Back indoors from outdoors, for outdoors is where I was. But indoors is where I now be.
A whole bunch of holes, one foot diameter at the top, tapering to six inches at the bottom, two foot down, dug scraped and scratched. And let me tell you, that’s the most fun with a spade and trowel I’ve EVER had.
It started off fine, just fine, and I powered through the top two inches of that stuff that things grow in. That’s it! Soil! Then, inch by inch it got harderer and harderer, ‘till for the last foot and a half I wuzz fighting through clay, then that clay stuff that’s just short of going hard and becoming solid pot stuff. It’s probably got a name; very hard clay? Works for me.
Two feet below the bottom of your feet is quite a ways down and, owing to advancing years, finding the best position to work with my natty little trowel took time.
Kneeling was okay but as I got deeper I needed more reach. I thought lying face down would get it. Sadly, my stomach put my hand further from the bottom than when I was kneeling. Lying on my side proved to be the answer, alternating between left and right side. Quite a site, wallowing around like a beached whale, making sure my blow hole didn’t get covered.
”Why you don’t get twirly whirly diggy thingy like you see in shop?” she said through her laughter.
”Why? You think I can’t do this like this?”
”What I think is you stupid, like seriously stupid, is what I think.”
After what seemed like a very boring, horizontal lifetime the job was cracked.
I spent another couple of hours rolling around the garden, partly to see if there was anything else that needed doing while I was down there, but mainly to slowly decompress my way back to the vertical.
I achieved this by raising my head a couple of inches every ten minutes, then elevating into a kneeling position, head down, then standing, but with my upper body bent forward. From there it was just a matter of slowly, very slowly, moving into the full vertical.
As careful as I wuzz, the last movement still resulted in loud cracks, pops and stabs of pain everywhere until my head began to fill with those sparkly coloured lights and that strangely haunting sitar music again.
I stagger for a shower with lights, music and, ”What I think is you stupid, like seriously stupid, is what I think.” on continuous loop inside my head.
{Note to self; should’ve got one of those twirly whirly diggy thingies.}
Quote; Emo Phillips.
"I used to think the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this."
2 comments:
Chin up Foggy, one day you will reach an age where it will not disgrace you to get a little man in to do such things.
These days if I fall over I have a quick check round to make sure there is nothing else that needs doing while I'm down there...
(And when I do eventually attain the vertical perpendicular, it is accompanied by a noise like a crackle of musketry).
Yup, I should've got the little man with a twirly whirly diggery thingy. I do feel a tad tender today. And it's raining. And the TV's rubbish. Again.
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