Sunday, 17 February 2013

Zombie apocalypse and the garden centre


No, no, no. You need white coats...

...lab technicians, chemicals, and genetically modified everything. That'll never work.

Won't it?

In the poorest corner of India, using less seed, less chemicals, no herbicide, less water, no GM, a farmer is producing world record rice harvests. That wants looking at again. It isn't a case of not using all that stuff ICI and their lapdog ministers tell us we'd be starving without and doing okay, not even doing just as well, but producing with the best efficiency in the world.

Those lessons won't be taken on board. Not in my lifetime.

Fox bites baby? Cull the urban foxes. That's the answer. Boris Johnson as Mr Punch. “That's the way to do it.” For every fox produced baby injury there's got to be any number of cat scratches. End the urban moggy menace? No votes in that.

Bovine TB? Kill the badgers.

You might as well try to ban motorised transport when the next motorway multi-car pile-up claims some lives. Front page: Boris says: “No car, no carnage.”

We're losing species hand over fist and still ruled by nuke 'em politicians. We have a climate change denier energy secretary. Did Greyfriars ever put Billy Bunter in charge of the tuck shop?


The Walking Dead catch up

It starts tonight. That should actually be 'the The Walking Dead catch up' but that's too pedantic and doesn't work so well. I'm hoping for at least two episodes of post-zombie-apocalypse fun and frolics, splatter, blood and gore, and preferably three. That leaves Monday, Wednesday and Thursday (one episode each) and I'm up to speed for Friday. Football on Tuesday night. The horror, gloom and despondency might get too much for me. If it does I'll just have to turn off the Arsenal v Bayern Munich game and go back to The Walking Dead.


We went to the garden centre today...

...a lovely, small, independent, friendly place. I'm like a vegetarian in the butchers in those places. What I don't know about gardening could fill several books. I don't actually know my aster from the hole in the ground to plant it in. BLISS has more knowledge and enthusiasm than me.

In a lot of places, pitching up without a scrap of knowledge or any idea of what's going on can be made an uncomfortable experience. Often, if it's not uncomfortable, it's because they've worked out early that it's going to be dead easy to royally rip you off. Not here though. We bought six small tree things for the front hedge to plant between the existing small tree things that haven't grown much. We were assisted in the six for twenty quid (£3.95 each, three for a tenner, obviously our price-label reading isn't so good either) bargain on offer, and then handed clearly (with the aid of a trained eye (not something I'm equipped with)) the best six specimens on display. Their sort of brown with bark, thinning out at the pointy bits, with green leaves on. They are not: buddleia, leylandii, or Japanese knotweed. Nor are they willow, yew or oak, or bay. That, sadly, is as far as it goes without referring to the Observer book of small tree-like things.

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