The phone went at half past nine this morning, and it was my Pilates teacher apologising that she was going to have to cancel this afternoon's lesson as she was ill. While I wouldn't have wished her to be unwell I was quite happy to postpone, since my cold was getting snufflier by the hour. There's a lot of it about. A friend contacted us last night to rearrange supper booked for the weekend because our host had gone down with a cold so bad he was having to cancel his university lectures. What's the old saying? That a green winter makes a fat churchyard. At least things are not that bad. When the days begin to lengthen, then the cold begins to strengthen, that's another one, and true enough.
It didn't seem to be raining when I went out to release the chickens into their run, and I kidded myself that I would be able to get on with some gardening as long as I was well wrapped up and remained active. As I carried my tools down the garden I had to admit that the dusting of fine white granules on the beds was snow, and that it was gently sleeting. I put the tools back in the garage, and limited myself to resetting the mousetraps.
I'd caught one mouse. I felt sorry for it, and wondered if the desire to create a garden justified killing it. But I want flowers. I'm not a vegetarian. If I am willing to go on eating meat provided I don't have to participate in the animals being slaughtered or see the process at first hand, but refuse to deal with rodents that are spoiling my garden, that makes me some sort of squeamish hypocrite. I don't have to grow hellebores, or crocus (whose bulbs were almost entirely stripped out of the borders in last year's cold winter), but I like them. I feel much more strongly about gardening than meat eating, which apart from domestic considerations I could take or leave. One doesn't have to eat meat, any more than grow hellebores. The Systems Administrator is absolutely not a vegetarian, doesn't want to be one, and does most of the cooking, so I have what the SA's having. If I hadn't caught the mouse, something else probably would have. It is in the nature of mice to be caught. If they weren't, the mouse population would explode until north Essex was laid bare like the Oklahoma dust bowl. I tipped the little body over the fence and reset the traps, still feeling mean. I'll see how this campaign goes.
I ordered some more hellebores on-line, from Ashwood Nurseries. This is a small family firm in the Midlands, renowned in the world of hellebore breeding, and I have wanted to get some of their plants for a long time. Ashwood Garden Hybrids are readily available as young plants, take pot luck on colour, but although all of them would probably be lovely I wanted the luxury of choosing my colours. I stuck to single flowers, which are much cheaper than the elaborate doubles, but more to the point more graceful, and went for a black, a claret, a green, a pinkish green, and one described as slate, colours that should combine well in a display around the soon-to-be-planted Enkianthus. In a couple of years I should start getting self sown seedlings, which will be worth growing on and trying in other parts of the garden, with parentage like that. Ashwood sell various species hellebores, but after reading up on their comparatively weak constitutions, susceptibility to disease and fussiness about soil I stuck with the Garden Hybrids. Very vigorous plants, tolerant of most soils. That's what I want.
And that was it. I know it's a dull day when I'm reduced to doing the ironing. I listened to a new CD of Norweigan folk songs by Trio Mediaeval and the first part of Pandolfi's violin sonatas, which made it more interesting, but I could have listened to them while gardening, if it hadn't been such miserable weather and I hadn't had a cold.
Addendum The Systems Administrator updated the wireless driver on my laptop last Friday, and since then it has been connecting to the internet without problems, like a normal machine, which is provisionally encouraging. The new wireless transmitter ordered at the same time, to see if fitting that would help, still hasn't arrived, and nor have any of the various concert, museum and theatre tickets I ordered last week. If it's not BT it's the post office, out here in the boondocks.
No comments:
Post a Comment