A GOOD AND BAD DAY

Do you ever have a good and bad day? Well, I had one today.

The bad bit came after I had moved things around in the barn in preparation for bashing out the concrete floor and putting in a new pipe connecting the storm drains on either side. The light on the freezer that has long sat in the barn was blinking furiously, and that was followed shortly afterwards by smoke coming out of the cooling unit, and then fire. It was a crappy old freezer, so that didn't upset me too much. What did was having to empty the thing. I now have a fridge stuffed full of vast quantities of formerly frozen fruit (there will be crumbles galore next week), the remains of last Christmas' turkey, lots of (ex-)frozen green beans (which I don't like very much), plus all the meat chunks that have sat in the freezer since my daughter went vegetarian. And at some point I have to get the freezer to the dump. 

The good bit came when my mother-in-law dropped by shortly afterwards to help me plant my seven Hans Christian Andersen-variety rose plants that I bought this week. They will fill out the little circle that I have built for them in the middle of the new lawn that is part of the 2011 Project, and give a splash of red in the midst of an otherwise sea of green. My mother-in-law thought that the plants had terrific root systems, and that they will come up very nicely next spring (the probability of which was increased markedly by her planting them rather than me). Even better, I don't have to do anything to them during the winter, I just have to pull out any neighbouring weeds and wait.

The up and down day was completed when I went for a cycle ride at 5.30pm with two others in a howling gale. Going west directly into the wind, we were struggling at times to do 10km/h; on the way back, we were doing over 50km/h and cruising.

Walter Blotscher