After a disappointing day yesterday when our plans had to change because one person had a bad cold and sore throat and another did what he does best to drive me to an early grave, today was simply brilliant. My lunch in a posh restaurant in Cambridge was thwarted, though the day turned out to be fruitful enough. The previous evening Hugo had inexplicably got wind of half a bar of Ritters pepermint fondant-filled chocolate, tucked away in my handbag and forgotten about. I did my usual scan of the kitchen before I went up for the night - more a full body search with sniffer dogs these days - but could see nothing that he could eat. So I was close to being distraught to discover bits of wrapper in his bed in the morning. Surely he wouldn't survive another assault on his digestive tract? Oh but he did! No ill effects at all. He's a dog after my own heart: a half bar of Ritters does me no end of good too, as long as I don't eat it too close to bedtime. So there we were, me havering about the wisdom of driving all the way to Cambridge with a dog who might be sick or worse, when his babysitter for the day reported being unwell. The posh lunch was postponed until next week, and I set about dragging the hoover around the house instead.
Today was much more fun. Nick arrived nice and early, the day was dry and warm, and he set to moving all the shrubs I've decided were in the wrong place, and planting others I've bought and stockpiled since. He shifted barrow loads of lovely soil, the result of all those turves we piled behind the summerhouse last year and covered with tarps. Talk about friable - you could have eaten it. Nick is beginning to feel his age like me, but he kept going for five hours until the sky darkened and drops of rain splashed on the pond's surface. He'll be back in a couple of weeks for another marathon, digging out the nettles behind the back fence, and generally tidying the back hedge. Another terrific man, Shaun, brother of the heroic Lee who ground out my hazel stump in a hurricane last year, is coming to drastically reduce the side hedge. It's taken me a while to decide that this is the best tactic. Last year I had it reduced by around 20 feet, probably the first time it's been so tamed, but if we'd only gone to another 10 feet I could have kept it under control myself. You live and learn. Or do you?
So, my hypericum has been clipped back hard and moved to the space where I always knew it should be, the crocosmia Lucifer has taken its place, a climbing rose and a lavatera have been planted in front of the big field maple, an abelia and a cystus with which I optimistically filled a space in the front garden but which disappeared from view never to be seen again until now, have been rescued and found new places near the woodshed. A slightly vulgar fuschia has been taken from its pot and put near the pond, and an orange montbretia shoved in the space behind the summerhouse where all the turves were stored. It's a wonderful achievement, one the old me would have taken in her single-handed stride but which the new me can only watch and admire. While Nick hurled his spade into the ground I wasn't exactly idle: I cut back dead and dying lupins, delphiniums, phlox and aquilegia, hauled at overgrowths of Johnson's Blue, clipped back the voraciously spreading vinca, and generally cleared and dead-headed. It's all relative.
I've finished The Huntingfield Paintress. I can't express how much I admired and enjoyed it. When Mildred Holland decided to paint the nave ceiling a few years after completing the one above the chancel she was already crippled with arthritis. She could barely get out of bed, and had to slide down the rectory staircase on her bottom every morning. Yet she insisted on being winched up three flights of scaffolding in a sling to the top of the church where, suffering from terrible vertigo as she always did as well as having agonising pains in her hips and hands, she lay on her back in the darkness and the bitter cold for three years and completed her incredible work. All of that time the church was closed and her husband the Rector and the villagers walked to the next village of Cookley for Sunday services. It was an act of massive charity on his part, and amazing tenacity and courage on hers. I'm hoping we can go and see it soon. I'm already awe-struck.
And finally: https://www.facebook.com/BeethovenOnlyBeethoven/videos/974039686057244/
Nothing makes me happier. It's not Beethoven though. It's Clementi's Sonatina in D Major. For my friend F.
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