This past weekend brought victory with the cider press. With all the replacement pieces finally in place, the behemoth grinder crushed whole apples and made apple pulp or pomace about five times as fast as the old grinder. We had four gallons pressed in about an hour. This left time for lots of long delayed victory toasts and…….other projects.

I am not sure I will ever have a cosy relationship with this wheelbarrow, but I am back hauling composted manure and bark mulch with it.

I move around it gingerly though. This was, after all, the very beast I took my bone breaking flip over.

Yesterday after hauling a lot of manure to build a new flower bed, I filled the bed with crocus bulbs. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. I ever so carefully planted clusters of different color crocus bulbs so that, next spring, they would look artfully scattered in a pleasing arrangement of different shades of yellow, white and purple Flowers.

I awoke this morning to find a skunk had ripped up the whole bed during the night. He had left his lingering scent and very few bulbs. I poked these forlorn stragglers into the earth again. As I did so, I felt a lot less smug than yesterday afternoon when I lay on the ground looking at the ziliions of crocus bulbs all so precisely placed for planting and crowed a little bit. That had been a short but misguided moment when I thought myself so on top of the bulb thing.

Perhaps Sophie and Lizzy’s daffodil bulb planting today will go better. If not, its going to be time for a war with a skunk.

Like anyone ever won a war with a skunk……