When outside has been nothing but a seven day sentence of a cold and grey, drizzly washout of miserableness, and your mood can still be described as a bit under the weather, you know it’s not been the best week at the barracks ever.
It hasn’t been raining continually, I guess there must have been a moment or two when it was ok to be in the garden because I did manage to weed the onions and garlic, and to transplant the broad beans into the plot, but mostly, it’s a Glastonbury-scale mud pit out there. On top of which, I am feeling surprisingly rotten.
This week, I am going to try to fix everything with an engine. The normal lawnmower, the ride-on lawnmower, Mr Rotovator, and the moped have all stopped working for a variety of reasons. I’m not really very much of an engine tinkerer, but I do have all the manuals, and I think I have an idea what it wrong with each.
The ride-on lawnmower, for example. The drive belt from the engine to the cutting blades has, over the winter, changed its length. Last year, it was working just fine, this year, it is too long, and it keeps jumping off the drive wheels. This should, of course, be impossible. I have had a little bit of a poke around already, and my best guess is that there should be some way to tension it. If there is, I can’t find it. Perhaps the springs which hold it all in place have just got a bit old. That’s a thing that can happen, isn’t it? Is it?
I had a look back at photos from this week last year. The seedlings were doing considerably better a year ago. Which means, its not just me being grumpy at all. This really has been a particularly grey, cold and damp start to the year. The forecast for the next week is more of the same. Rain every day. I expect that shortly after that, it’s going to start to get warmer and dryer and within no time at all, we’ll be into a face-melting record-setting summer, and honestly, I am looking forward to it.
Right now, I can’t predict the contents of this week’s job list any more than to be spending the maximum amount of time in bed, reading good books.
And so, until next week, I hope you get some sunshine wherever you are and remain until then
your Pirate Ben
xoxo
Sorry to hear you’re feeling rotten, I know how the rain can make you feel like that. You always brighten up my Monday mornings though and so after hovering over the subscribe button yet again I’ve decided to join you and might even cancel Netflix and I hope you get a bit of sunshine so that you can plant something there on my behalf. All the best
Laura x
I'm right with you on the miserableness all of this rain has dumped on the mood of anyone living in north-central Europe - I was completely prepared to return from my odd seasonal transition of winter-summer-fall-spring (it's an Australian travel thing)...and now, I am yelling at the weather gods because it seems the spring thing didn't really happen! On the other hand, the parched earth seems happy to receive a good drink of water!