Marvel-lous

I snipped the deadheads off a few dahlias this morning and had to go in and lie down. God, these bugs take it out of you. Earlier I ordered 200 Nespresso capsules so I must be expecting to live for several months. That's 200 morning coffees, fewer if I have guests, but more if you count my new routine of going into Waitrose before CAB every Tuesday morning and having a free latte. I'm not sure if you have to buy something first or if your MyWaitrose cards gets you one automatically without shopping. I daren't ask in case I sound too cheapskate, and that's in spite of getting my John Lewis Mastercard annual statement the other day which shows I spent £10,000 plus on it in the last 12 months. But that includes all my spending, everywhere. Still ...

Even earlier I put six pairs of pyjamas in the washing machine - yes, six! - that I have worn in the past week, some of them more than once when they had dried on the end of the bedstead and could be reworn when I stumbled from my soaking bed in the middle of the night and grabbed at anything dry. Oh, the bliss of taking off cold wet clothes and getting all warm, wrapping yourself in a towel, turning the duvet over so the damp side is upwards on your non-existent partner's side of the bed and going back to sleep. In Angela's Ashes they were wet all the time, wet because it never stops raining in Limerick and even Terry Wogan who came from there complained that he couldn't remember a dry day from his childhood or schooldays. And wet because everything was damp and they'd get ill and there was no fire, no comfort to be found, very often no food, or never enough anyway. I don't dwell on these misery stories. I don't like them. But when I do encounter them I marvel that people survived these lives when I know I couldn't.

I fried up last night's potatoes and cabbage with a couple of eggs for my lunch - delicious. I finished it off with the chocolate surrounding some chocolate and ginger biscuits that I bought with my online order for when Nick is here. I rang Ruth at work after receiving a text message from her saying "Ring me at work", and when she answered the phone she couldn't remember the name of the antique shop she works at, and in her confusion I told her very grandly that I was looking for an antique and then told her she'd do. Silly, I know, but we got a fit of the giggles and couldn't speak for five minutes when she had to go as a customer came in. I still don't know what she wanted.

Projection

I've had this microwave oven for, what, 15 years and today was the first time I discovered that it has a grill. I think of all those long lamented cheese on toasts, grilled bacon, whatever tasted better for a little browning that I have had to sacrifice since living here and all the time the technology was right there in front of me. I've diced with death toasting cheese bread with the toaster on its side only to have the end product shot out when the popper upper popped up and land face down on the floor. I'm ashamed to admit that I ate it anyway. It's my floor. I have no pride. I had a lovely grilled cheesy lunch today after I'd built a tall enough pyramid out of casserole dishes. I'm sure I can get one of those metal tower structures as a spare part. I never knew what it was and threw it away.

I'm feeling better today, a lot better. I had a bath, put on clothes for the first time in a week, and went and got the paper. Ruth popped by with some provisions including a fat slice of fresh pineapple which tasted like a juicy shaft of happiness. I wouldn't let her in as I was still pyjama'd and groggy from another horribly restless coughy night, but she was off on a walk anyway. I spent most of the morning in the summerhouse where the sun was powering down. I killed dozens of horrible flies with my rolled up Sunday Times magazine until I realised all the lovely cream paintwork was dark with magazine print where I'd bashed and I could no longer read all about AA Gill's long battles with drugs and alcohol because of the torn strips. This article revealed more feckless parenting, if not in the same class as Frank McCourt's. When he asked his 22-year-old son if he'd had any thoughts about a career, and his son said, Dad, does that sound like me? and he experienced a sharp pang of pride, I thought, you f***ing waste of space AA, that's not even half clever. I'm having some very intense and angry throughts at the moment which are confusing me rather. I didn't have feckless parents. Where is the rage coming from?

No Sense of Humour

My head feels like a boiled haggis and I'm clearly no nearer being better. I'm fed up with sitting, lying or slouching in bed all day, forcing myself to go downstairs to get food and drink, putting the electric blanket on when I get back under the covers and then having to turn it off again quickly when I get too hot, coughing fit to burst, sweating and having change everything and sleep on a towel, dreading the nights, dreading the mornings, bored and irritated and cross. Why do viruses have to last so long?

Going into my study to get print-outs of the Times crossword and killer sudokus each day, I lean on the windowsill and gaze out over the garden. Thank goodness there's something to like, even if these last several days have been ideal for doing all those autumn jobs I so enjoy but can't undertake. I keep telling myself it could be worse, and of course it's true. But it could be better too, and that'sthe one I want. Old miseryguts.

