Timings

Hugo's stitches came out today and the wound is looking heaps better. As I waited in one treatment room while they were being extracted in another, his unbearable yelps of pain forced me outside where I couldn't hear them. But when he returned to me all bouncy and happy the vet said it wasn't him crying but another dog! We still have to keep him on the lead for a further week, but at least we can go through the fields again. After the most recent harvesting many of them are still a feast for the eyes in their golden covers, hard to resist. When the rain has finished later in the week I plan to take off for a hike on my own with no whippet bouncing along on the tips of his toes, straining for a glimpse of a hare. It's not the most relaxing way to take in the sights.

Before: bruised and torn and shorn

After: calm and healing

Today I cut the lawn, and almost exactly on cue when I'd put the ride-on back under its covers the heavens opened. There is little more satisfying than getting this timing right. Earlier I'd sat with a sketch pad mapping out the beds as they are now so that I can plan where I want to move things. I will have a big sort out in the autumn with Nick as my spademan, and then hopefully everything will be in its rightful place and I can just add to the beds. I had a laugh to myself as I moved around the garden: a month or so ago I could have issued a challenge to find a weed; now the challenge would be to find a spot without a weed. But there are enough flowers to distract the eye, what with the dahlias, the roses, and a resurgance of delphiniums and lupins after the first finished batches were cut down to the ground. The wisteria has defeated me though. I've left it too long without cutting the excesses down, and they have now become entangled with the guttering and are resisting my fiercest tugs. Someone will have to get up a ladder. Not me though. My legs start to wobble when I get to the third step.