So, you get ready to start the week, you slip your trusty old shorts on and do all those warm up exercises that are absolutely vital if you're about to participate in any major bimbling.....You know, have a coffee, ensure both eyes are open, check your shorts are on the right way round.....important stuff.

And then the phone rings........and it's your pops asking "how do you fancy giving me a hand with a couple of worktops?".........innocent as hell right ?........wrong......So then you have to debimble yourself , put on some proper work clothes and somehow settle your poor brain down which is rapidly going into shock at the thought of having to do something more strenuous than deciding if it's warm outside.

Before your brain is back on an even keel, and with its screams still ringing in your ears, you suddenly find yourself heading to work for a "couple of hours". At this point I have to mention that my dads "couple of hours" work on a similar time frame to a womans "I'll be ready in a minute". He even brought the sarnies (sandwiches to those of you who speak wierd) which is kind of a giveaway.

A couple of (real) hours later, without ever having come into contact with a worktop, we've managed to put a wall cupboard up. I'm not saying it was a bitch, but, true to form the plasterers had never heard of the words "plumb" and "square" and the kitchen firm that designed it should have been shot. I mean 4 man hours to fit one cupboard somethings not right there, and we're bloody good at fitting kitchens (you'll be pleased to know that I know more about fitting kitchens than gardening).

So maybe now we can actually start to fit the worktops. Wrong again, first we need to fit all the rest of the wall cupboards so that we don't damage the worktops whilst we're putting holes in the walls. Are you starting to see a hidden agenda ? Yep, I've been stitched up.....and by my own pops! Luckily the rest of the wall cupboards went up with a tad less effort and we eventually moved on to the reason that I wasn't bimbling....the worktops.

The fact that they were huge and weighed a ton wasn't the problem, with enough practice, and we've had more than enough, you can handle them on your own "fairly" easily. The problem was that the house was also having a new roof put on, so we had to thread this thing through scaffolding whilst manauvering it round a 90 degree corner...... such fun.

Another couple of hours pass, and we've successfully entertained the roofers with our "thread the four metre high gloss finished worktop through the scaffolding" escapades, and finally we can pack up the kettle and head home.......What joy, I'll soon be back to bimbling again.....wrong, the quietly worded "I don't suppose you could give me a hand on wednesday....if you're not to busy that is?" sends my brain into another bout of screaming fits. "not to busy"......I bimble ! It's not exactly the easiest of things to construe as "busy".

Then I woke up the next day and rapidly discovered that I'd managed to pull a muscle in my back, but like "mummys brave little soldier", I struggled into my shorts, went through as many of the warm up exercises as I could, and valiantly bimbled towards the field. Humming happily to myself I bimbled up the driveway and had just about managed to reach the field when I got asked if I could help reseat two of the HUGE panels in the pond greenhouse roof.....yeah I know, we seem to have an abundance of greenhouses huh ?Several hours and a tad of effort later I eventually managed to get into the field, only to decide that my aching body really wasn't up to bimbling..... so I went to the pub.

Another day of kitchen fitting later, which did nothing to improve my back and involved another request for help on friday, I finally sunk into a hot bath with a smoke in one hand and a beer in the other contemplating the forthcoming joys of bimbling round the next day. Ahhhh, if only such happiness could last forever.

Then I woke up the next day, only to discover that not only had my back deteriorated faster than a tissue left out in a monsoon but my wonderfuly generous girlfriend had unselfishly donated her flu to me......it's a good job I love her, that and the fact that my shotgun arm was knackered (not working for those of you who speak wierd). As you can imagine, feeling like something that the cat threw up didn't exactly leave me in a bimbling mood, in fact it didn't leave me in a mood to continue breathing.

As you can see from my latest Lord Litchfield attempts, I did actually manage to find some time to bimble round the field. Steve wandered down for a tad of a bimble with me. Mind you, he's a bloody expert, he spent most of his time bimbling round with a nokia grafted to his leftt ear whilst poor little me (complete with knackered back) struggled like a trooper to knock a few dozen guide stakes into the ground to mark out the beds so that we can spend next week, kitchen fitting allowing, doing the preliminary rotovating of the beds.

If you take a look at the pictures of the potting greenhouse, you'll see that most of the Dahlias are now missing (they're in the small greenhouse) and the space has been filled with flowers. Don't ask me what sort, all I can tell you is that some are red some are yellow, some are pink and the rest are other colours. If you're really that interested, let me know and I'll either make some names up or ask Wendy what they're called........and then I'll ask her to write it down, because it'll be double dutch to me.

So, the dahlias, they're posatively bouncing out of their pots in an effort to get into the ground and do what they do best.....GROW......damn, I'd only been away for a few days and they've doubled in size already. Until you see how fast these things can leap out of the ground (we actually cut them down a few times to slow them down !) you really haven't seen anything. These things could take on the toughest mint plant in the world and leave it whimpering for mercy.

It's a cool feeling when you look at them and know that they'll soon be in the ground growing away merrily under the summer sun........well, as much of it as England gets...... even though it'll be several months before they flower. They would flower a lot earlier, but as I said before, we cut them down a few times so that they produce bang on the right flowers at bang on the right time. Wait until September when I post pictures of 500 plants all in full bloom and all of them up to championship level quality, then you'll be jealous.

As I have repeatedly said, I really am not a gardener, I only actually started turning up in the field because it's my mates (who owns an online Aquatics business - if you can't plug your mates, who can you plug ?) hobby and he asked me if I would give him a hand (a few years ago now!). After having spent a summer bimbling round surrounded by all these plants it was kind of tough to spend my summers trying to make a living coding websites. Far more sensible to spend the summer broke and bimbling and then work like a loon trying to earn enough cash in the winter to afford some new shorts.

Well, that would appear to be it for this week, which is probably a good thing. If it had been any more entertaining I think I would have shot myself. Hopefully the weather will be good and I can make up for my greatly reduced bimbling time, it's starting to have a detrimental effect on my health.

Have fun
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