Cogitating

The best friend you can have when you are ill and live alone is the dishwasher. Not having to watch the dirty dishes mount up until you are forced to stand and tackle them is a real treat. Other best friends are friends, obviously, who ring you up and send you text messages and offer to come round and bring you anything you need. Worth their weight in gold, they are. Last night I coughed and hacked until I thought my innards would tear. I woke feeling a bit out of it, but I had to get moving because both Nick the gardener and the Waitrose delivery man were coming and they arrived together on the dot of 9. I left them both to it once I'd unlocked the back door, one to empty my shopping onto the kitchen table and the other with a list of jobs to get on with. Nick was very sprightly this morning, full of energy, and he got to the lawn cutting by midday. But what possessed him to lower the cutting head on the mower? It'll soon grow back, he said reassuringly as I bit back the question I longed to ask: Why? But he's done good work otherwise, and it's great having him, especially now that I'm incapacitated.

I've started re-reading Angela's Ashes, my third time I think. I'm not sure why I've picked it off the shelves because it's a bloody depressing read, what with the feckless drunken Irish father, the starving, freezing, filthy children and the dozy mother. The first time I read it I thought it was a masterpiece, a true original, and I still do. But stories of irresponsible parents who don't behave properly and make sure their children are well cared for really upset me. And yet they survived, well two out of the five did anyway, even if only the author ended up as a respectable parent himself. The other, a drunken Irish fool like his father with the gift of the gab aka a load of blathering hot air that he spouted in a constant stream of poetic bullshit, died from too much of the hard stuff. How I loathe such people, charmers and flatterers whose words are empty and whose lives are so meaningless and worthless. In my opinion. I can see that touched a nerve. Discuss.

Ticking Over

When I'm better I'm going to have a cream tea at the NT cafe on Dunwich Cliffs. That's a whole bowl of clotted cream and I'm not sharing. It's not that I'm really craving food as my appetite isn't exactly healthy and I've got plenty of things to choose from to keep me going. Tomorrow the cupboards will be bursting at the seams. It was funny doing a Waitrose online order because, as an aide memoire, they showed what we used to pick a few years ago and it was a real shock, a blast from the past. Funny how an illustrated shopping list can do that. I 'as no voice (old Charles Aznavour joke). It 'as vanished, and it makes me sound much worse than I am. But I'm not there yet, which is sad because Sammy and I were having a free meal at Snape on Saturday followed by a performance of The Turn of the Screw and I've had to cancel. I'm also due to work there on Sunday evening and attend a concert as a punter in the afternoon, Beethoven piano concertos, and these have had to go too. Bad bloody timing.

Several of the members of my Italian class are off to Italy for half term, lucky things. Bologna, Venezia and Siena have been mentioned, and Cagliari in Sardinia. I've been to Italy five times and until I started lessons I didn't know a single word apart from the very basics. How is that possible? All that scope wasted. I spent a month touring around Spain two years ago and at the end of that time could still only manage cerveza, the word for beer. But I had no interest in learning Spanish, and until I started Italian classes had no idea how much I would love the language, how greatly I would enjoy speaking it and understanding it. A slow learner then. But I'm making up for it. Any day now I'm going to carry all my books upstairs and really revise, really get stuck in. I am. No, I am.

Surrendering

Last night I coughed continuously from 9pm until 3am when I finally swallowed a combination of ibuprofen, sleeping tablet and half a valium, and then I slept. I was so exhausted by then I thought I would never be able to rest, and my ribs and abdomen ached. Today I'm not too bad though my voice has virtually gone, but I'm not feeling too bad if you discount the occasional bout of boredom. Someone reminded me about vitamin C, 1000g in water, and I heard my brain go clunk, duh. Of course, the friend of the immune system, the enemy of flu. I quickly made some up, and I'll take it daily from now on. I also did a Waitrose online shop, so I'll be good for at least another week if necessary. The funny thing is that I've really slowed down now and am not agitating to be up and doing things. I'm just going with the flow, though when I woke after a sleep this afternoon and thought it must be evening only to find it was 3.40 I was shocked at just how slow slow can be. It's still light outside now. When will it be night?

