I'm writing! I'm writing!!
Saturday post coming... but probably on Sunday.
…Or possibly very late Saturday night, depending on your time zone.
In my defence, I’ve also been outside today, engaging in mortal combat with the couch grass. The forecast was for rain - which we got in grandiose abundance this evening - and when I went out to see what needed doing in the downstairs garden I saw them. Poking their vile little heads above ground as if to say, “Yeah, we’re here. It’s May and we’re heading for your onion bed. What’re you gonna do about it, two-legs?”
So I spent most of the afternoon taking ginormous and immensely satisfying overhead swings at the dirt with an ancient hand digger, an iron pick-axe-like implement used on this farm by several generations of contadini.
They drill. The little bastards. Like botanical driver ants, boring right through anything that gets in their way. They send runners underground to find new territory. They start under the flagstones of the big patio area, and if I had my way I’d have the flags up and the whole thing cleared out with a back hoe and a giant radioactive bucket of Round-up, so help me.
This is the time of year they get things going after winter dormancy, and I spent most of the sunny parts of the day pulling up huge clumps of evil white tendrils, digging down to find the very start of them, pulling up huge runners, lifting bricks in the path to get the runners that had oiled their way under them.
I staggered in, covered head to toe in a fine coating of clay soil, and realised it was 3 pm. So, I’m done, but the post isn’t. So we’re going to have to wait. Hold that thought. I’ll be right with you.
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Part II of last Saturday’s post, “Why are we really ‘languishing’” is turning out interesting. I think I’ve discovered the real nature of our problem, and it’s not what you might think. (It certainly doesn’t have much to do with Covid.) I’ve asked some very old people what the solution might be, and the answer was also surprising.
Here’s some hints:
Nice young guy loses dumb hipster job he probably didn’t like anyway, and just decides to start doing Real things:
How to build a house to last a thousand years:
How we lived for about 10,000 years, give or take:
You don’t have to live like they tell you.
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I hate couch grass. I truly hates it.
I have large patches at my home. It grows in my orchard. It grows under my borders. It menaces my vegetable patches. It grows with hideous strength and I delight in its destruction. Shovel, spade, pick-axe, and entrenching tool; agricultural herbicide, roller, and vehicle tyre. All are used and have been used on the stuff and there are still patches.
I ... feel ... quite strongly about it...
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As for the young bloke who built that tiny house I enjoyed seeing the process unfold. Yes, we do not have to live as we have been told so the more of these stories the better!
Strength -- enough to build a home. Time -- enough to hold a child. And Love -- enough to break a heart. ( You're right, we don't have to live like they tell us. )