Happy Burpday Burro!

Today is my birthday. It is also Clare’s (from the brilliant Pumpkin Soup) birthday too and we are the same age – as she said, this year her age passed her bust size for the first time ever… she never looks 41, does she ;-)

So. 37. How the bloody hell did I get to be thirty bloody seven? How come I still have no clue what the hell I’m doing? Why have I still no direction in life? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not feeling sorry for myself – far from it as I’m blessed with health, family, friends, a job and a house – but I just can’t get my head around the fact I’m nearer 50 than 20 and I have never – not once – known what the bloody hell I’m supposed to be doing. Sigh. Answers on a postcard (or the back of a sealed down envelope) please.

A Coke Moment…

Bloggers for a positive global change award memeRight… I’ve been tagged again. Thank’s KW ;-)

I’m dead busy right now so I’ll have to keep my tags brief (unlike the time I had to tag my briefs because of that strange man who liked my washing…). This meme comes to me via Kitchen Witch (and a damn fine Witch she is too) from this worthy site.

My five sites are…

1) Bean Sprouts - bloody great site full of useful, real-life stuff. If Mel and her family can do it, we all can!

2) Self Sufficient-ish – cracking site that will inspire and inform.

3) Honeybee Network – protecting rural knowledge for all.

4) Down The Lane – Richard downshifted… so can you!

5) Moosey’s Country Garden – Huge site with tonnes of help and advice.

That’s it folks – gotta dash. Check these links out and have a flick through the ones to the left as I had to leave loads of brilliant people and their blogs out :)

What?

Yes I know I’ve not posted for a bit. Yes I know you’ve missed me and I said I’d call you. Yes, we are all missing some Burroy love, but hey! Second Life won’t play itself you know! And I’m here now, so put t’kettle on and I’ll tell you all about it…

This month I ‘av been mainly working at work to make up flexitime I lost from leaving early and having looooooong dinners. I have also been playing SL. I make no apologies. I have plans for my island that involve a crashed bi-plane and an archaeological dig that uncovers some ruins of a shocking nature – but for now, I can say no more :)

I ‘av… sorry, have also been waging a War on Slugs. I managed to do this without illegally invading parts of my garden or causing a civil war to erupt between the snails and the beetles. So that would be 1 for me, and 0 for Bush/Blair – Go The Burro! In my War on Slugs (or WoS? for short) I have been using super-absorbent grit*, beer traps**, and a pen-knife***. I may be winning – I am waiting until I read the full report later this month before deciding if I can scale down my operations or I need to look at a mass organic blue pellet aerial bombing campaign. They ate my only two courgette plants****.

I am now, if you remember this, on planting numero 4 of my salad crops, beans and carrots. I am happy to report that a) the clips securing the mini-greenhouse to the fence seem to have worked, and b) last night I moved lots of the healthy seedlings into bigger tubs in the hope they grow big and juicy away from the attention of the slugs (Think Slugs? Think WoS?!)

Equally happy am I by the near-miraculous recovery of my poor slug-munched**** asparagus. A couple of weeks ago, I was looking at 4 out the 10 surviving. Last night I found that my nightly slug-hunts****, beer traps and barriers made of cut up milk bottles have seen an increase of likely survivors to a whopping 7! I’m hoping this will get up to at least 8, but I very much doubt it will get higher and almost certainly will never reach 10*****.

Now on to things I have not done so well :( I have not yet replied to KW’s meme (I will!), or many of my friend’s blog posts (I will!), and Bert has been most neglectful of Marvin’s frankly fooking brilliant blog (Bert is sorry, Marv – he is, as always, reading all your write and will issue forth a flurry of comments soon). I will attempt to do better very soon, I promise****** :)

General Bastard McBurro
Chief Slug Slicer in the WoS?
*************************

* They work a treat – they soaked up all the fekking rain we’ve had and provided the slugs with a lovely carpet on which to slither towards my plants so they could munch them. Bastards. The slugs, I mean.

** The is something very hypnotic about holding a jar of dead, bloated slugs up to the light as they bob about, suspended in beer.

*** Slicey slicey.

**** BASTARDS!

***** 1 has never shown even a single spear – all the others have, but suffered a varying degree of munching by slugs****.

****** This is in no way a binding guarantee.