For some reason last weekend seemed to be nicer than any we had over the so-called summer, so it was a perfect opportunity to get started on cutting the hedges. I have a crappy electric hedge trimmer that gets stuck on a hawthorn branch every 30 seconds, and I’ve also sliced through the cable three times previously, so it’s all done by hand these days.
Mia had to help out of course, and yes that’s her pictured right, two years old and up a wobbly stepladder with a pair of scissors. And yes, that’s a plaster on her finger, but she didn’t do it with the scissors – that was the day before with the kitchen knife. I guess that when Mia gets to the age where she can use the internet, she might read this blog and then head on over to Wikipedia to find that most other children have ten whole fingers. If so, Mia, however many fingers you have now, that’s how many you were born with and I can produce photoshopped evidence if necessary.
More seriously, I don’t advocate that anyone lets their toddlers use knives and scissors or climb ladders. On the other hand, I don’t recommend that anyone tries to tell me what my toddler should and shouldn’t do when under my close supervision.
Another weekend task was rot-proofing the chicken house, slightly too late but better that than never. Unfortunately, when I bought the ‘stuff’ I failed to notice something quite important and at no point during the transaction did the shopkeeper helpfully say “you do know that stuff is bright chuffing orange don’t you sir?” Therefore, due to the shopkeeper’s neglect, we have a glow-in-the-dark chicken house that people will probably use as a landmark when giving directions.
Unfortunately there’s still quite a lot of hedge left to cut (I assume that people who call it trimming have a totally different kind of hedge) but in the meantime I can take pictures that only include the bits that are straight-ish and pretend it’s all like that.
