Hopping mad
No blog and hardly any gardening for a whole month – I feel like my life’s been on hold!
Every so often we find that we have to pay lip service to the real world. Unfortunately, no matter how hard we try to drop out, there are certain people who just won’t let us, like the electricity people, the mortgage people… And for some terrible reason there seems to be a law against not paying one’s bills.
It’s a desperate situation! Although we would prefer to run our car with four bald tyres and no breaks whatsoever (we drive slowly to compensate) – someone out there in a posh office has decided to make it illegal. And so, a whole pile of nasty bits of paper accumulate on the table until one day I have to say, “Look, Ian, we need some money!”
And this is what has led us to the terrible month of April 2007, spent indoors and infront of a computer screen being ‘graphic designers’, using jargon we had almost forgotten, trying to come up with a design that we could present to our client as ‘simple, but contemporary’. It’s been a nightmare; many nights of not getting to bed until 4 am, endless cups of coffee, headaches, arguments. And at the end of it all, a client who probably thinks you didn’t do what she wanted, and an invoice sent out for only a third of what you feel you should be paid.
And whilst we struggled inside with our bleary eyes glued to computer screens, a war was waging outside. We are under rabbit-attack! The 200 hedge plants which I planted a month ago have been almost decimated by the chomp-chomp of furry hoppers; my parsley is now rabbit pellets, five rows of onions are just one inch tall. I had to send Ian out at dusk with his gun and orders to “shoot anything that hops”
Yes, I agree that bunnies are very cute, and the idea of killing them is terrible; but the sight of the damage they caused, and the knowledge that short of fencing-in two hectares of land (ha ha!) we will never be able to protect the veg and other stuff that are being planted has led us to… rabbit stew. So, on Friday, we got a big one (there have been others, but we are sizeist). I was sent out at 7.30 am with implements and my trusty book to skin my first rabbit. And at 7pm that night, we sat down to bunny-dinner.
It’s sad, but it’s war!
…Well, clearly I do, and there are plans afoot for rustling up one of those on a zero-budget (more news soon). In the meantime, here’s what the kids and I got up to this afternoon in order to compensate for the lack of greenhouse. It’s called the ‘hot-box’. I stole the plastic box from the children (it used to house useless toys that they never play with), plus an old plastic sack, a piece of twine, a halogen lamp (also stolen from the children, someone call social services) and VOILA! Inside this box are pots of melons and sweetcorn. We’ll be making another one tomorrow for the cucumbers, basil, etc.
