Scrabble Garden Garden Scrabble...

The sun is shining. That means end of scrabble studying and back out into the garden.

On the scrabble study front I have gone back to basics with stems, recreating my revision spreadsheets as I go. I really don't like the 'order of usefulness' in the Collins OSL. I think it is basically flawed, and not only by just using valid 6 letter words as the stems. How can TOEIER which only combines with A and Z, once you have ruled out the already seen words (only 3) from higher 'useful' stems come in at number 145 whereas ALDERS, which combines with 20 other letters with 15 of them not having already occurred higher up, be number 169... In the old book it was number 85 and TOEIER did not register. I think once I have gone through all 250 I will add in the old Chambers non-word stems and reorder the whole caboodle based on my own criteria of usefulness.

I had a quick look at my cardbox the other day. I have ignored it since Malaysia and it was around the 27500 questions pending mark. A reset methinks when I eventually resume...

We are currently getting our gutters replaced from the winter ice. Yesterday I salvaged a piece of guttering and one of the chaps kindly cut up another into three lengths of about a metre and a half. I am now all set to plant my peas in them a la Gardener's World.

But first things first, another day of topsoil sifting should see that through and then the potatoes in. Talking of which I got another carrier bag full out of the supposedly emptied veggie patch when I dug it over last week. I wonder how many are still there...