The bloody shovel

Oof. Not a thing to do on a hot day.   I have just come back from the lower terraces muck raking.   Or in hommage to my recent trip to Australia where people call a spade a bloody shovel, I’ve been shovelling shit.   (Excuse my French.) Horse manure both fresh and steaming.

And not helped by the fact that both horses are perched in the shed next to my mighty manure heap.   I have a healthy respect for young stallion Ulysse not to want to brush right behind him with a full wheelbarrow load of manure.   He is just the horse to spook, lash out and send all my lovely collected manure flying.   And me.

So I have managed two loads onto the pile by easing the horses out of the way.   I felt like a tug boat easing a tanker out of the harbour.   But I have been thwarted for the third load. It’s sitting nearby full to the brim.   And the horses will probably playfully knock it over when they find it.   But at least it’s on the flat.

I had planned to get the deed done very first thing.   But somehow I ended up making a huge batch of black cherry jam.   Sixteen jars of cloyingly sweet oozy black goo.   Not for the faint hearted.

And then I was distracted by a spot of watering. I hadn’t finished the whole lower potager last night.   I had to keep coming back in to watch the Champions League final as it was a brilliant Barcelona goal fest. But now it’s done and I have even found some mangetout in among the thicket of pea plants.

And then Artur came down for a play. He’s rarely loving and attentive so I tend to spoil him when he comes running up for a pat.   That took a while.   And now it’s almost 11am, boiling hot and almost too late to get the tomatoes and more cosmos in.