I went to Birmingham on Saturday to the Education Show: an exhibition for teachers to meet suppliers, government departments and each other! Three huge halls at the NEC filled with stalls that had all sorts of things on display. I came away with three carrier bags filled with booklets, papers and CD ROMS. I met a few people but I have to confess that the event didn't meet all of of my expectations. Never mind, I got a few ideas that could surface here in a while! The drive up was cold: really cold weather. The drive back was sweltering as the sun had broken through the mist and was boiling me half to death. I took a walk to Tesco on Saturday evening and had done the same the night before: 20 - 30 minute round trip including shopping. Then today, Sunday, Mrs W and I went to the garden centre to buy another cherry tree as our existing tree needed a cross pollinator ... now it's got one! We bought a peach tree too, plus an Azalea and some flower seeds. Cost a fortune and then Dima and I had to do some digging and moving. Mrs W, who's serioulsy into Feng Shui, was working on the positioning of the trees to bring out the auspicious and that meant digging up and transplanting three plants and then planting the three new trees/bush. Dima did much of the work, including spraying yours truly with ice cold water as we watered our new plants in. Half way through the digging we came across a major obstacle and big brick ... obstacle turned out to be a large piece of wood that took us ages to shift. Having identified it as wood, having thought that it was stone because of its colour and the sound the spade made when hitting it, Dima announced that it was probably a coffin or buried treasure. Of course it was neither! We came across half bricks and other stones, too that made or lives so much more interesting. We did a good job overall and the Spring and summer should help us to reap our rewards. Last year was disappointing as three of our then four fruit trees were hit by pests and didn't produce anything like anything decent ... the cherries blossomed madly but couldn't be pollinated, of course. I was also filled with glee when I spotted that some of the rocket seeds I planted last Sunday have germinated! Hooray! There you are, more slop and I'm kerry packered with all this digging and walking. DW