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I’m sure old ginger will be along in due course to explain his song choice. Remiss of me to say that Friday culminated in a swim for the second night. The temperatures have dropped a bit in the last week. A beautiful sunny day looks to be the calm before the storm.
I’ve focused on my projects recently but have still fallen behind because there is so much going on at the moment . I only had time to look at a few races at Chelmsford tonight. Still profitable with two decent winners. No celebratory dips tonight. absolutely cream crackered. Didn’t make the allotment today but plenty essentials done today and groundwork for the week laid. Good to return to a few races tonight and a profit on the all weather with lion house and tamuluk easy winners.
31 bags done and another ten likely to follow in the coming week.
As for the bouquets, I’ve no real idea other than I take a load of cut flowers in midweek from various gardens my own and my allotments. They are all sold and a conservative estimate would be thirty bouquets made and sold and at least another seventeen next week.
I’ll likely stop offering the poo on Wednesday and focus on all the jobs that need doing, there is a big hole in the netting which is for the polytunnel and that needs to be replaced. Panes of glass in the greenhouse, are needed and waste pruning from two of my five fruit trees need burning off the allotment asap. I think the morning which herald the first significant frost is the time to start all of that. A nice winters morning. Burning the excess branches from the old cuttings is a good start to winter and I’ve got to unearth some more artichokes and the beds need to be laid I’ve got loads of raw material now, poo and leaves and grass carbon layered on top of nitrogen and again and again. The pleasure is to dig into the bed over a year later and every square inch is over populated with worms centrepeedes woodlice and every imaginable creature ants three or four varieties of worm and of course spiders 🕷 big and small the daddy of them all the false widow who loves to live in dry conditions under rums and who has a truly fearsome bite, but is a mesirising thing of beauty to watch but avoid at all costs. The hour glass symbol tattooed on his body is a huge warning sign and he’s best left well alone.Yesterday was a quiet one by my standards and the emotional roller coaster of Friday at a mate’s funeral was strange. A pint of Guinness that lasted two hours ( usually gone in 120 seconds) while I chatted to people I hadn’t seen in over a quarter of a century was surreal to say the least. One such guy told me his Daughter had won love island and how it had transformed her and his life. “I’m a marketing manager for one of the biggest breweries in Britain and her tax bill is bigger than my entire salary”. Another colleague who was also a professional athlete had travelled from Lincoln. Performance director for uk athletics now and still competing as a vet. It was great to meet all these old characters and “chew the cud” and it was extra special to have a drink with the family. So yesterday although I hadn’t realised at the time was a day of recuperation. I nipped into the local independent non “national chain” coffee shop which although not shifting barrells of coffee every day, is still doing well and they give me a bag or two of coffee grounds a week. (Coffee grounds go into my no dig beds.) More importantly they have time to converse and I always take something in for the staff especially at the weekend.
These Artichokes are “special” and I have now given a box to the bakery, the biggest restaurant in town and to the assistant barrista at this coffee shop as well as a host of neighbours.
The beautifully independent cafe in the high street where there is a United Nations of cooks also have a bag of artichokes and I’m very keen to see what they do. The young lady at the coffee shop says she loved the artichokes and had a lovely meal last weekend with them, so she wants some more today. She has had zucchini flowers and courgettes and has a flair for cooking. She also tells me she is taking a pastry chef’s course at college and had been a sous chef at a big dockside hotel in Ipswich as well in London before the kitchen got “too hot”. Catering is ruthless and takes no prisoners it is potentially a source of pain and headache and I’ve seen and experienced both sides of the coin. So to hear this girl’s tale of the dark side of the industry is an everyday occurrence and a most familiar story.
Because she comes in from Ipswich on the bus she didn’t realise there was also an excellent bakery in the high street at the stop before she disembarks. To her suprise I told her that the local bakery might just be interested to know there was potentially a talented cake maker languishing in a coffee shop and urged her to take her cv to them. The bakery is next door to the top restaurant and a further buns throw up the road is the biggest and oldest hotel in town with a huge kitchen and up to two years ago, they had the best french head chef in Suffolk there and I can see this young lady working her way up the high street into one or all three of these establishments.
