Pub Quiz and Tools!

During the height of the pandemic in 2020, RollsRoyceGuy and his wonderful wife, Fi, had the idea of keeping our circle of friends amused by hosting a virtual pub quiz.Great success! However,an opportunity was lost as this could have been the next big reality TV program as lock down cabin fever brought out a range of competitive behaviors. A psychologists dream! For most though, the main objective was not to win the wooden spoon.

My favorite was the picture round – with the ”show us your favorite gadget”episode being outstanding. The males had to anonymously show their favorite gadget and the females had to guess who was its owner. Points won or lost for correct/incorrect answers. A strawberry huller was my selection.

Cob and AL both know how strawberries grow as they have seen them in their raised bed. Rosie thinks they magically come from the fridge fairy- so our raised bed will have strawberry plants and maybe she will get to use the huller?

But not to waste a good idea, I thought I would share 2 of my favorite gardening tools. Part of making gardening fun is to try and take the hard graft out of it, especially stressful back bending work. Both the dutch hoe and wrecking bar do this.

The wrecking bar is used in all kinds of construction work – Jeremy uses one to build crevice gardens. I have used one for 20 years – to plant bulbs. The pointed end of this heavy, 5’ bar when driven into the ground and wiggled around, leaves a nice bulb size hole about 6” deep – perfect! Next autumn mine will be called into action to plant narcissi, allium and camassia.

I learned to use a dutch hoe at Andy’s allotment before I was 10 – weeding between rows of spuds and brassicas. In half an hour it is possible to clear a pretty big patch of all kinds of emerging weeds. All done without the slightest back bend.

It has been a good while since I worked long stints in the garden during winter and as such at the end of the day a good bath is in order. lrene was fond of lavender bath salts……so……..

I have not been successful in growing lavender (English or French) since coming to the US – too much clay, preventing good drainage and wet roots does it for lavender. So, with the use of a gravelly landscape mix in the raised bed I think it worth another try. Something to look forward to.