Hectic here

These African tree stumps have been imported to the wet Welsh countryside at the Botanic Gardens.  I couldn't help wondering how they might have thought about that!  I imagine they would be missing the sun . . .

Sounds like it wanted to stay put!  Personally, I don't think it's very eco-friendly to bring these trees half way around the world just to be an attraction in a Botanic garden.  But perhaps I am getting old.

Anyway, here's something I wrote earlier which gives you an idea of the hecticness at the moment (as we have a viewing next weekend):

Evening all. Mrs Knackered here. I woke at 4.10 a.m., got up at 5 when it was obvious that Was It for the night, and began to mop the kitchen floor. I did about 6 slate slabs (they are old ones, some smooth, some not) when the handle fell off the mop. Which meant, plan B, scrubbing brush, hands and knees and be a Scrubber! It took me 2 1/2 hours but is thoroughly clean and you can no longer see where various mousey and rabbity giblets were deposited. Then we had to take the old car into town to be MoT'd and wait around for it, and I took the new car and dropped D back home. He was a trooper last night, and brought me the 2nd half of my present - a cheap boom box so I can play CDs and listen to the radio and the excellent but gigantic rig with two foot high speakers which we WON many years ago, can be put up out of the way. It really overwhelms the room and is a bit like a square elephant in the corner!! It can go up in the attic storage now, under the eaves. 

When we got back (with a new mop), we set to out in the yard again and removed the winter's leaves and broken bits of Ash twig from the middle stable yard, and the main one at the bottom, had a pile of brash which had been there for 18 mths (put it this way, I was not the one who dumped it there.) It had become overgrown with grass creeping from the edge of the concrete and was a nightmare to shift. Most of it got put on the bonfire yesterday but there were still about 8 barrowloads of leaves to clear from there, and as many from the small yard got moved too. Then it was sort out everything for the tip run tomorrow morning, and sweep and clear everything that had been dumped by the back of the stables. Then umpteen buckets of water sluiced with force across the yard to help clean it before sweeping again. Now when I had the horses, that yard was SPOTLESS - I wet swept it daily and it would have passed Army stable management standards (as that's how I was taught back in my BHSAI days).

After a cuppa, K and I went back out to put up my paddock greenhouse for the summer, and I cut back some brambles, then into the stone garden to rake up broken bits of dead rose branches which break off each winter, and finally I planted a couple of big bushy Aubretias I got from B&Q today. Boy, it might have been just a year older that I became yesterday, but getting back to hard work in the garden, I feel 10 years older!! I have been doing a bit of one job, and then changing to another, so resting different groups of muscles and that seems to work best for me. 

In the way that when you have a lot of bills which account for every spare penny, something is bound to break and indeed, the washing machine decided to spin its last. K and I tried to replace the band wot spins it yesterday (what a way to spend my birthday, standing on my head inside a washing machine, holding a torch and holding one end of said band). Our local repair chap (friend) came out today but pronounced it dead, so we have had to order one through Amazon. Delivery was stated as 16 - 19th April (eek, I would run out of knickers and socks!) but elsewhere it said they usually ship within 2-3 days. I've just checked the tracking and it is on its way already. Thank heavens for that.

I had a lovely birthday, but spent the morning in town and the afternoon in the garden - doing the first half of the clearing of the stable yards with K.  D came to stay the night and we had a Tesco Takeaway curry (I know how to live!)  

Right, this won't do.  Another photo and I shall away to my bath.