This afternoon I had a telephone conversation with one of the county contractor's engineers. There were indeed 4 blockages to drainage pipes at Cow Roast (between Berkhamsted and Tring) but fortunately in every case it was possible to clear them from excavations in the footway, without having to dig up the road.
WHAT A PITY... there are no local Flower and Produce Exhibitions this Autumn. 'Cos I'm sure I would have won the First Prize in the RUDEST VEGETABLE Section this year!
After some time of being neglected I was pleased to discover last week that the greenhouse has all the time been living up to its name, unnoticed. These are the remains of the self-sown spinach after rest was picked and cooked last week. That produced 8 portions to go with our home cooking - and what you can see will provide at least another 2. Then the greenhouse will be cleaned, the beds cleared out and replaced with a mix of fresh ericaceous compost mixed with richer material from our own compost bin - ready for tomatoes once the seedlings have grown. This years spinach and chard will be going straight into the garden in a muntjac-proof enclosure - and a second patch of garden is being fettled up ready for the seed potatoes we bought just before lockdown. I know not everyone has the space to grown vegetables, but if you can, you'll find it good, healthy exercise and very satisfying.
Duchy's Piece is a small nature reserve near Aldbury which features rare butterflies and downland flora. It was opened about 10 years ago by the Queen Mother on land owned by the National Trust. Running just below this, separated by a small area of scrub and undergrowth is a field that runs down to Northfield Road and which changed hands about 3 years ago.
"The privatised electricity supply industry has been a rip-off from the word go!" claims Hertfordshire County Councillor for Tring & the Villages, Nick Hollinghurst "and Ofgem, the complacent so-called regulator is complicit in all this."
Both Freightliner and Eurostar have been sold to North American organisations at the beginning of the month.