I fancy macaroni cheese with a touch of horseradish. I've been wanting some for weeks since I saw an advert for this variation, but it's such a fag to cook. I often put in mustard, but this version sounds yummy. Grilled tomato and cheese, sticky pasta, runny sauce - is there ever a time when this is not compelling? But such fancies are transitory, and my mind has been on a higher plane. I've been engaged in an email conversation with a friendly physicist for some weeks, trying to discover what scientists believe is beyond the universe, beyond the known world. What came before the Big Bang, what lies beyond the beyond? His explanations of what is generally accepted have been clear and straightforward, a delight to read and ponder on. But I think the answer to this conundrum lies beyond science in Hinduism, which teaches that there is no beginning and no end to matter but a continual circle of movement from growth to equilibrium to decline to dissolution and back to growth. It involves reincarnation, which I've never had a problem with, reincarnation until the soul is purged of all previous sins and become enlightened. When I'm better I'm going to have a bash at that.

Poems

It's been a long, long day, but not an unpleasant one. It's tailing off now, nearly 5.30 which in summer would see it just coming into its prime but at this time of year is the folding up and gently shutting down until the new dawn starts another one. The sun has shone all day and, lucky me, my bedroom faces south. I've dozed and slept, felt terrible and not too bad, done the crossword apart from one word which I had to look up - who could have known that a merganser was a kind of duck? - completed two killer sudokus, listened listlessly to the radio, and made the great trek down to the kitchen for refreshments. I haven't been able to concentrate on my novels, but a review of a book on TS Eliot in the paper made me dig out my old book of his poetry, and what do you know? It has really struck home today. My copy was annotated by me at university, and I've read with interest and astonishment my notes alongside The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land. Did I really know all that stuff? I remember marvelling at the concept of Modernism, and the amazing coincidence of Ulysses and The Waste Land both being published in 1922, the two seminal works being created simultaneously, though arguably Virginia Woolf had beaten them both to it. I've loved both Eliot poems today more than ever before, and feel that I too have measured out - if not my life then certainly my recent days - in coffee spoons. His imagery is startling and beautiful. I would now like to find the recording of Fiona Shaw reading The Waste Land. And then I'm going to read Heart of Darkness again, which I had already planned to do before I encountered the quote "Mistah Kurtz - he dead" in front of The Hollow Men. Life is full of these coincidences.

Drifting

I hadn't realised quite how busy I usually am, in mind or body or both. Lying in bed with all my accroutements around me - radio, light, electric blanket, water, throat sweets, pain killers, aspirin, sleeping tablets (only over-the-counter, almost never used), two books (Asunder by Chloe Aridjis and Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, my third reading in 50 years), computer, tray with remains of lunch on it, empty coffee cup, crossword, eyedrops, Ibuleve, dressing gown - I fidget from one distraction to another, too dozy to concentrate on anything for long but not peaceful enough to just do nothing. I try, I really do. I stretch out, comfy under my soft duvet, supported by two fluffy pillows. I close my eyes, I try to relax and drift but I'm not tired enough to sleep, and so I sit up again, slightly agitated, and try to find solace somewhere. But nothing works for longer than 10 minutes. And so I try again. I had thought that my days were filled with half-witted pleasures when not engaged in physical work, study or socialising, that staring out over the fields in contemplation of Nature and Beauty, gazing with happiness over the garden and planning my next moves filled more time than I would have cared to admit. But my mind won't hold on to any of these cogitative occupations. I'm dismayed. Am I after all just a butterfly whose brain skips from experience to experience, thought to thought, with no constructive purpose? I lie back again, amused at my foolishness, and accept that I'm ill, I need to just switch off and stop trying too hard. It works. I doze for a long time as gentle images drift in front of my brain, and then I fall asleep. It's nature's cure. I'll be better soon.

This, Not That

Imagine having ebola. I've got a heavy cold, thick head, gungy chest and I feel ill, really dreadful. All my joints ache, especially the ones already strained from heavy gardening. And my stomach feels sick. But it's nothing, nothing compared to how terrible ebola must be. Imagine being a Syrian refugee in a freezing field somewhere that you're not wanted, and you have flu, or worse. Or your baby is sick. I feel bad but, god, how much worse could it be.
 
I went into Jewsons the other day and asked for four cheap and nasty paving slabs measuring 450x450. Utility rather than cosmetic would be their function, so I didn't need anything fancy. We've got a special offer on at the moment, I was told, £1.49 per slab including VAT. Well, job done then. I paid, and we went outside so he could load up the car. But what manner of evil articles were these? Dark grey, forbidding and horrible, not the bland beige I'd imagined. I shuddered. Oh no, I said, these won't do at all. I feel depressed just looking at them. With an air of having heard it all before he lifted the offending first slab out of the boot and showed me what else they had. The next cheapest started at £4.99 , but it was much more bearable. OK, I told my friend, I'll take four of those and then come in and pay the extra. He loaded up the car then gave me a wink. I'll do a like for like swap, he said. If you come into the shop and we go through a refund and recharge you'll be there for 20 minutes, all that paperwork. I'll balance the books somehow. Thanks Jewsons. Now I know what to do when I install a wet room next to the cloakroom.

