Anika’s Blog

My garden is full of fruit! The little cherry tree is fruiting for the first time this year, wild strawberries have been ripe for a couple of weeks, the raspberries are looking good, and best of all are the plums. We have one big plum tree in the garden and a few smaller established trees from fruit it’s dropped. They all produced loads of fruit last year and I found out about thinning too late to do it, so I thought they’d be too worn out to fruit this year, but I noticed the green fruit among the leaves today. I’ve put together a woodpile to try to attract a hedgehog. We have loads of snails and woodlice that we have to fight for the fruit, so I’m hoping a hedgehog will hang around and keep them under control. Bonus points for being cute pest control.

I bought some flowers to plant today. Now I have to look in the compost bin to see if some of it’s ready. That bit’s not so good.

But… I’m seeing my boyfriend on Saturday. He’s working on a cruise ship and I’ve barely spoken to him in three weeks.

The bad thing is that we only have from whatever time I get to Southampton in the morning until 4pm when the ship sails, and he can’t avoid working for some of that. I don’t know if I’ll have much chance to see him during the rest of the summer either. The next cruise he’s doing looks worth going on, but because the job was at such short notice it was too late to arrange for me to go on it.

And just a bit weird was the boy I was supposed to meet today. You may know that I offer to meet potential clients for a quick drink at my convenience without charge. I thought I’d have to introduce a nominal fee, but the offer hasn’t been abused so I’m still able to do it for free. This boy sounded rather young but I arranged to meet him in an hour’s time, at 1pm in a local pub. I arrived on time (after dropping off my Active Kids tokens at the local school; I had to have a small girl show me how to get out of the playground) and he wasn’t there yet so I read my book. After 20 minutes he still hadn’t turned up or made any contact so I gave up and went to B&Q for plants.

At 3:40 I got a text from him. “Sorry i didn’t meet u at 1pm, got sidetracked. Maybe meet u soon. X x”

I suppose it’s good that he eventually thought to say something, but, well, no.