Paths' Endings

The Neighbour had worked until late into the gloaming on Wednesday, and dug out a lot of the midden area which adjoins our two plots. I spent some time tidying it into three piles: rubbish, scrap metal, and rotten wood for burning. I got down into the midden and found a double course of bricks, (handy, because I'm running out of bricks). I started to excavate them, when The Neighbour showed up to finish off his side, (rotten timber, bracken and brambles, he'd moved a lot of broken glass yesterday), so I went back to the path.

Hard work, having to travel the length of the path to get rubble (broken bricks and bits of concrete from the midden-border), and by mid-afternoon I realised I wouldn't get finished by reason of the staggering rule, (when I start to stagger, it's time to leave). Only a couple of flags to go to reach the stub of brick path I did last summer at the Northern end. Couple of the flags I laid yesterday are a bit shoogly, and will need attention in due course, but for now I just need the bloody thing laid and more-or-less serviceable so I can get the barrow back and forwards to shift some of that earthly delight across from the NE to the NW bed.

Whilst The Neighbour was working at the midden, and I was halfway down the path, two ladies in dark suits showed up, looking, in the muddy male swearing world The Neighbour and I were in, like visitors from another reality. It was the Predecessor's daughter (not the one I met last year, but another) and a grand-daughter.

He died a few days ago, and they'd been passing, and called in to see if his half of the plot was being tended, not knowing I'd taken it all over in December. The daughter told me the plot meant a great deal to him. In the hospice one day, he was sitting with his hands cupped, and she asked him what he was doing, and he told her he was shelling peas. He would be glad, she said, to see his allotment being worked so hard.