My current favourite garden tool - Aldi ratchet pruners

Aldi is out of my good books at present thanks to its new parking policy at my local branch. You are now only allowed to park there for 1.5 hours and 'only whilst shopping in store'. Taken literally, it seems you can't even park there while using the bottle bank, let alone popping up the high street to the post office, charity shops, bank, excellent Portuguese deli etc. The Technomage has written a rant on our village website and I've a letter ready to post to the manager.

The new arrangements mean that I won't be popping in there for impulse buys when in town for other things, but next time I'm there for a proper shop I do intend buying another spare pair of their brilliant ratchet pruners - a snip at £4.99. It's not because mine haven't lasted, but simply because I'm highly likely to lose them.


I've got plenty of overgrown shrubs, brambles and self-seeded saplings to tackle and these do an excellent job - they are great both for the initial removal of biggish branches and for cutting even fine twigs up to fit as much as possible in the wheelie bin. I was given a pair as a present two years ago, then bought a spare pair last year.

Good thing too, as I lost the originals last autumn - only to find them this spring hidden under the ivy that covers the icehouse. They were still in perfect condition - unlike all the other pairs of secateurs I've ever left lying round the garden. They're aluminium so are lightweight and of course rustproof. They even come with a little oil-coated pad for lubrication, built into the handle. Needless to say I lost both of these almost as soon as I opened the packets...

Highly recommended - but only on sale for a short period from 25 August 2011 (and perhaps at the same time next year).

So why are birds better at growing sunflowers than I am?

I sowed dozens of sunflower seeds this year and not a single one came up.

Granted, I didn't really expect great success as:
a) our soil is pure sand;
b) muntjac deer find sunflower leaves really juicy and tasty;
c) the seeds were mostly from ancient half-used packets (I have a vast stash of all kinds of old seeds and keep intending to strew them randomly round the garden to see what happens).

However, the garden birds have done their best to help. I've counted at least a dozen modest sunflowers dotted round the garden. They're mostly teensy and spindly...





...though some stronger ones have made a home amongst other flowers in pots.




I'm now wondering whether next year I should simply replace the seed on the bird tables at sowing time with some of Mr Fothergill's finest giant varieties, on the basis that the bird gardeners couldn't do worse than I did!

1 August - the start of the year

I've used a mid-year diary for my journal since 1973, when my cousins started sending me a school year diary that they published. Theirs is no longer available, but I've kept up the mid-year tradition, even in years when I use a Paperchase notebook that somehow always lasts me exactly a year too.

My current preferred books are both A5 page-a-day diaries - a WH Smith one in silver for my journal and a Collins one for my desk diary.


Both actually last more than a year, but I use them from 1 August to 31 July. The Smiths one will be the fifth of the same design and the Collins one will be the seventh, so I am quite set in my ways. I like them both for their own purposes - the Collins one has times down the side of the page so wouldn't work for a journal but is great for work timings, while the Smiths one has narrow lines so you can write a lot on a page (it also has a little quotation in tiny writing at the bottom of every other page, eg yesterday's was Jayne Mansfield's 'Men are those creatures with two legs and eight hands.')

Every year I wonder whether the time has come to keep my diary on the computer, but every year I put off the decision on the basis that I already spend enough time in front of the screen. Yes, it would be quicker to look things up - though yesterday it only took me about 20 minutes using a combination of photo albums and my diary to track down something from 1998 (without being sure beforehand what year it happened). Of course a spreadsheet of key events would have been much quicker still.

The written journal in particular contains a lot of information. I rule columns to make a page for each month to record where we each were on each day and keep lists of books read, movies seen, presents given and much more. These are arguably all things that would be better in a spreadsheet or at least in my Palm handheld, so perhaps I should start compromising and listing these electronically while continuing to use the diary itself for the not-very-exciting records of my days.

There will be two small changes this year. Every year, I try to keep a list for a single month of something that wouldn't necessarily be mentioned in my diary but that might be interesting to look back on one day. One time I listed a month's worth of non-food/supermarket shopping with prices. Circumstances last year led to a horribly long list of things that broke (several bits of both cars, the washing machine, laptop power supply, two separate leaks, a mp3 player etc etc etc). Another time, we totted up how many gigabytes of videos, mp3s etc we had as of that date. I think this year's list will be a month's worth of evening meals.

The other 'innovation' is to add photos. I'm terrible at getting round to printing out pictures, but bought a new toy last week - a secondhand Polaroid Pogo printer. Its not much bigger than my compact camera and prints out 2" by 3" stickers - you just bluetooth them to it, or connect a usb cable from the camera.



Brilliant - and it will be a great help in skimming through old diaries looking for particular events, as well as reminding me of good pictures worthy of proper prints.