Loved Gail's 'soil test' this month! Gail's January Guide
While digging a particularly heavy clay spot in the garden this week, it was great to find tons of earth worms. Each shovelful clod looked like the top of a crumpet, with lots of perfectly round holes drilled right thru the clumps. Good ol worms - fertilizing and aerating at the same time.

Thank you Maggie! Once again, it's the lazy gardener's test. For those who lack earthworms, spread molasses or sugar for a quick attractant of biodiverse creatures then keep going with organic practices.

Must apologise Gail, thought I'd seen the January ones, but I hadn't. Great practical advice as usual, now will you come and do my January pages?

As with Gail's column, I was also sooo glad to hear you are continuing your pages this year too Terry! I'll be lurking around for them every month, as usual! and will post a link to them here as usual. Course you can still have your own page on this site too, if you want to. You are our official Overseas Correspondent either way ;-)

Terry, I'm not much on doing pages for the website. I write 'em, Maggie posts them. BUT, I would love to come live/work in your garden! Would it pay much???

Oh yes Gail it pays very well, how many guineas/hour do you charge? That's Guinea pigs/hour.

Sorry Terry,,, that one goes over as well here as the ballsy bottle one - like a lead balloon too. ! See Gail, a guinea was once a currency denomination. It was a whopping shilling more than a pound, which was once 20 shillings. In the last half of the last century, before UK went decimal, a shillings $ equivalence ranged from 15 to around 50 cents. The pound now trades for around $1.50 You'd be better off getting paid in pigs than guineas, if you knew where to sell them for cash. ;-)

We don't have the pound symbol - L with a slash thru it - on our keyboards. Do you have a $ key on yours Terry? And you had to know I would ask you for any history you can share about the guinea - 21 shillings - not the pigs. I remember when only the posh stores still priced things in g's instead of pounds back in my old (and yours:) days. There must be some interesting aristo related history in there somewhere.

Well if I get paid in pigs and/or guineas, I'll need some land to raise 'em! Does that come with the job AND I would just love a thatched roof house too. Can/Will/Would you provide?

First, did everyone else has had trouble getting on here over the past few days? Second I put the guinea on to test your knowledge Maggie, knew you would be up for it. :-)
Of course our keyboards have a $ sign on them and a € sign, the second one is the Euro that we still haven't adopted as our currency. I don't know any more than you do about the Guinea, Maggie. You are bang on when you say it lingered on for expensive purchases only.
Talking of expensive brings me to Gail, would you settle for a small wooden shed and a window box?

Our server was down several times again Terry. They have been bought by a huge outfit and the switch-over is going to be a bumpy ride. grrr
I hadn't seen the keyboard Euro sign before, cool. It's a good thing this a gardening board, or I would be up my soap box about that subject ;-) You must have a lot more buttons on your board than us!

Is your shed thatched? ;-) Just think, Gail could spend her holidays in UK with free board and keep in exchange for converting the homeowners' yards to the natural ways, while teaching Organic Gardening Lessons.

Maggie/Terry, at this point in my life, this sounds ooooohhhh sooooo tempting! Are there flowers in the flower box?

I could sell the house, give away my car and be there within 10 days. Would that be in time for spring? or would it be winter? I always forget whether ya'll are opposite of us, probably not, uh? Either way, I don't own any pets so you would only have ONE extra mouth to feed. And let's see, wonder what the charge would be to bring my garden statutary and trellis, and arches, and favorite stepping stones and...all by plane... hmmmm....might have to empty my retirement account too!