Stoned

I wish my new camera would come. I feel like a Monty Python lumberjack without an axe, or a pianist without my Steinbeck. I have things to record, progress to monitor, changes to display, and I'm being held up. It's been On Golden Pond here for a few weeks now, but the tale is nearly told. There will be a sequel, but it won't be as thrilling and eventful as the main story. Katharine Hepburn won't be in it for a start, but then nor will there be gnomes with fishing rods. I went on a hunt for stones to edge the pond, with my visitor who is good as snuffling these sorts of things out. We went to the big commercial garden centre whose telephone operator assured me they had what I was looking for. We hunted through the predictable stone collections and were just giving up when she spotted them in a storage area. They were perfect, lumps and slices of slate with rusty marks on them, and I bought six, three for the price of two. They were meant to add interest to the edging, but back home I decided I needed another 10, so off we went again and bought more. But when they'd been roughly laid in place, magnificently setting off the pond, I realised I needed more, so off we went again and got another nine. Twenty six would have been perfect, but I made do with 25, spacing them out a little, the interstices to be filled with small stones wedged in place when the area dries out. It's been pretty wet for several days and I've felt like a child making mud pies. But it really looks great now, and worth all the money and effort.

I'm alone again after a few days of company, and doing what I always do on these occasions: throwing myself into some diversionary activity. It usually works, and it's working now. If only the weather would perk up again and the sun shine. Hard to believe it's going to be 100 degrees by the end of July. Maybe my heavy parasol base will have arrived by then, but that's another story, and since it's already bored me rigid I'm not about to repeat it. I'll certainly have it for next summer.