What a weekend - it started with me innocently pulling down some ivy and ended with a very sore face and puffy eye. There is a wasp’s nest not far from where I was pulling the ivy down, and unbeknown to me, one had flown at me from behind, and I managed to get stung just below my eye. Cue lots of screaming, pain, burning sensation in my eye “it’s stung my eye! it’s stung me eye!”, more shouting, and dancing on the spot whilst Rich tried to pull the blighter out of my hair. Poor thing was half-mangled by the time it was freed from my locks, so Rich had to stamp on it. Feel a bit sorry for it really, I should have been more careful! I’m just steering clear of any wasps at this time of year, they’re mental - like a group of lager louts, completely pissed and up for a fight at the drop of a hat. Much prefer bees anyway, they have something distinctly more laid back about them.

My face was painful and sore and a little swollen for the rest of the day, but I went to bed and woke up the next morning looking like a Klingon. Puffy, half-closed eye and a distinct lack of defining of cheekbone on my right side. Oh how very! Bit better today, although it did puff up again overnight - but you can’t really see it that much anymore. Which is a good thing. My grandmother goes into anaphylactic shock when she’s stung by bees - I have never been stung by a wasp or bee before, so I don’t know. Well, didn’t know - I know about wasps now.

It seems this clearing of land is taking forever. The hedges are just MASSIVE, but it’s not so much the cutting that takes forever, it’s the clearing up and disposing of afterwards. And it’s quite boring work if I’m frank. Our compost heap is gigornmous, so I really don’t want to add a few extra feet to it, so I’m insisting that we take our cuttings to the local Tidy Tip, where they have a green skip. So at the moment we have lots of piles of hedge trimmings, ivy, buddleia and soon bionic Dogwood cuttings all over the joint. I’m waiting to dig out my extra veg plots (Rich thinks I should ditch the bordered beds that I currently have and just have one massive plot…not sure about this) when it’s rained a bit later on, as the ground is just rock solid at the moment.

I bought a load of herb seeds yesterday because I was a bit bored - can’t decide whether to do a trial run or not. I don’t want to waste my time or money, but I think if I have been more patient I could have got the seeds a lot cheaper. It seems that it’s totally the wrong time of year to plant any sort of herb, save a couple and the ones that you can grow indoors all year round. I think the people at the garden centre thought I was a bit mental - they were taking off the seed packets from the display whilst I was frantically trying to grab the herb seeds that I could salvage from the remnants of the display before they were put away. I might do some research and see if it’s viable to grow them all in pots over winter under cover. It’s all on a whim, I haven’t really thought forward about potential farmer’s markets, about how I should source the seed etc. I have done some research into how the different herbs are used in cooking - so that’s giving me some ideas for my own cullinary activities! Anyway, at least if I can’t grow them until early next year, I can have more time to plan this slightly bizarre venture.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 7:36 am and is filed under wildlife, herbs, plans, seeds, veg. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.