All of this underlines my unfulfilled passion for catering especially the culture of the kitchen. My brother is a top top chef and now works and lives in Germany 🇩🇪. When I was sixteen he got me a job in the kitchen at his hotel where he lived in as second chef. While I was only a domestic (washer upper and general dogsbody )despite that, I was a small but vital cog in the machine and before long I was prepping plucking at gutting chickens and one of the family. Every Friday Saturday there was a huge function in the ballroom, be it a wedding or dance or sportsman’s dinner. This meant a long and very late night but such was the care of all staff there was a mini bus ride back home for all staff and the driver would take you as close to home as he could. The sportsman’s dinners were the best,a rump steak or two wrapped in tinfoil was always the addition to the sweet trolley which came home in cakeboxes. I ate lunch and dinner with the head chef and lived like a king at weekends. part of me stayed in the catering trade and in the kitchens forever until on leaving my job ( early retirement) I got a delivery job for the local fishmonger and I was transported in time back to my old life (short as it was, two years, no more) I was delivering fish to restaurants, hotels and public houses direct to the kitchens and I was back talking to the Head chefs and above all the chefs. I know the lingo the banter and the law and the lure and the lore of kitchens and I absolutely love it. Everything I ever learned and remember about catering life remained intact. I had tremendous rapport wherever I delivered to and if I was a salesman I’d be selling ice to the Eskimos and hauling coals to Newcastle, because that is what I do. Before I knew it the boss was giving me extra fish to add to my rounds and I would sell it with ease. The only problem of course was I was well liked on my rounds and this “mutual love in “ meant I took forever to get around and despite my affinity with each and every kitchen I was the equivalent of Brian the snail and of course in the real world, time is money. This could never be impressed on me and I was too much of a maverick to understand that I wasn’t the God of sales and all I needed to do was deliver and move on to the next job, not give everyone artichokes!! The pay wasn’t great and I had already done a lifetime of defying authority in my career, so I guess I lasted just over a year before the smell of fish and bad timekeeping saw me leave the catering world again. But to say I loved that job and my reintroduction to the kitchen would be an understatement a massive one as well. Despite Having boarded huge vessel miles out at sea using a Jacob’s ladder off the side of a tiny pilots craft ( would today be risk averse and simply not allowed.) it is fair to say I’m a land lubber and although never far away from the water, I go better on terra firma. But I love all things nautical and have huge admiration for all seafarers from the great to the small.
I hope the young lady works her way up from the bakery to the restaurant to the hotel kitchen and then maybe back to the city of London. Today artichokes tomorrow the world 🌎.Nice one Ginger
Riding high in the sheet-music top-20 of 1916 this became became a favourite of the poor buggers dispatched as cannon fodder to the trenches. So popular was it that it was used post-war to help the shell-shocked regain some peace of mind
A truly beautiful song, it’s been recorded by many a singer such as Jo Stafford, Dorothy Squires, Vince Hill, Bobby Darin, and more recently June Tabor and Alfie Boe; but my favourite is by Frank Sinatra
Roses of Picardy – Frank Sinatra
This is certainly a musical journey and I’m loving it gentlemen thank you.
Plenty of nothing that’s what I’ve got.
And it’s plenty enough for me.
Great day.
Finally got the first steps done to re organise my plot in my first year there. My orchard trees half of which have been pruned back are central to my design. The prunings have been blocking progress and getting them shifted has proved problematic earning a quote of 128 pounds to wood chip them. My solution a £1 box of matches and a huge bonfire 🔥 I love a bonfire and I can mix the ashes into the soil. I’m still aiming to woodchip the path system I’m putting in. But I’ll have to find a company willing to donate the chips free. For me the first rule of an allotment is make sure I pay as little as possible to run it and recycle recycle ♻️ recycle. I saw the lady in the coffee shop after the bonfire of the samitees and she is keen to tryout at the bakery 🥯 and hopefully it’ll be a stepping stone back to restaurant kitchens for her. Tomorrow is my dad’s anniversary we lost him in 1999. He liked horses and I think he’d appreciate the funny side of “Sam’s poo 💩” raising so much cash for the hospice who cared for him. The flowers, the end product of the manure is the attractive part and the joy they bring to so many people. But the huge impact on the local environment of growing these plants as companions alongside vegetables cannot be overstated. And taking these cut flowers for the hospice charity shop will hopefully raise awareness of their value to the natural balance of a unique local environment.
