Three things make a post

1. Why does my garden look worse this year — when I have time at last to tend it — than it ever did when I was working full-time? Probably for the same reason that, on the first day this week when I could go out in it without getting wet, I'm on medication that requires me to avoid direct sunlight...

2. Some years ago, I was taught to dowse by a no-nonsense engineer who (so he said) had used his skills regularly in the army to speed up the surveying of sites for the installation of telecomms infrastructure. When I suggested that it was just wishful thinking that produced the movements of the rods in my hands, he had me try it with two bent lengths of metal coat-hanger inserted into sleeves made out of short lengths of plastic piping. The metal rods still moved, even when I had no direct contact with them. I am therefore not convinced that this is the whole story.

3. I need a better cat-waxing icon.