At the back, the roses are responding well to my pretty ruthless pruning, and we’re happy to see that the cream hellebore has bounced back from similarly harsh treatment from gardener Ben. It’s nearly time to start cutting the grass again, but I’ll leave that until the next dry spell.
Thanks to Martyn’s quiet supervision, I finally managed to charge the car today at Sainsbury’s. Must admit that it was a case of RTFI: Read The …. Instructions. I ought to have got this worked out long ago, but with our driving pattern, it’s usually enough to do an overnight charge at home.
The roses are all pruned, and I’m about to make a start on the various cornus shrubs, which are hurtling out of dormancy. A nice surprise today, when I looked at the mini greenhouse: the fuchsias in the hanging baskets are coming back to life. Their geranium and lobelia neighbours, however, did not make it through the winter, but there are geranium cuttings in the sitooterie - one of which I’ve had to discourage from flowering too soon. Anyway, the hanging baskets are tidied up, top dressed with fresh compost and grit, watered well nd put back under cover. The roses are responding well to my usual brutal pruning and feeding. The crocuses and snowdrops are starting to go over, but we have various lots of daffodils in flower, and tulips and hyacinths are coming on.
All this may have been down to the extraordinarily mild weather in recent days. This may change: we had quite a heavy hail shower this afternoon: short sleeves one day, hailstones the next. Well, let’s hope for the best. Our neighbour’s pink camellia is covered in flowers. Our white one is budding up pretty well, but the red one is less promising.
The mild weather has encouraged me to get out a bit on my hind legs, which is helping me towards my still very modest daily step count goal. The knees are not encouraging such efforts, and winter inactivity has sapped energy levels and added weight. But I’m still the right side of the grass, so that’s something to be grateful for.
Having lately had major expenditure on the fence following storm damage, wind has been somewhat on my mind (as well as elsewhere, of course). For yesterday’s German conversation gathering it was my turn to host, so I sent out a couple of pieces about the winds that afflict Switzerland, the Bise and the Föhn. For such a banal subject, the dialogue was really pretty good, and we all learned some new vocabulary. It’s a friendly little group, and it helps me to cling on to what remains of my fluency.
…were it not to a funeral, and routed via the M25 and A12. There was a very decent turnout, and the service was a bit shorter than my cousin Gill’s, Chris’s late wife’s, nearly five years ago. (Tempus don’t half fugit!) Chris’s daughters each contributed beautifully to the service. I shuddered on reading the order of service that the service would end with Widor’s Toccata (from his Symphony N°5), since the organist got spectacularly lost that time. Well, he got lost again this time, but retrievably. We didn’t hang round till the end…. Though there was no wake afterwards - the crem slot was straight after the service - but we did get a chance to speak briefly with the four cousins as we left.
Having left plenty of time for the journey, we had a chance to look round the historic centre of Lavenham, and for an early lunch in a quaint tea shop on the main drag. (I’m now paying for the generous salad…)
The travelling was not too unpleasant, but the roads were pretty busy. Since the journey involved a round trip of 180 miles or so, I had a touch of range anxiety: motorway driving notoriously eats up battery charge. But we got home with close to 20% - 60-ish miles - left ‘in the tank’. The range is proving disappointing, so I need to master the art of using public charging stations. I’d hoped to charge the battery this morning at Sainsbury’s, but the only available charging slot had an incompatible plug. Saturday morning is plainly not the day to charge the car: the shops were jumping, and the car park was consequently jam packed. I did wander along to the garden shop nearby, and it does have compatible equipment: not all that helpful, since one doesn’t want to spend time and money in the the café while the car does its voltaic stuff. Anyway, the car is plugged in for an overnight charge at home, and I’ll check Sainsbury’s the next time I need to shop on a quieter day.
On Wednesday we had supper with old friends Jenny and Andy: Jen’s mother Jean lived next door to me when I was in my first little house, and we became friendly during her last months - 42 years ago, for goodness’ sake! I used to cut her grass, and occasionally took her loveable Jack Russell, Daisy, for a walk. Jean’s garden backed on to mine by my back door, and Daisy was always up at the fence for a bit of fuss when I got home from work. I remember an evening during Jean’s last days when I was painting the door to the West Wing (outside WC). Jean came up to the fence with a gin and tonic that would have stunned a horse, just to say thank you for the really modest help I’d given her. I still have a couple of pot sinks that she’d brought down from Liverpool, and which Andy and Jen passed on to me: one is planted with bulbs and primulas, the other with oregano and thyme.
Jen and Andy have two endearing rescue dogs, Yana and Evie, the latter of which is loud and vivacious despite lacking a right front leg. I’m not a great dog fan, but often find that I like the ones I’m introduced to! Jen had prepared a delicious supper: a salmon, jumbo prawn and scallop gratin, which I shall be looking to emulate.
Out the front, work has began to install our new fibre optic telephone cable, so there’s a digger making a hole in the footpath, and a powered circular saw cutting a trench from the hole along to where the cable will come into the garden. We didn’t get any notice of the job, so a lot of the fencing materials are lying right where the cable needs to run.
This all requires a steady supply of teas and coffees for the five workmen, of course, but they all seem nice chaps and they’re certainly grateful.
The world of politics has gone quite mad. As each days brings yet another outrage I no longer find myself thinking ‘this can’t be happening’ as I did in the first days following the inauguration: rather I’m wondering how we are to cope with the awfulness to come.
We learned yesterday that Chris Burnford has left us, aged 92. Today would have been his 93rd birthday. He was the widower of my cousin Gill Routley. Her father Frank was boarded out at birth, since my grandparents, both teachers and then unmarried, were not in a position to give him what we would regard as a normal family life. It was only through Gill’s and cousin Philippa’s genealogical research that we learned of the relationship. We sometimes bemoan the times we live in, but in many ways we’re better off now. Anyway, we remember Chris fondly as the father of four fine first cousins once removed, and of course for his impish sense of humour.