A tonne of wood and fencing and a wood store has been given to me by a neighbour. I’ve managed to reclaim some driftwood after years in the sea and along with a rejection piece from a recent job a huge piece of wood will be the centre piece in holding in all the no dig beds. My next door neighbour had the first batch of artichokes (which he’s cooked and frozen ready to serve up on Christmas Day “ delicious they are “
he tells me. I’ve cleared all the leaves from his front beds of a massive garden, so he’s kindly agreed to get out his trailer and haul a huge amount of allotment bound wood for me tomorrow. And his leaves will go straight into the leaf mould bank and in two years will be pure black soil for beds and potting.
Tomorrow is all about the old fella though. A big big day.I’ve one word to say about all of this
Poo.Saturday 13th November 1999.
This is of course a thread revolving around a tree and my reluctance to remove it as lover of plant life. Remove it I did and up sprung “ The Tree” 🌲.
It’s become a bit of a chronicle of a small but major cross section of my life and my love of gardening and how that love can make a difference not just to my life to that of many others and how I can reach them through the medium of growing things.
You are as unlikely to get my life story or that of my Dad’s here. He’d had a long career as a truck driver and served out over 40 years before leaving at 65. Back to the start of things today at least POO 💩.
I’ve had a bowel cancer scrape test kit on the mantle piece for other a month now. Sensibly the powers that be wait for you to reach a certain age then pow 💥. They send you a reminder on your birthday that it might be a good idea to test you for bowel cancer. No happy birthday or message from the king just “ you are in the drop zone and in order to keep you there you need to make sure you haven’t got the big C. Of course like a lot of indestructible men I left it on the mantlepiece and exactly eight days later an automatic reminder came out. I ignored that too. But it’s the middle of the following month now and by pure coincidence last night I decided it was indeed high time I bit the bullet and got it sorted. So at the unearthly hour of 0130 this morning I followed the bizarre instructions on the test packet and “ got the job done.” These days us guys are very lucky, it’s a pure coincidence that I’ve done this test on the anniversary of my Father’s passing. Sadly awareness around men needing help and reminders about cancer were not in place then back in the 90s in the same way they are today.
My Dad just five years into his retirement and a healthy seventy years old got no such notification. By the time his illness, -for which he’d been advised to take “more Epsom salts” by his GP – was identified he was stage four beyond the point of return and there was absolutely no hope. I’ve detailed this way back in this thread and this is not about diagnosis, but a life less ordinary than it seemed and Above all it is a celebration of life and all of the twists and turns we can enjoy if we get into it and play the cards we are all dealt with smartly.
All five of us brothers are cast to the four winds and yet you could still put a horse blanket over three of us who are no more than twenty miles apart. The eldest is in Germany and the nearest in age to me is four years older and lives close to stansted. The nearest in age to me is going to meet me at our Dad’s graveside later on this morning. The eldest is in Germany and a real European. He’s the one who cultivated my love of food and introduced me into the world of catering and all that goes with it. He got me to go on two wonderful sailing holidays in Croatia 🇭🇷 on board a schooner cruising around the Dalmatian coast with a ship full of chefs his mates Germans Croatians and two brother Brits. Back to my Dad I cared for him following the sentence he was given a blunt one and nothing other than an eviction order with no hope of it being rescinded. In those few months followed horrible chemotherapy which of course intensified pain and didn’t lengthen life any. But what also came along were moments of joy amidst harsh reality. He even had time to tell me he had adopted a horse Dalametre. Not any horse, but “My horse” he proudly announced stamping his wilting fingers on the daily mirrors racing column. A few weeks later, today in fact on Saturday morning he left us. He was at the saint Elizabeth’s hospice in foxhall Road Ipswich. My pain at losing my old fella was deep enough to prevent me from venturing along that part of foxhall road since that day.
Save for the grand national and the Hennessy I wasn’t really into national hunt and even less so the flat. But my workmates and their slavish devotion to all things lester piggott was getting to realise there was something to racing what I wasn’t sure. Well Dalametre was a big help. On the day of Dad’s funeral, indeed at the very moment he was lowered into the ground his horse galloped across the line in first place at 40/1.
Don’t ask!!His horse won several more times before he was lost in a huge house fire which also engulfed the stables. So my way of thanking the hospice was always going to be revolving around horses in some way and it really wasn’t until last month that I stumbled on that Eureka moment and set upon POO as the chosen way I’d be saying thanks. The thread has been a by product detailing among other things my own self awareness that we all have something within us a power of self determination and a chance to make an impact in contradiction of the limitations placed before us by time honoured perceptions of things.
