Gardening

Yesterday was a wonderful warm and sunny day. John went over to my parents to get the AA to start their car (it's not been driven since November and had flat battery). The AA man got the car started OK, but on testing it found that it wasn't taking up charge. So they drove to a local garage, with the AA man behind them in case they stalled, to find that the garage couldn't sell them a battery as the people who dealt with that weren't there. So the AA man had one in his van, and fitted it and charged the garage for it. Ye gods, what a palaver!

Later someone did a test drive in the car, and is interested in buying it. That will be a weight off my parents' minds.

Meanwhile back in Liverpool I was doing some gentle gardening. The primroses I bought the other week looked as if they were becoming potbound, so I found some old pots and potted them on. Three thrums and a single pin. The male plants are much more floriferous than the single female. But it was the only pin we could find at the nursery, and very happy we were to find it. It would be wonderful if it sets seed.

It took me all afternoon to pot on the four plants, and I also managed to split and pot on one of last year's primulas. Basically I potted one plant and then watched some TV for half an hour or so (re-runs of Startrek Voyager) before tackling the next one. But by the time I finished I was too weary to go back one last time to clear up, so John did that when he got home.

Later on I was really happy to see a repeat of Friday evening's Gardener's World with some fantastic ideas for making living fences out of willow (and some school children made a giant spider out of it too!). I'd love to try this at the caravan - maybe we could do that to disguise the gas cylinders a bit more. Plus would make a great wind-brake where the hawthorn was, might even give the wrens a new nesting place, though we are thinking of getting a wren nesting box too.

At the Chiropracters the last time I went I was leafing through the latest RSPB magazine. There was a really lovely article by a man who had regularly fed a brood of blackbirds, one of which later brought back his own brood. I so wish that the birds would come feed in our yard! I've seen a wren there once, pecking at my primula flowers. And John's seen a blackbird come down in the Autumn to peck throught the leaf litter. But mostly we are a bird free zone.

Was just browsing the RSPB website since I was there, and found an interesting article on the Humming Bird Hawk Moth. I didn't see one last year, but the two previous years I had one visit the garden at the caravan. It seemed to be particularly drawn to the red campion.