A Productive Morning

Last night we had a roast chicken dinner, and this morning I washed up after it, including the roasting tray. I also cleared the dining table (as much as it ever is cleared, which is to say that it has a big pile of papers on one end) and hung up some laundry. I have to do some more and hang some more and fold some of the laundry I did yesterday.

I also managed breakfast again. This is in danger of becoming a habit.

Garden News

Inspired by kightp

My garden is very small. We recently washed the patio and trimmed back the ivy outside the back door and the jasmine beside the patio. The jasmine looks like it's going to flower soon; it'd be nice to have it pretty for the wedding (17 days from now).

The rhubarb is doing ok, but I'm reluctant to pick it; I have a feeling that if I want it to spread and come back stronger next year I should leave it to go wild. One stalk bolted a couple of months ago and grew to over 5' high, so I cut it. The lemon verbena is definitely related to mint, and soon we will have to stop hacking it back with the shears and just uproot and pot it. I've potted some mint already and am hoping it doesn't die; it seems to be surviving ok, even though I potted it in the dry season.

The strawberries are doing fine; the older ones are doing better than the new runners we replanted with gravel around them in the spring. The new ones aren't fruiting much, but the older ones are producing big fat berries, which we ate at lunchtime today with Yeo Valley organic ice-cream (yum, yum). The blackberry bramble over the shed is in blossom and it looks like we'll get a lot of fruit from it this year.

The rubblery is completely overgrown with something I don't recognise, but I'm leaving it there until after the wedding, as it looks better green than brown. The little tree, which we think may be a pussy willow, has doubled in height over the past couple of years and we had to saw off a couple of lower branches.

Next door's convulvulus seems to be under control this year, which is nice; we aren't having to uproot the tendrils growing through the fence anymore.

The nasturtiums I'd almost forgotten I'd planted are flowering! The petals aren't as peppery as I remember, but they look pretty. One tendril is climbing the hanging lantern pole. The bedding plants we got are flowering too; I hope they'll still have some colour left by the time people visit for the wedding.

We have an abundance of dandelions. We deal with them by beheading them and uprooting them, depending on energy levels. The lawn would look a lot better if we uprooted all the dandelions and got some nasty chemical lawn-food-cum-weedkiller, but I don't want to. I'd like to get something else to cover the lawn, like chamomile. Something that smells nice. It's a tiny, tiny lawn.

I should deal with the dead irises and bluebells, but they haven't shed all their seeds and dried up yet, and apparently I should wait until the stalks are brown and crunchy before cutting them down. They look untidy, as though we don't care for the garden, which is usually true but not, I hope, this month, since I'm caring madly about how the house and garden are for my guests.

Today's weather makes me very happy. It's warm and grey, and the air is heavy and damp, and there's a moderately stiff breeze. It makes me feel like all the best times of being 16 again. My childhood and adolescence often sound like a horror story when I talk about them, but I had a lot of joy in with the drama and angst. And I associate weather like this strongly with the joy.

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In other news, moussaka and lasagne.