Screwing

I'm grubby from uprooting sedge grass from the food garden in the wood. There's a rune in the elder futhark connected to sedge grass with its own little rhyme about how sedge hurts the hand that grasps it. ('The Elk-sedge usually lives in the fen, growing in the water. It wounds severely,staining with blood any man who makes a grab at it.') It does hurt too, or at least large sedge reeds do; the little ones are more delicate.

The Entling has a plan for all these sedges. He wants us to create a 'green' roof.

I fear this plan. Creating a green roof, testing in itself, is made a greater project because one can't just bung soil across the top of the portacabin and hope for the best, as per the Boot's preferred method. Apparently this will not do. A platform for the plants is needed to go on top of the roof, and said platform needs to be supported by what can best be described as a kind of wooden exo-skeleton on the outside walls. This means woodwork, a lot of it. My first experience of a hammer was just over 8 weeks ago; power tools are still new to me. My technique is rubbish: I overscrew. I wedge the screwdriver bit of the power drill into the screw, then find myself desperately jamming the four jutty out bits of the screwdriver into the crossholes, at which point I push, press, and watch in horrified amazement as the head of the screw chunts* itself into a battered wodge of mini-metal which I can neither secure nor remove properly. Creating a wood scaffold for four walls and a roof platform constitutes a challenge well beyond my current ability.

But I came home weary in a good way. Another dream this morning, about a kitten curled up round my feet while a neighbour told me about a near pub she liked. In the dream I thought, 'Surely not,' because it looked dreary and had a bad reputation. Still, I walked out somewhere only to find myself facing a mansion in Haiti.

At least it didn't have a green roof on it.

* Possibly not a word.