I hear voices outside and jump up to see who's invading my space, but it's only two passing cyclists, gone by in a flash of colour. In the sky hovering over the field beside me is the sparrowhawk who often works that same patch. He hangs in the air for nearly a minute before flying off. I've never actually seen him dive and emerge with a mouse or vole. I wonder if he's just putting on a display of power for me. I wish the Irish had shown its power earlier. But they're out of the Rugby World Cup now. Commiserations.

The Big Smoke

Why is it that every time I have a great trip to London I return home with a bug? At the moment it's just a cold, but history has shown that this can easily turn into a serious case of bronchitis rendering me housebound and useless for weeks. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and trying to be a Murphy (ie, not bitter). It was a good visit though. The highlight was seeing Keiran Hodgson's show Lance at the Soho Theatre, a skit on the disgraced cyclist which nearly won him best of the Edinburgh Festival. Clever, funny and gorgeous in one bundle, he's very compelling to watch, and really hits the spot with his humour. I checked on Youtube the interview with Oprah where Keiran has her ask, face a tight mask of concentration: "Yes or no, did you take drugs?" Shocking answer, eyes squint, jaw tight and lips pursed "Yes I did." Cue Oprah's sad, disapproving face. It didn't happen quite like that! He made it up! But it was soooo funny. Next day it was from the ridiculous to the sublime in the form of the Giacometti exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery and lunch with an old uni friend. But we had laughs too, especially remembering the old days as naughty students when we turned up at seminars slightly the worse for wear after a boozy lunch, or got firsts for essays we'd virtually made up. If only the visit could have ended on a high, but it couldn't of course. I sat in the tube at Holborn for 20 minutes while they cleared the line ahead of whoever had decided to jump onto it and restored the power. I missed my train, and though the next one was only 30 minutes later, I had to wait at Ipswich for an hours and a half for the connection. I travelled back on a packed train with Humphrey Burton and his wife Christine, and was regaled with stories from the music world, names dropped into the conversation like confetti. Despite the overcrowding, the heat, the dirt, my exhaustion it was all quite delicious.

An Everyday Story

Sid arrived early to set his traps, and it was such a beautiful morning, still and sunny, that I thought I'd take a walk straight away before heading off to London for a few days. First I had to hear Sid's woes, as always. "I bin bad," he started as usual. "Real bad. I'm on them anti-depressants, and I'm seeing a counsellor, but I have real bad days when I can't even get out of bed. I'm isolated in my mobie on the farm, and in this job you're on your own most of the time. I spose I'm not the only one." Well Sid, I thought, where shall I begin? Instead I sympathised while he told me the object of his love is clearly not interested, though she hasn't said as much, and he hasn't seen her for four months. Did I think she was just playing games, biding her time?  His pills must have suddenly kicked in, because he flashed me a great big smile, the sun bouncing off his enormous tombstone teeth, and so startling was the effect that I took a few steps backwards. "I'm too sensitive, that's my trouble," he said sadly. "Most men would tell her to get stuffed, begging your prdon."

I set off when he'd gone, marching down and up and down the lane, admiring the bronzes shades of the oak trees, and the many berrries and bright red hips in the hedgerows. Does this all suggest a cold winter to come? Here in this village in its very rural setting all the seasons are equally welcome to me whatever their extremity. I haven't experienced a bitter winter yet, though I'm told the village was cut off a few years ago, huge drifts of snow making the lanes impassable for days. But I don't mind the prospect at all, as long as I have enough firewood and food stores. It was a bit chilly when I left the house but I soon warmed up and started peeling off the layers. I still had my bright blue fleece on when a horse-drawn vehicle approached from the top of the hill. At first I thought I was seeing things as it was motionless, and could easily have been a low overhanging branch. Then I realised the young mare had spotted me and was afraid, and Jenny her driver from Fiddler's Hall was gently urging her on. We chatted a bit, and I'd love to have hopped up beside her and toured the lanes behind the horse. But I had a train to catch, and had to get back. "Walk on!".

