Isn’t it strange how the more you do, the more you find that you want to do? Oh, so you don’t find that? Ah well, I always suspected I was strange, but I’m having fun. Specifically, I’ve been playing in my little garden. It’s about twenty feet wide by forty feet long and every inch of it is packed. It’s also paved because there wasn’t enough room for a lawn to be viable once I had fruit trees and bushes and a shed at the bottom. And of course, the bins. Have you noticed that no one ever seems to have bins or washing lines in the garden makeover shows? So maybe I’m strange again because I have both, and the line’s on a pulley so it goes up nice and high and is supplemented by a clothes prop at the far end so the washing dries beautifully. I put it out at dawn at this time of year and it’s dry by lunchtime.
Anyway, I’m digressing all over the place. Sorry. My plants have been growing, which I know they’re supposed to, especially since they’re part of a Grand Plan which should mean that there is pollen for the buttterflies and insects as much of the year as is possible but minimum work. So, them growing means discarding some of my placeholder plants (quick growing, cheap but don’t fit the scheme which varies from area to area and year to year). It also means a lot of potting on and rearranging which is where the fun starts for me.
You’d think by now that I would accept that there were some things that my wonky joints won’t let me do too much of. You’d think wrong, unfortunately, but I am trying to pace myself, which is why I quite often end up out there, as I did today, pottering for ten minutes or so at 5 o’clock in the morning. I only do the quiet jobs and it’s usually after I’ve put the rubbish out because, and I know this’ll amaze you, we have a yellow weather warning for rain for most of the day. So there I was, and I know this sounds daft, thinking about relocating my plant pots, with the boring ones at the back and the pretty brightly coloured ones at the front. I won’t do it finally until I’ve done all the potting on, so I settled for organising them in a neat row going along the front of the border by the fence so I know what I’ve got and I can put my hands on them as I need them. After that, I moved some of them to their final location because they were dry, which isn't happening often. After that, for the same reason, I potted on a few plants for the great rearrange. Now it's raing and, for some strange reason, I hurt! Don't worry about upsetting me by saying 'serves you right' because I already know.
The plan is to be sensible because I really don’t like pain. It hurts and then I have to take nasty drugs with side effects that I have to take others for, is to tackle an area at a time. So, I’ve done the little slate garden, and when you see the picture you’ll know I really did mean the little bit. I’ve done the slate garden itself, and I’ve got a bit further with the bit outside the back door which I call the sunken garden if I’m feeling posh, the side return if my husband, who knows about such things and likes accuracy is around and, in my mind, I’m afraid, it’ll always be, the bit outside the back door. One of this year’s projects has been a gallery of mostly motivational signs to go with my dragons and it’s beginning to look how I want it to.
Potting on has to be tackled 3 or 4 pots a day and I keep telling myself that that’s okay. Someday I may manage to believe it but you can take it as read that Eleanor, my heroine in ‘Between the Sea and the Sky’ which comes out in October, draws on me a lot. Apart from the drawing,which I can’t do for toffee, sadly. I can sew though, and cook, and I have so much despite my wonky joints that I know I’m lucky.
I also have some books on special offer in the UK and the US and this week they’re nice cosy ones and first ins series, so they’ll be ideal holiday reading (not that I’m hinting, you understand.)
First there are the first three books in the Lavender House series, which leads on to the Harbourside Series. Straightforward, simple romances with a matchmaking ghost, and heroines who don’t always know what they want and sometimes have to learn that happiness isn’t where you expect it to be. Those are House of Dreams, Ghost of Dreams and Ghost of a Chance
Then there are the first three Windy Bay books, which are sweet and sex-free and based around a little village on the Studland Peninsula where, as they like to say, time goes more slowly and people are kind. They also bake and people come there and find a new life and acceptance of who they are, and sometimes a realisation that their old life isn’t so bad after all. Those three are A fresh start, Starting Over and Second Chances.
So that's it from wet Poole for now, and I'll leave you with another garden picture because I'm quite pleased with it... It's of the bit that doesn't have a proper name, but all the plants there now fit my Japanese-ish garden theme. Have a good week and we'll catch up on Sunday. Who knows, maybe it won't be raining? But if it does rain I shall start my quest to make the ultimate chocolate chip cookie, so if anyone has any recipes they'd like to share, I'd be very interested.
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