Ouch

I thought it might comfort those of you repulsed by spiders to know that from time to time they eat each other. I can't tell you what the unfortunate victim was - of the almost 700 species of spider in the UK [covers ears with hands to mask the noise of screaming], I can confidently identify fewer than a dozen - but it looks to have been smaller than its nemesis, and a female Zebra Jumping Spider is only about 6mm long, so the poor little thing may well be more noticeable in death than it ever was while alive.

Today was Too Much Gardening Day. If you've been reading my drivel for any length of time you'll be aware that in my book any amount of gardening qualifies as too much (eeeurgh) - but today I really pushed it, by deciding to remove some big self-seeded clumps of stuff that had plonked themselves in the wrong places, and were beginning to cause a problem. I didn't have too much trouble with the three foetid irises I uprooted, one from the rose bed, and two from close enough to our baby wildlife hedge to be impinging on its roots. But my final target - a vast clump of pendulous sedge that was completely overshadowing a beautiful, but fragile and temperamental, peony (shown in my extra image here) - put up a hell of a fight. In the end I used the two biggest spades we have, and little by little worked them in underneath it from either side, until enough of the roots gave way for me to haul it bodily out of the border. It completely filled, and slightly overhung the wheelbarrow into which I triumphantly dropped it - and which I confess  to having left on the lawn, for R to see when he got home. I didn't want him thinking the elves had quietly removed the damned thing, while I was reclining on the sofa like a lady of leisure, reading a book and scoffing chocolate.

In fact, by the time R came in I was running a hose and sprinkler round to the front garden, to water the recently tidied and replanted border, where some of my young plants had been starting to look a bit sorry for themselves. I was already paying the price for my exertions though, and I had to have a bit of a lie-down before dinner. Then I went off out to choir, and - Haydn notwithstanding - by the time I got back I was toadally zorsted, and ready to crash.