Last night was the Snape ushers' annual party, and what a merry crew we were. It was thrilling to hear Harry tell us of future plans re the continuing development of the Snape site with its massive, empty and probably now crumbling buildings associated with its previous life as a maltings. There is so much scope, so many ideas for future use. It really is an exciting place to be involved with (I know that should be "with which to be involved" - never end a sentence with a preposition - but it just don't read right). I ended the evening with Richard who told me about his life as a minimalist artist living in New York for 10 years. And he knew Agnes Martin before she went to New Mexico. Now that took me by surprise.

Amour

I'm in love! Head over heels! I know, at my age I really should know better, but when these things strike they leave no room for demur. It's my garden of course, which probably means it's unrequited love. But I don't care. It's an all consuming passion and it gives me enormous pleasure, though it won't come to the cinema with me. Every morning I get up and dress in the same clothes, which at the moment are thick green corduroys, check flannel shirt and weighty striped wool sweater. I have my breakfast, check my emails, read the Times online, don my wellies and get outside as soon as my teeth are cleaned. It's bliss, truly it is. Today I bashed the earth off around thirty thick sods which Nick dug up, and tossed them into a long pile which will eventually be covered with a weed supressant to be turned into lovely compost. When my neck, back and arms started to really ache I stopped and planted a few lavenders along the side of my new path. Then I had lunch - home-made leek and potato soup - and took myself off to my favourite garden centre, the Walled Garden in Bedhampton. Oh, it's all go but what joy it brings. I bought some marginals to go around the pond, and some beautiful shrubs - euonymus elatus for one, and exochorda, beautiful things that will bring gorgeous colour to the garden. I came home with my haul, and mowed the lawn. Reducing the area has dramatically shortened the time it takes now, though I'm aware that my fitness and stamina levels are much increased. It all looked a picture when I finally came in and got into the bath.

The new path

Pond, finally cleared of weeds and grass for the umpteenth time

My beloved escholzia, hiding their heads for the night

But what else? Being with Nick has made me start to look up at the sky more, and there above me as every day this week was a large flock of redshank, their curleew-like cries an anomoly 10 miles from the sea. Why have they been wheeling about for so long, this far from the ocean? Are they trying to deide if it's time to migrate? Before I came home I stopped off at Waitrose for a few things, and treated myself to a pair of chocolate eclairs, the fresh cream filled variety. Very sensible. Very healthy. I got into the car, took one out of the packet and started to eat it. I was very naughty. Facing me was a Range Rover type of vehicle with a man in the driving seat, no doubt waiting for his wife. I put the eclair in my mouth, took a slow, gentle bite, and allowed an expression of ecstasy to pass across my face. And so I proceeded to the end, exactly as I would have done if I were alone but aware of his goggle-eyed face watching my every move. As I drove off, finally sated, he smiled broadly and nodded his head. It really was all about the food for me, whatever he thought. It's the garden I'm in love with.

Progress

From my study window upstairs I watched a tractor in the distance crossing backwards and forwards through a heavily ploughed field, the tiny tines on his trailer rendering the massive ruddy sods into finely raked tilth. It really is a marvellous sight, like seeing a crumpled sheet ironed smooth, or peaked clouds of icing sugar tamed on top of a cake, only muddier. I just wish I had one of his machines, in miniature. Nothing daunted I set to work on the great outpourings of brambles that have sprouted from my hedge and cascaded over the drive obscuring the lane, making exiting in a car quite dangerous. I wore my new yellow gloves, so expensive that they had a security lock on them so that when they forgot to remove it at the garden centre I had the choice of gardening with my hands held close together or returning them. I took the latter option. Why the alarm didn't go off when I left the centre the first time I don't know. Anyway, they are up to pulling on brambles, so I littered the drive with treacherous lengths of the barbed stuff, and then had an hour or so to fold them all up small and cram them into the already full gardening recycling bin before the truck arrived to empty it. The sun was so hot I stripped to a shirt but kept my hat on and high factor lip salve. I'm not going to be caught out twice.

When I'd finished that job and the binmen had removed it all I started on my little path. The newly-widened beds mean it has to be doubled in length, and I've widened it too by one line of bricks. I dug out the extra space, levelled it off and laid my bricks, a motley crew of old stock and new. It's not perfect but them I'm not a very careful person, preferring to get the job done than to spend ages in the preparation. It's the details that kill me, as is probably going to be apparent at CAB ere long if I don't change my tactics. But the path looks OK, rustic and charming. This is not Surrey, as an old neighbour used to tell us when we first moved to Suffolk. Twee doesn't hack it here.

