in sleeping we surrender ourselves to strong currents

A week of this and that. There seems to have been a run of public holidays. So, in theory, I should be catching up with the paperwork and such-like. Fine in theory, but in practice, I can always find vastly more to do, than I can find hours and energy to do it with.

I have also decided to mix up what I'm doing a bit more. So, rather than spend the whole day doing the garden, I'll do the garden upto lunch-time, and then do something else. I'm not sure whether it is more efficient breaking up the time like this, but it does sharpen you up, if you know that you only have a fairly finite amount of time to spend on something. A day seems pretty vast at the start, and it is only towards the end that it becomes clear how little a day's work can achieve with some tasks.

I have been lucky, in that I have recently had some of that weather that is so good, that I feel that it would be a shame to be doing anything else but being out in the garden.

So I have been excavating the fine plants that I am growing, from in amongst the vast and profligate weeds that are often dwarfing them. One part of me thinks that I should be working systematically to a laid down scheme of work. One part of me thinks that I should just dad about doing whatever catches my fancy. I'm currently steering a middle course, perhaps slightly on the dadding about side. There is always something to be said for doing whatever happens to catch my fancy, rather than working to some sensible but uninspiring list.

Some plants have been successfully excavated, and the garden now looks a bit more like a garden again.

Offering a couple of observations
• at this time of year, a good gardener always has vastly more to do, than he has time for
• the perfect garden is one that is just big enough to keep you busy when you want to be out gardening, but not so big that you have to go out when you don't feel like it.
• the only gardener who has does not have weeds in his garden, is the one that does a LOT of weeding.

Otherwise, I've been playing about with my new digital camera. Much impressed. I would love to have more time for just playing about with digital cameras, and websites, and Fontstruct, and reading the Sunday papers, and ...

If I am off during the week, and have to go shopping for something, there are all these really miserable folk there, really really miserable. I can't imagine that I would ever run out of things to do, or end up grumpily wandering round garden centres. There is so far too much to be doing.

Just finished yet another book about the Shakers, this one on the Shaker Garden. I do like the Shakers, doubtless pandering to my obsessive neatness.