The Garden Shed - Excavations

(A view of garden sheds in the area - ours is barely visible on the right, after years of growing things up it!)

OK, so Mrs Beeton's suggestion for the domestic work on a Wednesday was cleaning the best bedrooms and the windows, but this week we did something a little different. With help from our friend Tom, we emptied the garden shed: very exciting, not, surely? Well, no, but we were not without some trepidation about what we might find in the way of inhabitants...many rodents in this area, and quite a few foxes, for starters.

What's more, we knew there was a hole in the back wall of this historic edifice (complete with asbestos roof, natch) and over the last year the shed has filled up with some four or five inches of soil/compost, as though something were nesting within. Hmmmm. And as is the traditional way with garden sheds, it wasn't exactly clutter-free. We took out two bicycles (Keith's with a chunk out of one wheel!), two bookcases, tins and tins of old paint/ wood sealer/ paint stripper/ barbecue fuel, three thousand (well, that's what it felt like) flowerpots, an oil lamp, assorted bits of watering equipment, six (or was it seven?) defunct pond pumps, a pond hoover (yes, there really are such things), hanging baskets, a quantity (as the auction houses say) of hosepipe, an assortment of garden tools (including a probably 1930s rake we inherited with the house), wooden shelving, and a seemingly infinite supply of deteriorating bags of sand, gravel, grit, cement, cat litter etc.

But in fact all we found by way of creature was one dead rat - and quite enough too, I hear you say. Could have been much worse, of course - but the real acid test will be when we take the edifice down and find anything that may be nestling underneath (see rodents, foxes etc above). Tom's comment was "That was a good job we did there. Of course there's just one trouble with having started it - we have to finish it!".

The Stone Menagerie no 1

Well, alabaster, to be absolutely accurate, rather than stone - but I really couldn't resist taking a shot of this carved dog on the Rickardes tomb in Chipping Norton church. The detail is amazing, and it was surely carved from life - you can even see the claws, and I can just imagine the collar with what were probably a gilt brass buckle and matching quatrefoil decorations on the leather. Some sort of bull terrier, I would think - I saw one very similar hanging its head out of a car window only a few days later, looking for things to chase, as it were. Pity this one looks so melancholy (and I wished I could un-muzzle him!), but I suppose he's partly intended as a mourner...

The Ancestors Say Hello

Yesterday we had a day in Chipping Norton in search of my Meades ancestors. The weather was bright and breezy and the town looked at its best with all that pale gold stonework reflecting the September sunshine. We made a beeline for the church - often a good place to start anyway, but in this case there was an extra that put a smile on my face straightaway. One of the first things I saw was this inscription:



for all the world like a welcome.

We also found Mowbray Meades on the war memorial plaque, and a group of at least three gravestones to members of the family just outside the door. And Richard Meades who was my great great great great grandfather was the mason who led the rebuilding of the church tower early in the 19th century. Salute!

Electric Flowers?

A slightly bizarre image taken at the end of a coach tour during the recent biennial conference of the Anthony Powell Society in London. Not actually electric flowers, despite appearances! (Best effect achieved by clicking on the image to enlarge it).

Woodman, spare that tree!

The view from the back of our house in the leafy suburbs - looks quite normal, even fairly civilised, if unexciting. But it isn't as good as it was, alas. The other morning we heard the sound of a chain saw, and realised that the people who live about three houses along, in the road backing on to ours, were cutting down the conifer at the foot of their garden. Oh well, probably Leylandii, so perhaps one can't blame them - though a pity, as the birds seem to like perching in it, even those that are a bit large for it, like the crows! Oh, and they took down the rest, while they were at it, which is why we are now forced to look at the backs of the houses on the other side of these now deceased trees.

OK, so it's delusional to pretend that we're not surrounded by buildings - we live on an estate in a built-up area, for goodness sake. And our neighbours are entitled to do what they like on their own property. But I do regret those trees, as they were part of a screen - in summer you could hardly see any of the nearby houses at all. Now we have an uninterrupted view of the backs of the houses at that edge instead, and the photo really doesn't show how bare it looks. One neighbour recently asked why we have so many trees ourselves - and we could only say that apart from the important benefits to the local wildlife, we've never understood the fascination of gazing upon fences, drainpipes, satellite dishes and washing lines!

Feed Me! Feed Me! (Part 2)

This morning I happened to get quite a good portrait of Pussy-next-door, whom I am feeding while my neighbours are away:




Though it has to be said that this is the even more familiar view!

Feed me! Feed me!

(Finally managing to break out of the post-employment blogging silence) There are a-many things for me to do in my retirement, but at the moment I seem to spend half my life ministering to critters. This morning I got up and fed the pond fish, the birds in the garden, and four cats (of which more anon) and the long-haired one had to be brushed and have her eyes bathed and her soil tray topped up too. I have just dealt out the second (or is it third?) round of cat treats for three.

When I finish writing this, I shall go next door to feed the long-haired one again and probably change her soil tray, then come back, feed the pond fish, refill seed hoppers for the birds if it will stay dry enough, and feed the three cats again. The increase in cat numbers has come about in two ways - one neighbour came to us a couple of weeks ago and asked if I could feed their cat while they were away. To be sure I had said I would if they could find no-one else, so that's my choice, but I had forgotten that the long coat would need regular grooming, and I had not bargained for the fact that his cat is almost certainly pregnant. I just hope she manages to hold onto the kittens until they come back! The other extra is a stray cat that would like to move in - but that has sto be taken slowly as our two resident pussers are not keen...