When I'd finished the path all except filling the cracks with silver sand which I ran out of, I started again on breaking the earth off the huge turves which Nick has cut out of the lawn. It's very hard physical work, but it has to be done. I continued until I could barely move, and then crawled upstairs and into a very hot bath before slathering myself in Ibuleve. This constitutes a normal day at the moment. But to be honest, if my body didn't wear out so quickly, I love it. I can't really think of anything I'd prefer to be doing.

Wheat planted just a week ago, already growing

New tree waiting to be planted

The new rug in place, the finishing touch

Distractions

I spent ages trying to force my garage key into the back door lock in the pitch dark on Saturday night until I remembered a tiny torch in my handbag and finally got indoors. I could just see myself sleeping in the car. I was back from Il Trovatore, Live From the Met, a feast of music with Anna Netrebka, Dmitri Hvorostovski, the amazing Yonghoon Lee from South Korea and Dolora Zajick. The last two times I saw this opera were at Covent Garden 20-odd years ago prior to the coming of surtitles, so the story came as a complete revelation to me. I knew so many people in the audience that Ruth was wondering who has lived in Suffolk for 15 years, her or me? Prior to the opera we settled ourselves in the Wentworth with a tray of tea for a catch-up after 3 weeks apart. I'd spent the afternoon at Snape ushing at the Flipside Festival of Latin American music, dance and literature, and was lucky enough to be in on Chloe Adjis, Julia Blackburn, Louis de Berniere, and a trio of aging, multi award-winning writers from Brazil, Mexico and Angola who looked respectively like a sexy leather clad biker, an amiable professor and a drug dealer. They were so bright, so talented and earnest in their role of explaining their countries to their readers and themselves that I wished they could have talked for another hour. The weekend weather was glorious, and the Mexican food I was given two days running, the most delicious enchillados, was enjoyed in baking sunshine though another usher complained that all those beans gave her wind. There was plenty for children to do at the festival, but what a shame that they were all so middle class, already privileged beyond fairness while the children of Leiston or Saxmundham for example who would have benefitted most from such creative, fun activities were nowhere to be seen.

My weekend was made, I have to be honest, by England going out of the Rugby World Cup, though Ireland's struggle against Italy gave me palpitations until they drew safely ahead. Italy a threat? Since when? Every year in the Six Nations they vie with Scotland for the wooden spoon. Ireland meet France on Sunday so I'll be yelling them on then too. My dream is to see them win the cup. After a very productive evening at Italian that included home-made chocolate cake I could probably say that in several tenses including Conditional (I would like them to win), Subjunctive (Were they to win), Imperfect (When they used to win), Pluperfect (They had won), and best of all Perfect (They won)!!!!!

It's finally started to rain, not heavily but enough to make the garden smell and look wonderful. Much more is to come and then it will be fine again. The weather eh? Doesn't it keep you on youer toes?

Indian Summers

Two chatty riders clip-clopped past my house at 6.45am, rousing me from a vivid dream and deep, deep sleep. As I emerged from the bath half an hour later and threw open the window I could hear their conversation as clearly as if they were in the garden, but they were a good 500 yards away in the bottom field. Wonderful air, and another beautiful, still day. Another horse, one pulling a couple of people in a trap, deposited a load just along the lane which I spotted as I was going into Fram. I hesitated, then decided to collect it when I returned but, lo! it was flattened by the time I got back.

I zoomed in on them with my new camera

The garden is really taking shape now, though it won't really all fall into place until the planting has been done. I've got my tree, and several new shrubs, and all I have to do now is to work out a plan and get them planted. Luckily Nick seems interested in being here and putting my dreams into reality, so that's a huge bonus. I want to get it right first time so things don't have to be disturbed again.

This just doesn't do it justice

Yesterday was baking hot, and I toiled for several hours cutting down echinops and eryngium from the front, and clearing weeds from around the pond. I also hauled down the wisteria from where it was climbing into the guttering and the roof, climbing the ladder higher than I wanted to but exhilerated when I got the job done. At 3pm Sarah and I were meant to be cycling down to the Old Rectory where Patrick was going to take us to a prime patch of sloes. But by then my knee ached so much I had to cry off and resort to ice instead, so it was a lovely surprise when she appeared an hour later with a big fat bag of juicy fruit for me. I'm getting the gin today, and come Christmas there'll be a couple of bottles of prime sloe gin to help keep the cold out and the cheer in. I'm licking my lips at the thought.

Euonymus Alatus

Asters

More asters