Weekending

[perlmonger]

Too hot.

I cycled off to the shops first thing Saturday, before the weather went from Too Hot to Batshit Crazy Hot: to Whiteladies Road for a lens cap and skylight filter for the Nikkor 50mm; not to the bike shop in Cotham (it hadn't opened yet); Gloucester Road for ankle straps and a quick steering bearing adjust from the poncey bike shop, sausage from the Polish grocer, and a two-for-one pair of fly zappers from Maplin. Thence to St Marks Road past Montpelier Station, where I took the crappy photo adjoining (now immortalised on the Bristol Traffic blog) after having to circle on the pavement around the three cars blocking the end of the road, more sausage from another Polish grocer, and squit, coriander, chilis and a jar of cornichon from the Sweet Mart. Finally, back home via St Werberghs (cheddar, apples, bananas and mushrooms) and the Centre, Anchor Road and the Floating Harbour.

Up to 25° as I got back to the village. ramtops and I decided that now was the time to divest the pnod of its infestation of underwater Leylandii in the form of reeds and a lily that between them rendered it impossible to see the fish, and barely even feed them. I should've taken photos: the whole lot came out as a single, huge and heavy lump that had covered pretty much all of the ledge in the pnod - maybe 3 or 4 foot round a curve and a good 18" across. Sawing the fucker up for disposal took the rest of the afternoon: that was wood in them there roots, and the four housebricks buried inside the mass demanded a degree of care in the sawing. I split most of it, but extracting the plastic pots that the two plants originally emerged from had to wait.

We discovered that one of the new zappers was dead. Checked the unit to be sure: 630VDC on the grid; 240VAC on the socket; nada from the UV bulb. Maplin said they'd replace just the bulb if I took it in, which seemed fair.

Sunday, after Mac's nasty but, thankfully, consequentially constrained fall on the grass bank by the pnod (she's written about it elsewhere), and aching somewhat from the previous day's exertions, I finished the splitting and greenbagging of the triffids. The pots were cut free, but there was no way that either would ever be separated from the solid mass of root it contained, so they went in the car as was. The idea was that the whole lot could go to the tiprecycling centre, along with our current load of plastic bottles and sundry other crap; this we did after swapping the UV bulb (they had to extract one from another unit; I'd assumed they had bulbs in stock when they said they'd swap it ;) and buying a tenpack of solar powered LED garden lights at Maplin, and getting the key that Mac had cut on Saturday filed down so it might actually work at Sainsbury.

We went on to Cleeve, to buy a few aquatics to fill some of the new space around the pnod (and perchance to keep the Tribe off the fish and frogs; well, we can hope); we got a couple of garden plants and tomato feed while we were at it. The afternoon saw ramtops and me mostly gardening, front and back. This is all getting horribly traditional middle-aged weekend occupation, but it's probably best if I don't think about that too much. Still, everything looks much better now post weeding and planting, and the day was ended wonderfully by a sharp rainstorm just after full dark. We sat for a while on the patio under the awning with last drinks listening to it fall and looking at the lights scattered around the garden, before finally going to bed.

A good weekend, on balance.