Sore as a sunburnt neck...

I spent Easter Monday in the garden. There's so much to do that I kept getting side-tracked. I'd start raking a flowerbed, then take the rakings to the compost and stop at the raspberries and work on them for a while...and so on. But things are looking good.
The beds by the door are clear, though, disappointingly, it looks like the clematis haven't survived. Watching The Beechgrove Garden, they seem to put in really big clematis plants - so when I get more clematis I'm going to leave them in the pots and feed them well, and not put them out until they are a decent size.
I have been wondering if either of the two reading tents I've been left with (and which are taking up room in my basement) might make a reasonable plastic-covered greenhouse. The more sturdy one would be the best to try with, I suppose. I must get a roll of banking plastic and give it a go. The main worry would be wind, of course, but maybe with ingenious guy ropes...I'm thinking down to the east of the vegetable garden, there's quite good northerly shelter there from some spruce trees, and a lot of sun to be had.
Anyway, I did a bit of work in the ugly ditch as well, raking down the dead stuff to the bottom and then firing it - however it was quite dry and a bit too windy, so I stomped it out pretty quickly. There's a bit of debris left behind after the fire that can go in the Waste cart tonight, and then, with luck, the lupins will come along and beautify the area! I took down a number of young Norway maples and wild roses, though there are many more of the latter at the end I didn't get to yet.
We have had rain since Monday, so my sunburnt neck feels oddly inexplicable - though it certainly is sore. Don't think I got much of a burn anywhere else - I was quite well covered up, just didn't think about sunscreen. The sun sneaked up on me.
I think the grass has greened up considerably just since Monday. More scarifying to be done yet, but we will have rain until at least Sunday! Though I hope that will change.
Fred plans to take out the honeysuckle and the spirea at the west side of the house - he says they are too close to the foundation. Luckily they have propagated themselves - particularly the honeysuckle, which has youngsters all over the place - so I don't mind. The house will look different with them gone, though. And we have to get a new oil tank, which will have to go indoors (I hate the thought, as I greatly fear oil spills and the resultant sickening smell, but apparently indoors is more acceptable to the insurance industry). This means that the whole west side will be bare. I may have to think about doing some flower beds there - it's mainly green at the moment. Lots of trees. Perhaps a shade garden.
Easter in Halifax was great, plenty of dancing and warm weather. It was 20 degrees on Sunday! We saw a bit of Katie - took her to Talay Thai on Saturday night, and brunch on Easter Sunday. She was going to a BBQ on Friday, so we ended up going for Indian food at Curry Village just off Spring Garden Road. Nice food, and good to see quite a few East Asians in - makes me think the food must be reasonably authentic!
Emily has been driving a truck for the NDP in Toronto - driving out to the airport to pick up equipment at odd times when the crew return from a campaign stop. She was called upon (as a native Islander) to recommend a PEI restaurant where Jack could have dinner with "a journalist" - somewhere with a view. She recommended The Dunes. Turned out the "journalist" was P. Mansbridge. She couldn't tell if they actually went to The Dunes when she watched it on TV that night - apparently most of the shoot was in a moving car!
We got lawn signs for Rita Jackson last night - but the Liberals out our way have been pretty mean, they have torn down countless Conservative signs in our neighbourhood over the few weeks of the campaign. And of course they defaced our Layton sign at the last election. What a big bunch of scaredey-cats.