Collectively individuals who impact really can change perceptions and make a huge difference to their own lives and that of others. I’ll walk to the post box first thing today and post a small parcel of POO it’s a positive positive aiming to produce a negative and a chance my Dad didn’t get. but our very presence today asserts that we are here alive and well and grateful for the chance of life that has been afforded us. By taking this simple step towards affirmation that I’m alive and well honours his life and hopefully ensures I can continue this journey of life as far as I can take it.Poo
Manure or preferably Muck are the terms used by farmers and we ‘proper’ gardeners. Poo is a tinny word used by infants who know no better and the adult middle-classes who, for some reason, think it’s polite
I’m rather fond of the woody word Turd, particularly when applied to dog excrement. Angry letters sent to the local press regarding ‘dog poo on the Knavesmire’ would be so much nicer if written as ‘dog turds on the Knavesmire’
Regarding wood chip. We get masses delivered free by self-employed tree surgeons so I’d suggest ringing around a few of them in your area
We also get free ‘oss muck from a stable and free off-cuts of wood from a sawmill, some of which is good quality and would cost upwards of a tenner from Jewsons
Poo 💩
I’d say we all have a word for the stuff and you couldn’t successfully bracket the type of person who’d say it. You can, but you’d probably be wrong.
Marching into the charity shop and waving an fistful of fivers demanding to buy “Sam’s poo” is good enough for me.A very enjoyable day spent with my brother. Yes, I took him to the allotment and we spent some quality time together.
Trying to solve the last race at wolves.I’ve gone to the conclusion
Wolverhampton 2030
compelling cases for these three…….
wakai umi
all in the hips
both each way
Lets go Hugo
win
Let’s go Hugo found one too good here and had to settle for second place.
Round up a runner up in two races on the night.
A busy day and in this neck of the country very few showers. Very windy today. Lots of wood shifted and the chance tomorrow to construct paths and put a few things in place.I omitted to mention one or two huge chunks of a great day yesterday.
The graveyard which hosts my Dad is at it’s magnificent best at this time of year. The entire site which covers a vast 100 plus acres of prime land and is a huge green lung 🫁 in the centre of Eastern Ipswich. The leaves which I gather by the builders bag back home are scattered all over in a many colours. The council workers are doing overtime to clear the graveyard. For once my rake and bags were not in my van otherwise I’d have joined them in the clear up!!! I’d already gone out in the morning to a car park at home and racked up four builders bags of leaves for my burgeoning leaf mould pile at the allotment. After paying our respects my brother followed me back home and after a cuppa and chewing of the family cud, we went to the cinema! Well the cinema car park hosts two bins and after the punters have consumed their vast quantities of popcorn and ice cream the uniform boxes of cardboard they arrive in are placed tidily in a BIFFA skip ready for recycling. The cinema and underwoods our independent hardware store are virtually side by side in the high street and their skips keep me in permanent supply of the raw material of brown carbon for my no dig gardening.
My high fire on Sunday took ages to fire up and the cardboard and newspapers were the key to building up enough raw heat to burn wet wood just a month old.The collection of horse poo 💩 remained in shitu on my front doorstep for the last week all piled up in a huge bin container. I tasked my poor brother to help me break it down into fertiliser bags ready for people to buy it.
My partner is a sculpter and she has been commissioned to produce two arches for separate client one for a show which will have 36000 visitors in a week or two and the other for a coffee shop in Walton high street. In a nearby park lies the remains of three once mighty willows alongside the park lies a now defunct CANAL which once bore large barges down to the ancient port of Felixstowe it is all filled in now and it’s channel converted to a railway track which leads to the mighty behemoth we know today as “the port of England “. All that remains of the canal is a small stream which flows down Langer road through the ends of the park. It is full of wildlife including fish and I’d love to be involved in any restoration of it. The water remains in vast quantities underground it feeds the bog that ensures the survival of the three once mighty willows now coppiced to their stumps. They continue to thrive on this old wetland to throw out great rods of which we are the sole harvesters nowadays. So yesterday with the leaves on these rods all but shed, I took my brother and long suffering van to this park armed with loppers and we cut as many rods as we could fit into the van. We looked like ancient “ reed gatherers and all that was missing were the thick shirts rolled up sleeves with flat caps and pipes. Otherwise, we looked the part, me in my year round uniform of blue guernsey, shorts and wellies and my brother in his brickie’s hi viz yellow coat. A surreal Suffolk scene two blokes with bundles of willow aloft on their shoulders in the gathering gloom of a setting sun. Not quite a constable scene but a truly traditional one all the same.
