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Of hopeful time wasting, present lists and planting trees


Written on Saturday 8th December:

"But that would be a waste of my time," I replied to Littlest's request to spend time browsing in shops this morning.

I then listed all the chores I planned to do, when we got home.

She paused, thinking, then asked, "If you did have any time to waste how long would it be?"

And persevered, "Surely you have some time you could waste. I just want to know how long. We could waste time together."

Her idea of wasting time was to browse and add to her Christmas list: the list that she had taken shopping with her ... on a clipboard!



The chores I had to complete on getting home mainly involved the planting of trees. Or to be more precise, the final planting of the final tree in our fruit-pie/apple-crumble-generating orchard - the one that will feed fruity puddings to our grandchildren. This task has not been easy to finish -

It got off to a good start. Garden centre visited, trees selected, paid for (those puddings had better sustain us for years) and holes dug in preparation for their delivery. Then the problems started -

  • England was besmitten by an autumn monsoon and became saturated. The holes dug to receive trees became ponds - small round ponds for pond-dipping: dipping of paws; noses; more paws; tail; all paws; then total ... body ... immersion. Thus was created a muddy, grey-with-blond-highlights friend.
  • ponds later froze and blond friend decided he rather liked ice
  • Littlest liked it too ... until her fingers froze

  • tree plus de-iced pond-now-planting-hole plus compost/soil mixture then hit a snag. Pile of soil was frozen. and excavating it took much, much, longer than planned ... and the light ran out
  • several days passed with ground first solid, then covered in snow, then soggy
  • hence, lack of time, as explained to Littlest.And most definitely no time to waste, even if the time lost is in fact hopeful wasting; wasting with a goal in sight, that goal being loads of presents. Before Littlest sounds grabbing and unpleasant, the intended time wasting was definitely hopeful: the only element of wanting was a desire to guide the rather inept Father Christmas who often doesn't quite get her stocking right - how did he get the size of her fluffy bed socks so wrong last year? 

Littlest spent lots of time helping me to plant and net the trees. She knows the elves are watching to see if she actually deserves any of her listed presents.


And she got into the Christmas spirit






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