Virtuous and tiring weekend

[fivemack]

This weekend, I have bought and planted twenty marigolds, ten white snapdragons, ten burgundy snapdragons, ten blue lobelias, two white-flowered fuchsias, two yellow gerbera-like things, a large daisy, a purple gerbera-like thing, and a Venezuelan plant with purple feathery cones of flowers which I have naturally christened Hugo. Also 75 litres of compost and 75 litres of topsoil, 25l of which I have put in the large hole in the ground from which I excavated the buried vacuum cleaner on Thursday. I would have bought and planted a great big bag of broad beans, but apparently it's almost exactly the wrong time of year for them.

On Saturday, I cycled to Grantchester, had tea with naath and ptc24, and cycled back again. I have attended a barbecue chez antinomy and rmc28, paddled in the pool and eaten barbecued gammon steaks.

Today, I have cycled to Audley End (1:40 door to door) and back (1:20 door to door); it's quite an impressive house, though probably best to go there later in the summer, when you're not obliged to take a guided tour and can stare in wonder at the three rooms full of cabinets of taxidermy - they have a passenger pigeon, and an extremely disturbing entire cabinet full of owls. If the plan to get Great Bustards reintroduced on Salisbury Plain works out, I see I will have to go there and admire them; they're enormous.

The garden's also good, Capability Brown vistas with hahas everywhere. There's an urn with a monument to the Free Poland resistance members trained at Audley End by the SOE during World War 2; that's not an episode I'd heard of before, presumably because Free Poland didn't end as well as Free France.

I am tired now, and slightly wishing that I could install a spare set of knees; I will have a bath, eat pasta, then curl up in the living room with a good book until I feel sufficiently sleepy.

Comments

[darcydodo]

I've had tea in Grantchester, but not with pseudomonas (nor you), more's the pity.

I remember hearing about the Great Bustards reintroduction plan a good ten or more years ago.... what's the current status? :)

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

Should you be anywhere near Grantchester in the future, I would be delighted to take you tea, but I'm sure you could have guessed that.

Fifty-nine bustards have been obtained from Russia, reared from chicks and released; they tend to cover quite a wide range, in that at least two of the released birds were later found in southern France, but apparently they do come back to Salisbury Plain, and you can organise a trip there at some times of the year with an organisation that guarantees you will see a bustard.

Unfortunately, there's some concern that the Russian bustards were obtained by removing eggs from viable bustard nests (the claim was that a Russian organisation went around looking for bustard nests in about-to-be-ploughed fields and saving the eggs), so the import licence for the batch of bustards to be released this autumn has been delayed.

http://www.birdguides.com/birdnews/article.asp?a=692
http://www.rspb.org.uk/england/southwest/conservation/greatbustard.asp
http://www.drumbeat.org.uk/bustard.htm

[darcydodo]

That's... kind of hilarious.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Poland is free now.

As we went into WWII to guarantee its freedom, all I can say is better late than never.