life with booyaa

after breakfast on saturday we headed straight off to the lottie (allotment) to discover that the wet weather had not only prodded the potatoes into rampant growth, but the dreaded weeds, too. so, it was a case of on your knees and get picking, girl.

i have to say it was a bit disheartening. we have a nasty weed called mare's tail and we know it's going to be troublesome. but when we first started on the allotment, before even thinking about sowing, we turned over the soil in minute detail and pulled every visible weed up at the roots. so, really, we hadn't expected to see them come back in such wanton profusion. anyway. the next issue is that we can't dig them up where tiny baby seedlings are coming through, as the root movement will displace the young plants. so we just have to tough it out for a while. to add insult to injury, they're looking to seed, so if we don't get rid of them soon they'll spread everywhere and not only will we have a hundred more of the blighters but our lottie neighbours will be most displeased with us.

booyaa and i have been talking a lot, of late, around the notion of the slow revolution. as a lapsed marxist i am aware that there's no such thing. a revolution is, by its very nature, abrupt and usually violent. what we're referring to is more of a movement. it's slow, steady, underground but not furtive. good-natured and well-meaning. and it's all about standing back and taking a good, long look at life and then trying to make it better in any way you can.

we're all so busy turning a profit, consuming, being entertained by a media machine that doesn't want us to think for ourselves that we don't have time to truly consider whether what we're doing, where we're going (as individuals and as a race) and how we achieve those goals, are, in fact, what we really want.