Monday 29 June 2009

Monday 29 June 2009

The weather was excessively hot yesterday. And it seems that it was just as warm today - possibly the hottest ever day since records began. This is no time to be a Staffie. I want my partner to shave me bodily but she refuses, saying that my fur will "grow back funny". Hmmm... I believe that is a chance I am willing to take... oh dear.
With all this heat, I am unable to tend to my garden as I would wish. A pity, as I have been pleased with the progress of my tomatoes. As mentioned previously, they came from Lincolnshire, which is hundreds of miles from my estates down here in the South. I will explain, before you surmise that I have taken leave of my senses and am gadding about the country in search of seedling vegetables. Some weeks ago, my partner ventured up North for a family wedding. During some free time, she took Delightful Nephew Ewan to visit a working windmill (he's very keen on those) in North Leverton (here's a link to the windmill's website: http://www.north-leverton-windmill.co.uk/index.htm - very interesting and a friendly and knowledgeable miller will show you around if you ask! The milled flour makes nice bread, too). Here are some pictures:




The Mill








Sweet Ewan helps the Miller fill his flour-sack






Anyway, at the windmill, small tomato plants were on sale at 50p each, so my partner purchased two for our garden. Here I am with the fledgling re-potted plants on my estate:


Aren't they wee? Bless 'em. More of the tomato plants later...

I have just returned from a delightful walk in the woods, in the cool of the evening air. Alas, the occasion was a scene of distress for my luckless partner. Soon after entering the woods, she was caught short - as the best of us sometimes are - and had to pop behind a handy bush to download an urgent weemail.

Now, I concede that, when enveloped in the shady shelter of a coppiced beech in the early evening, the diminished light would make it difficult to distinguish between different types of plants and their leaves. However, I think that even my partner would agree that inadvertently grasping several stinging nettles (along with more harmless specimens) and wiping one's most intimate parts with them, post-wee, is a step best avoided in future.

I watched carefully as my partner's facial expressions on regaining the path progressed through "a slight tingling sensation", via "an increasing warmth", to "exceptional pain and swelling". At that point, I beat a hasty retreat, lest my convulsed guffaws be mistaken for - - - well, actually, no. They could not have been mistaken for anything other than helpless laughter. I felt guilty laughing, but still the tears of mirth ran down my cheeks. You will not be surprised to learn that we only took the short circuit of the woods this evening.

And now, as I type this entry, my partner is seeking relief in a hastily-improvised remedy. This involved a wet towel being placed into the freezer until thoroughly cooled. The chilled towel has now been placed 'twixt her rosy rear cheeks, with the added occasional and careful application of an ice-cube to the lips she doesn't kiss with.

I do not trust myself to watch without laughing, so I return to the subject of the tomatoes.

One of the plants is thriving and bodes well for a healthy crop of love-apples. The other (the one that my snout points towards in the picture above) has died completely. Upon examination, my partner expressed her suspicions as to its killer.
"Someone," she said, glaring at me - most injudiciously, in my opinion - "has been regularly urinating into the plant pot. Do YOU have anything to say about this, Jasper?"
Well, of course I didn't. I had never seen my partner (or myself, for that matter) pee-ing into the pot - and I had OFTEN been standing right beside it, while lifting my leg and trying to aim my- oh. Suddenly, the full force of my partner's argument struck me and I developed an urgent need to be somewhere else. I slunk away, my partner's glare burning into my retreating back.

Hmmm.... well, at least I didn't use a stinging nettle to wipe all the way from my intimate Box of Delights to my Little Chocolate Starfish...

Good night.

3 comments:

Lance said...

GOOD HEAVENS Jasper!! I think you almost DESERVE to scald in some abnormal heat for a while. I agree with your Ruth, your fur WILL grow back funny (which you might also deserve). As hard as your Ruth works to take care of you and provide for you... and all you can do is LAUGH at her misfortune? And even DENY weeing on the poor little tomato plant?!? You had better be careful dear Jazz. Your Ruth has every right to be VERY cross with you.

MBNAD woman said...

No Jasper, you don't want to be shaved. This is what Spottie Boy looked like shaved and it wasn't good.

Spot at the rescue

Also when it started to grow back, people gave him some very hard stares as if he had visited a poodle parlour. Now that wouldn't be cool, would it?

And as for you poor partner's run-in with the nettles. Yeoooouuuwww! In one of my mother's failed attempts to make me lady-like, she sent me out to play wearing a skirt. I fell off a high wall into an enormous nettle patch with similar results to that suffered by your poor partner. A bath of diluted calomine lotion was the only comfort.

Angie said...

How on earth did I miss this post Jasper? It never appeared on my Dashboard.

You know, I feel awful about this but I did almost giggle. Well actually I DID giggle, just a little bit, ever so slightly. Poor Ruth, but what a picture it conjures up. Don't they have dock leaves down south.

If the lovely young Ewan wants to expand his knowledge of working windmills yet further, there are a few further north still in north and north-east Lincs., one of them not 5 miles from here.

They tend to peter out any further north in favour of the other kind of mills where they made textiles and said things like " 'ey oop" and "Eee by gum" and "Gracie Fields for King".

Hope you're both well,
love, Angie, xx