When the Kentish Spring Distinguishes Itself

Cistus purpureus, rose Abraham Derby

A few fine days work wonders for the Weltanschauung, or would, were it not for the awfulness of the news.  I worked through the despair yesterday morning weeding out in the garden: nothing like a bit of labour to keep the mind from brooding, though it can hardly amount to a fitting tribute to the dead, maimed and bereaved.  So, herewith a small floral tribute.

It's always a joy to see the iris sibirica coming back into flower.  Ours are descendants of plants that my mother grew in Scotland and then in Maidstone, and, though their flowering season is sadly brief, they are a joy, both to the eye and to the principles.  One of the satisfactions of gardening is that scope it gives for sharing: it's so satisfying to pass on to friends splits and cuttings of the flowering plants that give one pleasure.  Which reminds me: must marshal a few bits to give to Miss tomorrow.  A few years ago, she gave me a sedum that gives us architecture and colour just outside the French widow [sic: ack. Hoffnung] off the dining room, and a darker iris sibirica that gives (I hope) pleasure to people as they walk by the front garden.

We seem to have 100% germination from the climbing yellow courgettes, so I'll need to get some wires up the fence to train them to, assuming that we can bring them on successfully and harden them off.  I've sown some dwarf French beans, and I think they too are germinating.  The onion sets are planted and the leeks are sown.  We're expecting a lot from our tiny veggie bed, but what the hell?  Nothing ventured.

I thought I'd booked the car in for some attention before we left Another Place, having failed to open the bonnet to refill the windscreen washer, and because of the failure of the choreographic tailgate opening procedure.  Taking the dealer at its word, one presented self and vehicle on the appointed date and time.  'Oh, my manager emailed you to say we couldn't do it today.'  Well if s/he did, s/he may have mis-transcribed my not entirely user-friendly email address.  Rather than inflict another round trip on Martyn, I booked a loan car this time, and took the car in early yesterday.

I had a call mid-morning to say that the reason I couldn't open the bonnet was that the passenger door has to be opened first.  (Not an option when one is parked against the wall in Another Place.)  Would you have thought of that?  Sensible, I suppose, since it prevents a passenger from opening the bonnet on the move.  As if...  Oh well, we live and learn (thank goodness!).   Come 17:15, I rang to enquire as to progress, to learn that the spare part needed would arrive this morning, so I got to hang on to the roller-skate loan car a little longer.  A SEAT Mii, it's a nippy, agile little car.  It is to all intents and purposes the same as the VW Up!* and the Skoda Citigo - which leads me to describe them as the Volkskodeat Upmigo...  Lively little car, though it did come with one of those funny things on the floor that you have to waggle back and forth now and then.  But it was good to get back into my own car, and to be wafted home in a degree of luxury and indolence.  And it had been reasonably well washed into the bargain.  And a modest movement of the foot under the back bumper now raises the tailgate, which comes in handy when both hands are full of Fortnums' best - or an art class bag in one hand, a computer bag in the other, and a canvas or two under the arm.

*the Up! branding may resonate badly with Scots of my age, that being the înstruction given prior to getting the hands  thrashed with the dreaded Lochgelly tawse.