Yaaaaaaaay the 2007 bimbling season has begun, at last I have the opportunity to break out my shiny new shorts, bring on the sun and lets plant some dahlias.

Everything started a tad late this year as I spent a month being a smidge on the blind side of sighted, which doesn't help when you need to bimble around behind the trusty old rotavator. It got even worse because when I could finally see the only thing in sight were grey bloody clouds, gotta love England. Anyway, the weather finally realised that the sun was meant to be visible, what with it being almost June, and the clouds scurried off for long enough to allow us to put in a couple of weeks of power bimbling.

We'd had a tad of a windy winter this year and due to the fact that an unnamed blonde bimbo forgot to reattach a couple of crucial brackets to a few pieces of wood we lost one end of the big greenhouse ...... well, we didn't exactly lose it, although we did lose the roof, it was just ripped apart and dumped on the flower beds. We also lost the roof off the center section of the same greenhouse, due to the same winds, but this time it wasn't the bimbos fault ...... ah well, we wanted to replace them this year anyway, and it saves us from having to remove them manually.

As always the season began by rotavating the main greenhouse, a task that normally takes a week and a bit all by itself. This year we pulled out all of the stops and got it done in just under 4 days, trust me when I say that it was hot & sweaty and approached being called hard work ..... yeah yeah, pick yourselves off the floor, I promise not to swear again in this post ...... due to the lack off roofs the majority of the big greenhouse was knee deep in weeds, thankfully Barry had the task off clearing them away, and I had the pleasure of using a flame thrower to kill any seeds that were left behind.

In an attempt to catch up with lost time we decided that we'd plant up over the weekend, not only because the dahlias were screaming to be let out of their pots, but because it's far easier to look after them once they're slapped in the ground. So, roll on Saturday, throw on a new pair of shorts ...... did I mention that I have several new pairs of shorts? ...... and lets start planting. Five hours of extreme power bimbling later we'd marked up 10 of the 12 beds and I'd watched as Barry hammered over 400 stakes in the ground ...... somebody has to supervise huh? ...... and we had all 10 of the beds planted up, damn they look good when they're full of plants ...... as you can imagine I had a fair few beers to celebrate.

By the second week we were pretty much back on schedule, so we were able to take things at a smidge of an easier pace. We finished off the last two beds in the main greenhouse, staked them up and planted them, and then wandered over to the little greenhouse to get that one ready for planting as well ...... another hundred and a bit stakes for Barry to vent any pent up frustrations by hammering them into the ground and a couple of hours of planting later and we had that one resembling a real greenhouse full of flowers as well.

The last bit off the week was spent taking the roof off the little greenhouse and bringing home the odd spare flower or two for the Mighty V ...... you should have seen the smile on her face when she came home to well over 400 spare plants and the odd bag of chicken shit for her own garden ..... instant "in good books" material, I highly recommend it to anyone who wants some instant karma Of course this meant I hardly got to see her for the next few days as she wandered around donating dahlias to all the neighbours who'd been waiting with bated breath for there annual arrival, and then started planting all of her favourite ones in our own little patch of soil.

During the odd spare moments from planting up the greenhouses we also managed to get our own little corner of the field cleared and rotavated and we spent a sunny afternoon planting all the veg that had been sat in our tiny lil greenhouse waiting for us. Damn they're gonna taste good when we get to eat them. Due to the fact that we had a tad more time to plan we've got some great stuff planted and should be eating our own food within weeks. We've also planted some more veg in our tiny little back garden ...... and in a few pots ..... and we even have some strawberries in one of the hanging baskets.

Anyway, the sun's made an appearance so it's time for me to throw my shorts on again and go and give all of the dahlias a tad of water whilst I water myself with the odd beer and soak up some rays ...... it's a hard life, but somebody's got to do it huh Gary?
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