My Life with Plants

It's been a very productive few days. Last night I ushered at Snape for the English Touring Opera's La Boheme, and to be honest I wasn't wild about the prospect. Puccini is not my favourite composer, though I am very fond of Tosca (I nearly wrote Tesco which I don't love!) and quite like Madame Butterfly. But it was fabulous, a really interesting production with excellent staging and, oh, the music! I was sitting at the front of the hall at right angles to the audience, and had to flick away the tears as casually as possibly so as not to be too obvious. I wasn't the only one. Earlier I'd arranged to meet a friend to play duplicate bridge in Nigel's absence, but she got the time wrong and I bumped into her emerging from the Co-op with a grin of gleeful anticipation on her face. It turned to bitter disappointment when she realised her mistake. Never mind Caroline, we'll try again soon. I was happy to get back into the garden where I'd left Val transplanting Japanese anenomies, and the day too lovely for bridge anyway.

A bit more colour in the RWNN

The sun beat down again today despite the gloomy weather forecast, though a sharp easterly was best avoided. Tony came early and fitted some bookshelves for me, so the room with no name is beginning to take on a bit of character. Then Patrick arrived with some raffle tickets for me to sell in aid of the church, and Caroline rang asking me to help her on the plant stall at the fayre next Saturday. It's all go in the country. As the day wore on I paid another visit to the plant man, Adrian, and filled the car up with more of his perennials, ground cover this time, geraniums with blue flowers (pronounced the Suffolk way, flars). I stopped off on the way there to get some cash, and when I got home it was still in my pocket. I hadn't paid him! It's OK though: he's happy to wait for my next visit. I got home exhausted after another day with the hoe and the rake, but it's a happy kind of tired. I did the only possible thing under the circs: opened a bottle of Peroni. Now that's better.