Minutes, months and fruit

The challenge for today: write 400 words on on the subjects minutes, months and fruit, moving seamlessly from one subject to the next.

For the last seven years it has been my pleasure to produce Jungle Jottings, the monthly newsletter for members of Brighton Lions Club. Well, it's mostly been a pleasure. During the last 12 months I have also had the doubtful privilege of being minute secretary for the club so I have incorporated the minutes of the business meetings into the newsletter. Business meeting are held on the third Wednesday of each month and JJ is due to be published ... well, I have always aimed to get it out during the last week of the month. So I have, especially during the last 12 months, associated the business meeting with the end of the month. But this month the third Wednesday was on the 15th of the month - a full two weeks before the end. That has really thrown me. Here I am with the minutes written and much of the July edition of JJ ready, and there are still two weeks to go! If I'm not careful I might even end up just twiddling my thumbs.

No, not a hope. I could always mow the grass. I realised on Tuesday that it needed doing but I had higher priorities and decided to put off doing it until Wednesday. And on Wednesday it rained, so I put it off again till Thursday. Well, yesterday threatened rain all morning (while I was writing the aforementioned minutes) and didn't look too good when I took the dog over the Downs in the afternoon, but it stayed dry. Until I was ready to get the mower out, when it started to rain again. So the grass still needs cutting. What I have been doing, though, is harvesting blackcurrants. That sounds as though we have a field of blackcurrant bushes rather than just the one. But that one has only ever been lightly pruned and is now , in blackcurrant bush terms, almost obese. But what a crop it has produced this year. I thought last year's crop was good, but this year is even better. Which is, perhaps, just as well. The dry spring we had this year has caused almost complete failure in the rhubarb department. The onions aren't looking good, either, but then I forgot to buy the sets until all I could get were some dried up wrinkled things so that's really down to me.

The plums are looking good and bad depending which of the two trees is in view. One tree has virtually no fruit on it while the other is likely to have broken branches with the weight of the crop. Pears this year are iffy, but the apple crop looks as though it will be good again.

And that is 449 words so I have covered all three subjects. But whether or not I moved seamlessly from one to t'other is something only you, dear reader, can judge.