Just around the corner lies the best pub in town, the Felsto Arms on the promenade or at least a stones throw away from it.
Willow gathering is thirsty work and Guinness was calling. A thick ice cold pint can now be washed down by a pint of “ zero per cent Guinness” a game breaker for drivers. It is served in special pint cans iced in the fridge and tastes surprisingly good. currently it costs half the price of its alcoholic equivalent I’m sure that it is a temporary marketing cost and will soon be the same as a pint. I buy one more to take home and the pub makes five more pounds from me,each time I visit along with any extra purchases while I remain there, a marketing piece of “ genius” and a lifeline to pubs. We enjoyed a haddock dinner at home with the family. I wish I could say it was line caught off the beach earlier but that is next week and I’ll ask the fishermen if there is any bass or even cod around. It is definitely herring time soon and I know who to ask for that.
As for the poo and flower initiative it’ll receive further publicity later on as the local radio are doing “a piece” on it today. I think after the next twenty bags are gone I’ll wrap it up and concentrate on production planning and planting. I’ve got to get busy with my drill and paint brush.We looked like ancient “ reed gatherers and all that was missing were the thick shirts rolled up sleeves with flat caps and pipes… A surreal Suffolk scene two blokes with bundles of willow aloft on their shoulders in the gathering gloom of a setting sun. Not quite a constable scene but a truly traditional one all the same
If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now, it’s just a spring clean for the May queen
A tremendously positive day ( again) and with only time to hurriedly look at the final two wolves contests a second place in the last was on the face of it satisfying.
An “ appearance “ on the radio 📻 today explaining the virtues of poo 💩 and also clarifying the advantages of buying day fresh flowers rather than shelling out wads of cash for poor quality foreign produced plants with an horrendous global carbon footprint 👣.
Compare a foreign flower shipped or flown into England from over a thousand miles away, to a flower sold in Felixstowe in a charity shop.
* The Suffolk equivalent cut and bouqueted and made available on the same day.( day fresh or picked and on sale in shop within a day)
Overheads of the foreign flower
Staff,logistics (picked weeks ago.) Refrigerated and stored in country of origin prior to shipping. Sprayed with harmful chemicals to prolong life. Sprayed with chemicals to prevent predation and damage by wildlife. Pollinated artificially to prevent damage or consumption by wildlife when pollinating.
Huge transport costs to travel to port/ airport of departure. Huge transport costs to distribution centre by road rail from port / airport of arrival.
Pollution. Unsustainability of originating ecconomy. Damage to local environment due to pure production processes such as intense farming and unethical farming methods damage to local eco systems through unsustainably intense farming practices involving chemicals and pesticides. Use of poly tunnels and greenhouses, and hydroponics depleting water supply and decimating local ecology due to non encouragement of bio diversity potential extinction of birds bees and micro organisms which thrive in ecosystems which supports organic and natural plant life. Depletion of traditional farming methods to satisfy huge global demand for cheap rapidly grown “ perfect” non organic plants and flowers.
* Locally grown flowers totally organic and wildlife friendly. Planted and raised outdoors in a way that supports local eco system.
* locally grown flowers improve Felixstowe’s unique eco system helping local pollinators and supporting wildlife.
* locally grown flowers sourced and picked without huge staffing costs and in a manner that encourages regeneration of sustainable plants and enhances and encourages development of companion plants such as other flowers 💐 🌸 and vegetables 🥗 🥦 🥕 .
* Helps support wildlife locally.
Boosts local ecology environment and economy with affordable flowers.
* zero overheads, zero carbon, zero global footprint.👣 . Cheap and affordable, but superior quality flowers artistically arranged in bouquets that surpass and totally eclipse the quality of supermarket flowers and florist plants and flowers.I neglected to mention an incident which called for a bit of diplomacy yesterday. I’ve nearly completed the no dig flower bed at Molly Roberts’s house. I just wish the little terrier was around to christen the huge pile of organic matter in her inimitable style with a little “tinkle” over it.
In making this “lasagne” of green /brown green /brown layers of leaves 🍁 and coffee grounds ( green nitrogen) amazing things occur. The physics of chemistry sets off a chain reaction of microscopic organisms all working in unison. Temperatures can soar under the right conditions to near combustion and the worms are the kings of this organic jungle where my little pile of dead and living decaying material all combine to make the most incredible permaculture copying the same process as a rainforest.The house next door has seemed unoccupied for some time and the garden unkempt. Three was no fence and the borders overlapping between the gardens separated only by the garden path of next door. The lawns were lush but overgrown. I’d been eyeing the grass as a source of green nitrogen for my ever growing no dig bed for weeks now. My new no dig bed was beginning to tower imposingly over the rest of the L shaped bed as it took on the persona of a termite mound.
