Today for the first time since going down with this horrible bug that’s been plaguing me for weeks, I’ve started to get on with stuff. Sunday for me is always a day of shit shovelling (through necessity, rather than choice…..dogs, wabbits and chooks all need clearing up after) and after I’d done the deed I decided to stay out, do a bit of work in the veggie garden and try to get a few photos for the start of my February garden gallery.

We have our garden divided into two parts, the part where the dogs are and the part where everything else goes on! It’s not that they don’t ever go into the rest of the garden, it’s just that Archie can’t be trusted with the hens and Rosie is so mad she churns up the lawn with her mad running around. This pic of poor Archie shows him sitting beside of the gate looking woefully at me because he knows I’m about to go through and leave him behind.

He’s right – I’m not about to let him have the opportunity to grab a hen. When I first had him, I didn’t know of his thing about birds. I took him to the river where a lovely tranquil scene depicting a family of swans (two parents and two cygnets) was shattered by Archie diving in and swimming really fast up behind them. I didn’t even know he could swim until that point. The parents were desperate to keep their brood safe so they let the cygnets swim ahead and they brought up the rear where they stayed just ahead of Archie hissing and trying to scare him off. Archie made a lunge at them and ended up with a mouthful of feathers. I was terrified, not least because swans are protected and I’d already read Lord Hattersley’s account of him being prosecuted for Buster, his dog’s killing of a swan. (Read Buster’s Diaries, it’s cool!) Fortunately, it was OK – they were quicker than him and eventually he lost interest and climbed out.

Now though, we can’t risk him taking one of our girls so we keep them apart.

Archie hates it because all he wants to do is be with me and when I’m up the garden he’s tantalisingly close but not able to actually be with me. He whinges and whines and barks and drives us mad. Good job we don’t have neighbours who get stroppy about such stuff.

I made him stay on the patio while, in between bouts of coughing, I dug our last year’s spinach beets (not that we managed to eat any of it – the hens saw to that) and cleared the Jerusalem artichokes out of the bed ready for new planting later this month.

So, I feel as though I’ve achieved something today – only a couple of small jobs in the garden it may be, but given that it’s my great passion and I’ve not been out there for three weeks because of being ill, I feel pretty pleased.

Oh, Arch has mud on his nose from playing footie with Wiggly Giggly!