Stormy weather, la la la la

This gap is beginning to annnnooyyyyy me!

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After a frazzled day, yesterday, I decided to finish it off by finally getting around to potting the plants I bought earlier in the week. Snails had already been chewing on 'em. The sky looked a little overcast but I decided a little bit of water couldn't hurt. I bought some gardening gloves recently and put them on. They have rubber palms and felt quite uncomfortable, which they hadn't when I tried them on. Then I realised I'd put them on the wrong hands and my hands were looking like an upside down spider! I'd just had the idea to make holes in the hanging basket weavey stuff to pop some lobelia in for a more floral ball effect and was chopping away when there was a huge bolt of lightening! I threw the scissors indoors and went hurtling after them. My word, did it pour? The road was like a river. It's only a tiddy yard but will be much more pleasant to look out upon when in full flower. So this picture will be replicated, in a few weeks time so see what the snails have left! I caught two of the little beggars and took 'em for a ride on my trowel to sail down river! And I left some pretty little blue pellets for any of their cousins to dine on. I went back out to finish the planting and got absolutely sodden so was sitting in the bath, warming up at 9.30pm. I love that tip about digging your nails into a bar of soap to keep soil out. I just don't like the feel of the soap beneath my nails! I gave up on the gloves so best keep my hands in my pockets today. Oh, there's an open garden this afternoon to photograph. Maybe I'll see if there are any nice plants for sale cheap! I mean, I only fed the snail £15 worth a couple of weeks ago! Wonderlust Jeanne bonged me this morning. She was in Shanghai (ni hao) having just had a meal with a Chinese family, part of the tour itinerary. I was once thinking about doing some business in China and bought a book and tape to learn Chinese. It looked a very interesting language but all I managed for the initial meeting were 'hello' (ni hao - knee how) and 'thank you' (tse tse - but not like the fly). Also read all the do's and don'ts and it's frightening the things you could do wrong. For instance, NEVER leave your chopsticks standing up in the rice bowl. It reminds of incense sticks and death. And don't eat before being invited to a business meal because there's about a million courses! However, there's no taboo against being a noisy eater and it's OK to talk through a mouthful of food, slurp your soup, belch, cough, hiccup or sneeze. The latter is probably best done if your mouth isn't full of rice though, or else people mail think they've been hit by hailstones! I've added a counter to the site. No idea how many people had taken a peek up until now but I started it at 100. I'm going to edit this sentence out if it doesn't get beyond 110 by next week! My diary looks a mess so I thought I'd use the calendar available in hotmail to put some order to it. However, it only goes from 9am to 5pm (so far as I can make out). That's a bit silly! I've actually got some pictures to order and I feel a little guilty sitting here having fun but tomorrow is going to be 9am til 8pm taking pix, zipping about and include 3 of the calendar shots - almost finished them now but still have to get a guy naked on a motorbike, a classic car rally, cricket, wrestling and a presentation. I certainly can't say there's no variety in my life! Just need a touch of Garam masala. ....

Containers planted! I'm nothing if not inventive. The 'decking' is a pallet that was sitting outside a company with 'free to good home' sign on it, so I stuffed it in the back of my car. For the truckers out there amongst you, you might say I probably looked 10 pallets short of a load!