Finally, against the advice of my clients I succumbed (as I always do) and got out my petrol mower from my allotment shed and cut the double fronted lawn. The precious grass cuttings took pride of place temporarily on top before becoming another layer of lasagna under a mixture crown of weapons grade four year old vintage horse muck and perfect three year old leaf mould as black as yer hat 🎩.
Mr Roberts helped me drive posts into the ground yesterday as the bed neared its completion. It’s the crowning glory of this garden and we toiled away in the rain to make the old recycled boards fit into their new surroundings.
If the person who rejected these excellent bits of wood, perfectly rotten to accommodate a world of woodlice slugs and snails could see it now! A living piece of first class hotel accommodation.
Not a little swearing ensued as we “chuckle brothered” our way to gardening 👩🌾 completion. I may be a gardener but I’d be Incapability Brown were I a limited company as I’m no craftsman just a grafter. The planks are lined up and today I’ll be nailing them into place. Just as we stood back to admire our handiwork The Man from next door emerged from behind his garden gate like Lazurus. I hadn’t seen the guy in two years but here he was right on que.
We only saw his head popping through the gate like a turtles 🐢 head popping in and out. His gate was jammed by a clump of grass so infrequently had he used it.
“ Hang on mate, your gate is blocked by plants. I’ll get my spade.” I actually had to dig the man out of his own house.
When he emerged he had a suprise for us.
I have to say that I don’t like what you have been doing out here. In fact the bed you are working is on the deeds as half owned by me. I’m thinking of putting a fence down the middle and I’m going to be speaking to a solicitor. You shouldn’t have cut my grass either. Sam the diplomat swung into action. Airline pilots, royalty, ships captains. Visiting dignatories, thief’s and rogues, stowaways I’ve dealt and conversed with them all. The good thing I’ve learned about confrontation is eye contact.
I work on the level of the person I’m dealing with and assume equality.level
never fear anyone or show over respect to anyone. Treat everyone as your equal. But do show respect.
I explained to him there was no need to use a solicitor and apologised for encroachment but explained the workings of the new dig bed and how it would enhance both gardens. I also explained the mountainous bed would be broken down to ground level naturally in six months and that he could choose any flowers that he liked in his part of the bed.
Within a flash of an eye he’d gone from anger and indignance to a pusseycat. “Actually I quite like it, and I have to say you are doing a very good job. Do you think you could cut my hedge as well?”.I did my bit for nature yesterday Sam…
My cat came home last night with a small mouse. It was unharmed and the cat was having great fun in playing or practising his hunting skills by letting the mouse roam before pouncing on the poor bugger.
Usually by the time I get downstairs the cat has cracked the mouses skull but I made it quick enough to put a bowl over the mouse and a strong bit of card under the bowl and walked him about 100 metres away outside toward the park before releasing him back into the world
When I got back home the cat was still milling around looking for the mouse… Did he not see me with the bowl..
Blackbeard to conquer the World
You know your address was written on that card right?
The mouse will be back with mates.
A visit to one of Suffolk’s finest stately homes was the subject of the morning to deliver the willow which was converted yesterday into a massive archway in time for an installation there. I can work quickly at times but I’ve nothing on the architect. Well done my lovely 🥰.
That’s the willow I cut with my Brother on our Dad’s anniversary, the same day I put Horsey poo 💩 to one side and concentrated on doings poo of my own to provide a sample for BOWEL CANCER SCREENING. It is something we lads can easily shy away from why it is such a chore I don’t know. Perhaps it is fear, but as a great president once said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
A visit to this beautiful building in huge grounds wouldn’t be complete without a look around the amazing gardens here.
The head groundsman and his staff were the Suffolk punches that run the show here for me and they were only too willing to allow me to see their incredible handiwork. I was also humbled by the readiness to listen to my story which began with a little tree….
I left with a small but significant cargo of cut flowers bound for the hospice shop. The amazing feat was converting 25 rods of raw willow into an amazingly stylish archway in the torrential freezing downpour. The Bombay nights awaits us all tonight. For now it’s back to Molly Roberts’s to finish that no dig bed over the next three hours. 🌲 🌲
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