, even just for a stroll out to look at the wildflowers that reside there.

Despite the typical British-summer's day looming over the dark horizon of the golf course there was a huge turn out of kiting fools with, at one point, well in excess of a hundred kites of varied form sharing the skies together, not always in total harmony!

For my part I had fashioned a pair of 1.7m stunt kites into a twin-stack and dominated as much sky as I could hold, still with said five-year-old's grin firmly ensconced on my face!, while the wife and mother snatched what sky they could with my two mini pocket kites and a bloody great fish!

The day was awash with everything from the smallest tissue-paper slips on cotton threads to bloody great 7 & 8 metre traction kites dragging full-grown men through the air and down the hill on their arses, a sight much enjoyed by all who love to see cocky-bastards come to an ignominious end!

All was a picture of fluttering beauty, giggling joviality and family happiness, proper old stylie!, and only slightly marred by the unfortunate incident of my rather thugg-like sky-hogg of a kite colliding with the teddy-bear-parachute-launching kite flown by a lovely old couple. They'd done their bit on the display field, for the crowds of eager children wanting to see their beloved cuddly toys plummeting earthward on a totally inadequate parachute, and were just having fun with their own teddy when my awesome speed and radical steering caused my kite-strings to catch them by suprise as they sent the poor unfortunate bear aloft yet again, the upshot was that I hurriedly steered away before they could trace who was at the end of the offending strings leaving their kite torn, turned upside down, and decending at pace to earth. After inspecting the damage their only option was to pack the poor thing away and sit back fuming/sulking. I did give a call of 'sorry!', but I think it may have fell on dead ears. My karmic payback was to find, on grounding my own kite later on, that tension had taken it's toll on my nice new lines and I was now the proud owner of the worlds biggest birds nest! So much for that pair, I now await the arrival of 500m of nice braded line from Hong-Kong, via Ebay, of course!

So, I say to you all, if you've get even the slightest chance to get yourself out on a field with a kite, please, for the good of your soul, do it! Kites are cheap, check out Ebay, (other kite suppliers are available in the real-world), and buy yourself a good, clean, traditional bucket of damd good fun! You wont regret it for a moment.

As soon as I manage to work out how to do it I'll add some links to sites you can get your fun from.

All the best to each and all.

Question; Why do people drive for miles to get to a gym just to run a few miles on a machine that's bolted to the floor, and pay to do so?

So, here we are, another day, another blogger.

It's a brave new world out there and things are moving on at lightning pace towards the 'new eutopia' of the techno-age where we sit at our desks living our lives through IM services, saving money through Ebay/Amazon and the like and being regailed by the latest 'hot-picks' auto-downloaded by the music industry direct to the MP3 device of our choice.

Or so the media and the marketing departments would have us believe. There is, however, still a world going on outside and despite what the children might think, it's a reasonably fun one to get out and about in.

I know it's not the same as it was years ago when we all left our doors open and knew our neighbour's family history, pubs were places for old men, the Roxy was the centre of the universe and comunication started with finding a pen and paper not switching on the laptop.

If you're sat there agreeing with all that crap, then best you toddle off to bed, you're already past the point of no return! Even I, an ageing Hippy have embraced the world of technology in the hope that one day sense will prevail and unity amongst man will be helped along by the power or the web. Everyone has a view, and now we can all air them to the world for all to debate.

There was a point I saw the 'web as some kind of monster, skulking in the wings awaiting its chance to pounce, devouring us in its unending tide of filth, corruption and greed. And I was right, all this is there within, but that doesn't mean it's all there is and it's not hard to stay away from the darker side of the evil bastards ripping off the innocents.

Embrace the future, for only in the joining in can any difference be made by the individual. The tune has been written, the melody's being played, please join in, create a rythm with which to woo the world and steer the tune of our future by the standards of the past.

Peace and love to all.

Steve.