The Joy of Mud – Part 2

There’s an old children’s rhyme in Scotland which runs:

Rainy, rainy, rattlestanes, dinna rain on me,                                                               Rain on Johnny Groat’s hoose, far across the sea

I’ve been saying it to myself all day, but it made no difference. Too wet to mow, too wet to weed, too wet to plant stuff. So, it’s back to the hole.I’ve cut further into the bank and found where the water is seeping out between the two slabs of bedrock, and I’ve removed a lot more clay and gravel. In fact, I am about ready to start building back up again. Meanwhile, there is a trailer load of vileness to be disposed of in a place where it can do no harm:Meanwhile, let me introduce you to  my stone barrow:Dear reader, this rusty object was once my mother’s pride and joy. A long, long, time ago, it was a pram. My pram, no less, and here is proof:  Now it is transformed into one of the more useful bits of garden equipment I have. Never throw stuff out.  It’s low slung, so I can roll big stones onto it without having to lift them, and it retains the vestiges of springs so there is less inclination to tip over. It’s just a matter of finding stones (I dug these out of the bed of the burn), loading up, and towing them to where they are needed:Getting them into position was not fun, as once heavy stones become coated in glutinous clay, they are not easy to manoeuvre. Still, here they are, ready to form the foundations of the rebuild.My poor gloves are going to take some time to recover. I have learned through hard experience never to wash chrome leather gloves and never to try to dry them on a hot pipe. So they will just have to dry naturally, which may take a couple of weeks.