Stoned

A strange day, today has been. Absolutely scorching again, and so it may have been perverse that I decided to continue my mammoth task of moving stones from the back garden to the uneven drive. Why there are so many stones I don't know. They were dumped on two raised vegetable beds by a previous incumbant, and obviously have to be moved. As it happens I have decided to shore up the bumpy drive before having a load of planings delivered, the crushed grey product of churned up old roads. And so there is a kind of painful pleasure in gathering up the stones, piling them into my wheelbarrow and trundling them around to the front, barrowload after barrowload. Already the difference is amazing, and if it weren't for my aching neck I'd probably have kept going. Instead, as the sun went down over the yardarm, I decided to pour myself a glass of leftover Prosecco from last night's drinks party, and nibble on some remaining posh cheesy biscuits.

Today was the day for my garden to be created, planned in the diary months ago. A large team of men, or maybe it was a team of large men, was due to arrive at dawn for a few days to tear up what's there, dump 40 tonnes of topsoil, and smooth it into gentle slopes. 200 square metres of turf were to have been laid and cut to shape, and my new beds created. A terrace should have been built.  Disappointingly, the earlier date planned for killing off the existing grass and weeds, an essential task, was the first wet one for weeks, and so the new garden had to be postponed. I know it will happen soon, or sometime, but I thought I'd be planting my new shrubs and flowers by now, and ticking the last major item off my list of 'Things To Do'. We Laings like our gardens to be happening.

Cloud is beginning to filter through the intense blue that has been the sky for a few days now. Perhaps the weather is changing again. Earlier today I heard, with utter astonishment, loud music blaring outside my house. I bristled, and went to see what it was. An Open Reach van was parked down the lane, engine running, radio blasting. In an earlier life I might have told him to move away, or turn the radio off. But despite the heat I was chilled, and I went back to my stones instead. He soon moved away. Everything passes.