Gardening leave

Having arrived back at Brinklow and seen off our friends, we were settling into a life of lakeside drinks and relaxation, when I got a phone call from Michael, a friend who lives in Arundel. He wondered if he would be able to visit the following day.

Initially we thought no, too short notice after our Ashby trip, but on second thoughts why not? So the following day Michael met us at the house and we trundled off to the boat for dinner. An opportunity that we are glad that we didn't miss, the weather was glorious, and so we took her out to moor on the Oxford next to All Oak woods for the night, winding at the Brinklow arm and returning the following day, as Michael had to be in Torquay the following day for an appointment. A short visit but a good one.

The following picture is a sight that you won't see very often. I have been sent ashore on gardening leave!

Well actually we are both rather busy about the house lately painting and generally doing face lift renovations for when our furniture arrives from storage. Jeeves has become a master painter, and Wooster the master gardener.

The garden might be rather narrow, but it is very long - a little bit like an allotment strip from the shed to the back wall. So I am landscaping it as such (borrowed a book on the subject from the library). Although it is a little late in the year for growing much now, but I can put in all the paths and create the raised beds for the next growing season.

It is jolly hard work though forking over all that soil and pulling out a couple of years worth of weeds - dug up a lot of potatoes though.

Some people might have heard or heard about a monologue that I rather unthinkingly treated those at our table and those around us on the subject of cats when we were dining at the Narrowboat Inn on the Grand Union not far from Stoke Bruene!! I will say no more about that tirade. (shurely had too much wine - ed).

Anyway when we got the house here in Rugby, I found to my horror that the garden was completely overrun with verminous cats. Worse than the cats themselves, was that smelly cat poo was being deposited everywhere; on the lawn and in the garden beds - what a smell!

Jeeves however has saved the day. She was leafing though a gardening magazine when she saw advertised a gadget called 'Catwatch', which had recommendations from the RSPB. So we got onto their website and after reading all the blurb about how these things work, we ordered one.

The thing is absolute magic, as it senses a cat walking in front of its eye, Zap!! We watched enthralled as several of the neighbour's cats sauntered around the corner and disappeared with a bang and a puff of blue smoke. . . . . Not really, it does work on an infrared sensor, but lets off an ultrasonic squawk that only cats don't like. We haven't seen a moggy or smelt their poo since.

Now the vexing thing is, what will the dog have to chase when we get one??