Gardening With Ruby

Hello! The weather stayed quite nice today so I popped down to dig a plot and weed some stuff at Ruby’s!
When I got there she was cat-napping in the sunroom, so I said hi and told her I was going to work in one of the gardens.

I noticed she had been out and about weeding and spotted a basket full of strawberry plants and an empty strawberry bed.

I wasn’t long into my weeding when I heard the back door slam and Ruby coming up the garden path.
She was in a bit of a tizz because she had forgotten the one thing she really needed help with was topping up the raised garden bed and replanting the strawberries.
“Sure, no worries Ruby… I’m on it.”
Nope… by hook or by crook she was not going to let me carry those bags of compost from the shed by myself. I needed help!!
There was no way I was going to talk her out of that one and I was having kittens thinking about her tottering about helping me carry bloody great bags of compost to the strawberry patch!

I managed to convince her that we could put the bags in the wheelbarrow and she was happy to pick up and pass me handfuls of the straw – I ducked in and got the bags of compost as quick as I could before Ruby could!!

It was then a team effort spreading out the straw and topping it up with the compost & breaking it up over the plot. Basically the soil had sunk and needed to be built up a bit.

I separated the strawberry plants out and Ruby planted them in her garden bed.

Until the weather dries out we are hoping they will mostly look after themselves.

Ruby went off to put her feet up for a bit and I got back into the plot I was weeding

Up the other end of this garden is a lot of little parsley plants that I will weed next time and perhaps relocate.

Also on my ‘soon to do’ list is to get a trailer load of mushroom compost and top up her hothouse soil. Ruby has cleared out the hothouse so its ready for action soon!

Then of course to top off the afternoon work, its time to go in for a cuppa and a bit of a chin-wag.
We were talking about the demise of service. Back in the early days you went to a shop and asked for what you needed. A young boy would visit houses in the morning and get a list of groceries needed and they would be delivered in the afternoon.

In a small town where people left doors unlocked, Margies husband Des, when he was the butchers boy delivering the meat, he would walk into a house if no-one was there and put the meat into the fridge!
We self serve petrol, we now self checkout in supermarkets and my pet hate – photo booths to self serve and print photos! I would happily pay more for someone with the skills to take my files and print them properly but there is just not that option available.
I guess we are coming a little bit of a full circle that we now order online and have things delivered – perhaps that takes away a little bit more of the personal touch? Or delivers us from the necessity of having to deal with parking & crowds?