{"id":2693,"date":"2021-07-07T18:30:28","date_gmt":"2021-07-07T18:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2693"},"modified":"2021-07-07T18:33:51","modified_gmt":"2021-07-07T18:33:51","slug":"wednesday-7th-july-2021-day-478","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/07\/07\/wednesday-7th-july-2021-day-478\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday, 7th July, 2021 [Day 478]"},"content":{"rendered":"

I consulted my wife’s iPhone this morning (whilst my own was being charged up) to reassure myself that we were going to get some fine weather so that I could get some outside jobs completed. Specifically, I really wanted it tit to be a fine day so that some of the clutter in ‘Mog’s Den<\/em>‘ could be either cleaned and stored or thrown away before the reuse disposal men pay us a visit early on\u00a0tomorrow morning. The app on Meg’s phone assured me that we were\u00a0gong to have a cloudy but rainless day all day today\u00a0until about 4.0pm. We did some of our ‘normal’ Wednesday\u00a0morning jobs and\u00a0determined that we would go down to Waitrose<\/em> in the car having collected the newspapers and I would leave Meg with a coffee and a bun whilst I\u00a0want to shoot off to Poundland<\/em> to buy a few gardening requisites (putting the finishing touches to Mog’s Den<\/em>) But whilst we were in <\/span>Waitrose<\/span><\/em>, the\u00a0heavens\u00a0opened and we had a really intense downpour –\u00a0nonetheless, I waited until the worst of it was over and then did make a trip to Poundland<\/em>\u00a0where the things that I really wanted were ‘out of stock – try again on Friday<\/em>‘ Nonetheless \u00a0I bought \u00a0some cleaning materials (don’t you just love\u00a0washing out muddy old plant pots!) but the gardening books tell you that these really do need to be clean so that you\u00a0don’t transfer virus from old stock to new. I even bought myself a ‘dog grooming\u00a0brush’\u00a0<\/span>which has wires on one side and a brush on the other which I believe (thinking laterally) may be exceptionally good at removing crusted mud from old plant pots and renovating them. This morning I allowed myself to be\u00a0swayed by an advert in my Inbox\u00a0offering me an end-of-season sale of a\u00a0<\/span>Large Standard Weeping Pussy Willow Tree (on a 80-100cm stem) theoretically marked down from \u00a330 to \u00a38. The blurb tells me that it will not\u00a0<\/span>now<\/span>\u00a0taller than this but is an idea ‘patio’ tree which will only get\u00a0thicker and bushier over the years (with lots of catkins) but not\u00a0necessarily taller. I can always find\u00a0space for this in Meg’s Den<\/em>\u00a0where it can joon my other\u00a0section of small but growing trees which I am busy\u00a0<\/span>populating as I write but it\u00a0might even grace our patio at the back of the house.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This afternoon proved to be on of those frustrating afternoons when one was dying to get into into the garden to get one’s jobs done. Although we had several showers I was counting on the fact that in the late afternoon – about 5.00-ish the clouds tend to roll away and you have the start of a fine evening. I took the opportunity to get the little patch of garden dug over and now its awaiting something colourful to get planted into it. Next I started to tackle the area around my old little mini-greenhouse (soon to be replaced as the original cover ripped and got blown away – quite a common fate I\u00a0should imagine) In my pottering days, I had evidently filled\u00a0several pots with some sieved soil and then topped off with gravel but whatever the original intention was, they now looked a mess. So a lot of them\u00a0got thrown away as I have a\u00a0couple of empty Forest Bark bags which are quite strong and can take a lot of junk. So a lot of\u00a0that is now thrown away but I have discovered that evidently \u00a0I had a\u00a0penchant for\u00a0buying plastic buckerts of which I now have about half a dozen. The next job along is to clean out a matching set of\u00a0plastic pots which is a job which I actually\u00a0hate doing. But the upside of all of this is that I can plant out the hazel plants I have\u00a0rescued from my clearing of the border in the front of the house and that means that if they grow well enough, I might end up with a row of\u00a0hedging plants to make an\u00a0instant hedge were I to need one as a border.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As I write, the build up to the England-Denmark semifinal is reaching a crescendo. I must admit that I have very mixed emotions about all of this. On the one hand, like most of the rest of the country, I want the England team to do well and to progress, on merit, to the finals if they deserve to win and play the better football. On the\u00a0other hand, I do not really like the rampant nationalism that surrounds all of this – nor do\u00a0I wish that Boris Johnson should take any credit for any English success\u00a0that may ensue. It is not axiomatic that the better\u00a0team wins as we saw with the Spanish last night – rather it is the\u00a0team which seizes the moment (and doesn’t make any crass mistakes in the meantime)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I consulted my wife’s iPhone this morning (whilst my own was being charged up) to reassure myself that we were going to get some fine weather so that I could get some outside jobs completed. Specifically, I really wanted it tit to be a fine day so that some of the clutter in ‘Mog’s Den‘ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2693"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2696,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2693\/revisions\/2696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}