Shovel

F seems to do almost as much digging as I do.  I do mine in short bursts at regular intervals, and keep it discrete.  F on the other hand spends hours at it, sometimes months apart, and covers vast areas by comparison.  I’ve have never actually encountered anything that she has buried, so she seems to be very good at hiding it.

To be fair, if F has been digging it makes my digging a whole lot easier.

In our first two years at this house she dug up some bits of the back yard.  Last year she dug up the allotment.  Now she has started on the front yard.  Digging would seem to be some sort of obsession with her.  I dig with my toenails, but F has a digging stick.  She calls it a ‘shovel’.   It has a long wooden handle and a pointed shield shaped bit of metal at the bottom.

Last year when she started digging at the allotment, some of the neighbours must have noticed her ‘shovel’ and were curious, but they never said anything about it to F.  It seems that it is a digging stick largely unknown to local allotment holders.  They dig with something F calls a ‘spade’.  She reckons English gardeners must have exceedingly strong backs – or a lot of aching backs.

F loaned her shovel to Lyn, when Lyn was digging the potato patch on her neighbouring allotment.  I like Lyn.  I like Lyn’s allotment.  Lyn said I have nice stripes.  While we were at home for lunch, lots of people came and dug Lyn’s potato patch for her so that they could try out the ‘shovel’.

That was last year.  This year lots people have shovels.

I think F missed a business opportunity there.

(F: OK smart alek – I didn’t see you ordering in a consignment of shovels and hawking them around the allotment-holders when you were parading about showing off your stripes.  THAT would have boosted your ailing catfood fund!)