Well, it's been a tad since I last waffled about my bimbling, but you'll be pleased to know that this is because I've been innundated with bimbleable moments. Even better than that, Ash turned up and decided to do a far better impression of Lord Litchfield than I normally achieve......helped a tad by him having a digital camera to use.

Due to the size of the photographs I've only put thumbnails on these posts, if you want to see the full size versions then just click the thumbnails.......and before Scott wanders along and mutters "css zoom" in my ear I'd like to point out that the images total more than a meg and would slow down the page load a tad!

So, bimbling, birthday........what the hell would make me bimble on my birthday.....apart from the weather.......We finally started on the planting!

As you can imagine from the photos there's a tad more than a couple of hours bimbling involved, but it's well worth the effort. In the space of a few hard days of power bimbling, we converted the main greenhouse from a patch of organised dirt to something that actually resembles flower beds, complete with flowers......(well, the green things that flowers are before the colourful bits grow).....several hundred of them....... each with their own, individully knocked in, wooden stake............now, before I get thousands of sympathetic emails I suppose I'd better point out that , due to the fact I can't knock stakes into the ground that are even remotely associated with the direction "upright", my mate (who owns an online aquatics shop) ended up doing that bit............yeah I know, I dunno how I pulled that one off either!

Anyway, back to bimbling, although it takes several days of shuffling along on your knees (kinda like "bimbling for dwarfs"), it's actually very peaceful when you're planting up. There's nothing better than having your radio on low (if only it could pick up a decent radio station rather than just "Radio Wave".....bloody imaginative name for a seaside radio station huh ?), the sun beating down on your back, playing in the dirt (yeah, yeah, I know, I'm just a little kid at heart), and putting plants where they belong.

So, you have to imagine this peaceful, sunny scene, the music (crap as it is) echoing gently through your mind, whilst your mind wanders like a friendless cloud, moving from post to post, and putting plant after plant into it's new home.........and then Lord Litchfield Ash turns up...........complete with birthday beers.........damn what a hard life, maybe I should go back to webdesign for the rest of the summer ?

A couple of beers later, and I've managed to plant up one row, whilst Ash has almost sold Barrys van for him......and managed to abstain from attempting to sell him gas and electric........which is no mean achievment! He's also done his Lord Litchfield bit, and is so relaxed he's almost taken his jacket off.

Just in case you're wondering about Steve, apparently he decided that bimbling was a tad tough, so he went and spent a few days feeding cement mixers........and breaking them. I can understand how it would be far less effort to move several tons of sand and cement into a whirling thing, and then empty it into a barrow and wander a few hundred yards over narrow planks (you should see him balance)......yeah, sounds like a much easier day.............maybe I should cut down to a 4 day week to compensate?

Amazingly enough, England seems to have been less confused about the relative position of the sky and the sea this week...it's had a few moments of doubt, but it mostly kept them in the correct place. That probably doesn't sound like much of an achievment to most countries, but for England, it's like winning the 1966 world cup (trust me, they never let you forget that they won it)...... I just hope that it lasts longer than 90 minutes. Of course, the moment we have two sunny days in a row all the weather stations start rabbiting about the "heat wave" we're having.....these people must never go abroad on holiday.

In case you want to know what I got for my birthday, apart from the start of my tan and the beer, my wonderfully unselfish girlfriend Victoria (you remember her? The one that kindly donated me her flu?), bought me my mobile phone, a big cushion to crash out on and a pair of shades, my life is now complete......Steve on the other hand forgot to get me the plank of wood that I wanted, I might have to bar him from the field for life...........unless he's accompanied by beer, potatoes and crumpets......it's about time we livened the neighbours up, they've been far to quiet lately and I've been missing the entertainment.

Now that we've got the main greenhouse planted up, we can concentrate on ripping the roof off the small greenhouse. It's a tad old, faded and filthy, which cuts down on the sunlight and makes the plant stretch. We've never taken many decent flowers out of it in previous years, so it'll be interesting to see what difference it makes, if any. At the very least, it should stop the dahlias stretching, which means they'll have stronger stems than last year, so we should be able to show them this year.

We've got a fair few new varieties this year, plus a couple of unreleased varieties that we're trialing for some friends. I can't wait to see what they all really look like. It's amazing the variety of colours, shapes and sizes that we grow now, and we only grow a few selected varieties out of the hundreds that are available. I'm already getting nagged by my friends for any "spare" ones that we have......of course that means "spare after I've filled my own garden", because even if you just throw them in the ground and leave them to it, they grow into superb plants.

As I said a few hours ago, at the beginning of all this waffle, all of the thumbnails on this page will lead to a larger version if you click them. I warn you though, the file sizes range from 80k to 140k so they may take a tad to load if you're using a dial-up to connect. If you want to use any of these images for your own personal use then feel free to save them. The only thing I ask is that you do not link to them directly (known as "hot linking") as I would hate to have to remove them due to bandwidth abuse.

Anyway, I think it's about time I let you get back to what's left of your day after having read all this waffle, so, have a good un, and I'll no doubt waffle some more soon.

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